THE AMERICAN BISONS. 81 
term for the moose. The name “orignac” or “orignal” of the early 
French explorers appears to have been applied indifferently to both the 
moose (Alces males) and the elk (Cervus canadensis), but never to the buf 
falo. Champlain, in speaking of the game he found about Lake Cham- 
plain, makes no reference to the buffalo, neither do any of the subsequent 
writers of the seventeenth century. In regard to the “Ellans,” we find in. 
‘Lescarbot’s account the following: “The winter being come, the Savages 
of the Countrey did assemble themselves from farre to Port Royall, for to 
trucke with the Frenchmen for such things as they had, some bringing 
Beavers skins and Otters . . . . and also Ellans or Stagges, whereof good 
bugfe be made.” * We thus see that the term duffe was also applied to the 
products of the elk and moose. Charlevoix’s description of the Orignal, 
however, is strictly applicable to the moose, and to no other animal. 
Charlevoix says: “What they here [in Canada] call the Orignal, is 
what in Germany, Poland, and Muscovy they call the Elk, or Great Beast. 
. . . . Its Horns are not less long than those of a Hart, and much wider. 
They are flat and forked like those of a Deer, and are renewed every 
Year. 7 
Hennepin ascended the’ St. Lawrence and crossed the lakes to the 
prairies of Indiana and Illinois in 1679-80, but Hennepin in his narra- 
tive of his travels does not speak of meeting with the buffalo until he had 
reached the Illinois River in December, 1679.4 In his account of the pro- 
ductions of Canada, he says, “There are to be had Skins of Elks, or Orignauz, 
as they are called in Canada, of the white Wolf or Lynx, of black Foxes, 
. of common Foxes, Otters, Martens, wild Cats, wild Goats, Harts, 
Porcupines,” etc.§ In the account he has given of his travels he describes 
the buffalo with such particularity || as to leave no doubt that if he had met 
with or known of the occurrence of the buffalo in what is now known 
as Canada, he would not have failed to enumerate it among the products 
of that country. 
In 1763 Marquette passed up the St. Lawrence, and through the Great 
Lakes to the Mississippi Valley, by way of Lake Michigan and the Fox and 
* Purchas, Pilgrims, Vol. IV, p. 1613. 
+ Letters to the Dutchess of Lesdiguieres, Goadby’s English Ed., London, 1763, p. 64. 
+ New Discovery of a great Country in America, English Ed., 1698, p. 90. 
§ Voyage into North America, English Ed., 1679, pp. 136, 187. 
|| New Discovery, etc., p. 91. 
