82 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
Wisconsin Rivers, but he appears not to have met with the buffalo till he 
reached the Wisconsin River.* 
Charlevoix, who traversed the same country in 1720, and who has left us 
in his letters a full account of his journey up the St. Lawrence, and thence 
westward through Lakes Ontario and Erie, only heard of their existence on 
the southern shore of Lake Erie, he himself coasting along the northern 
shore. Concerning the game of the country bordering Lake Erie he says, 
“‘ Water-fowl swarmed everywhere: I cannot say there is such Plenty of 
Game in the Woods, but I know that on the South Side there are vast Herds 
of wild Cattle.” + Again he says, “But at the end of five or six leagues 
[from Detroit River], inclining towards the Lake Erié to the South West, 
one sees vast Meadows which extend above a hundred Leagues every 
Way, and which feed a prodigious Number of those Cattle which I have 
already mentioned several Times.” He gives, however, an account of the 
“chase” in Canada, in which he describes the method of hunting the buffalo, 
but the locality is specified as “the Southern and Western Parts of New 
France, on both Sides of the Mississippi,’ § which was then generally called 
Canada. 
In the account of the Voyage of Father Simon Le Moine to the country 
of the “Iroquois Onondagoes” in 1653 — 54 we find what at first sight seems 
to be indisputable evidence of the existence of the buffalo at the eastern end 
of Lake Ontario, in both New York and Canada. In this account we find 
the following : “At the other side of the Rapid || I perceived a herd of wild 
cows,{{ which were passing at their ease in great state. Five or six hundred 
are seen sometimes in these regions in one drove.” ** In the “Relation de la 
Nouvelle France en ?Année 1665,” we find the following description of the 
St. Lawrence River: “This is one of the most important rivers that can be 
seen, whether we regard its beauty or its convenience, for we meet there 
almost throughout, a vast number of beautiful Islands, some large, others 
* An Account of the Discovery of some new Countries and Nations in N. America in 1673. Transla- 
tion in French’s Hist. Coll. La., Part II, pp. 279 - 297. 
+ Letters, Goadby’s English Ed., 1763, p. 170. Dodsley’s English Edition says “a prodigious quantity 
of Buffaloes” (Vol. I, p. 3). 
t Ibid., p.178. Dodsley’s Translation says again, “ those buffaloes” (Vol. II, p. 18). 
§ Ibid., p. 68. 
|| This locality is just below St. Ignatius, on the St. Lawrence, not far from Lake Ontario. 
4] “ Vaches sauvages,” in the original. Relation de la Nouv. France en les Années 1653 — 54, p. 85. 
** Documentary Hist. New York, Vol. I, p. 31. 
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