ee ET em I eS TM ee eer eNO CT TNT ar MeT RE RTE Ty aT ey st ee ane 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. a2 
Newfoundland.” Parkhurst writes: “Nowe againe, for Venison plentie, es- 
pecially to the North about the grand baie, and in the South neere Cape 
Race and Plesance: there are many other kinds of beasts, as Luzarnes, and 
other mighty beastes like to camels in greatnesse, and their feete cloven, I 
did see them farre off not able to discerne them perfectly, but their steps 
shewed that their feete were cloven, and bigger than the feete of Camels, I 
suppose them to bee a kind of Buffes which I read to be in the countreyes 
adjacent, and very many in the firme lande.”* Though it is supposed by 
some that the musk ox may have been referred to in this allusion to a “kind 
of Buffes,” there is apparently little reason to doubt that these “ Buffes” were 
the moose, which the early voyagers found on the adjacent mainland in 
great numbers; yet Marcy ft and others have supposed this to be a possi- 
ble reference to the buffalo, probably from the occurrence of the word 
“ Buffes.” 
Another similar reference to the occurrence of an animal like an ox in 
Newfoundland is contained in the report of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage 
to this island in 1583. In an enumeration of the “commodities thereof” are 
mentioned “Beasts of sundry kindes, red. deare, buffles or a beast, as it 
seemeth by the tract & foote very large, in maner of an oxe.”$ In the 
account of the “first voyage made to the coast of America” by Captains 
Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, in 1584, it is said that they treated with 
the Indians for “ Chamoys, Buffe and Deere skinnes”;§ and Thomas Hariot, 
in his “briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,” written 
in 1587, mentions “Deer skinnes dressed after the manner of Chamoes, or 
undressed,” among the commodities of the country.|| The same writer 
speaks later of the “beasts” of Virginia, and says, “I have the names of 
eight and twenty severall sorts, . . . . of which there are only twelve kinds 
that we have yet discovered, and of those that be good meat, we know only 
them before mentioned,’ among which there is no mention of any “ Buffes,” 
“ Buffles,” “wild Cattle,” or anything that can be regarded as at all like the 
buffalo.¥) 
* Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., Vol. III, p. 178, London, 1600. (The Edition of 1810 is the one quoted in 
this memoir.) 
' t Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana, p. 104, 1853. 
t Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., Vol. IIL, p. 195. 
§ Ibid., p. 303. 
|| Ibid., p. 327. 
| Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., p. 333. 
