tment, antec 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. 97 
later, many of whom have given detailed enumerations of the animals they 
met with. While every species of mammal now known to exist there, from 
the squirrel to the deer, is mentioned, the buffalo is absent from them 
all.* It was also absent from this region at the time when Lawson, Brickell, 
and Catesby explored the Carolinas with special reference to their natural 
products. 
The Buffalo not found within the present limits of Florida. — The buffalo is also 
believed by some to have been found within the present limits of Florida, 
and throughout the Gulf States down to the Gulf of Mexico. This, however, 
is a mistake, mainly arising, probably, from the former vast extent of Florida 
as compared with its present limits.t 
These writers are Forbes,f who as recently as 1821 wrote, “The buffalo 
is said to be among the number of wild beasts, but not commonly seen”! 
Davis also says, on the authority of Romans, that “their tracks have been 
seen as far south and southeast as the Withlacooche River.”§ But from the 
context of Romans’s work, and from the known range of the buffalo at the 
time he wrote (1776), he must have been mistaken in respect to the identity 
of the tracks. Romans says: “. . . . at the junction of Flint River and the 
river in the south extreme of this division is the head of Manatee River, 
between which and the Amazura I saw a vast number of deer, and the marks 
* Among the authors here referred to are Robert Horn (Briefe Description of the Province of Carolina 
on the Coasts of Floreda, etc., 1666) ; Samuel Wilson (An Account of the Province of Carolina, in America, 
etc, 1682); “T. A.” [Thomas Ash] (Carolina; or a Description of the Present State of that Country and 
the Natural Excellencies thereof, etc., by T. A., Gent., 1682); and John Archdale (A New Description of 
that fertile and pleasant Province of Carolina, ete., 1707). Reprinted in Carroll’s Hist. Coll. of S. Car., 
Vol. H. See also Hakluyt, Voyages, ete., Vol. IV, for these papers. 
t As is well known, for many years subsequent to the disastrous expedition of De Soto, Florida, as 
claimed by Spain, embraced all the Atlantic coast as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and for more 
than a century after, or till 1651, extended northward to the present southern boundary of Virginia, and 
comprised an immense unexplored region in the interior. Not until 1721 was its western boundary re- 
stricted to its present limits. In 1764, the year following its acquisition by the British crown, its western 
boundary was again temporarily extended to the Mississippi River. — Monette’s Hist. of the Valley of the 
Mississippi, Vol. I, pp. 65-77. 
In 1745 the British possessions in North America embraced only that portion of the United States 
north of the present limits of Florida, east of the Allechanies, exclusive, however, of those portions of 
New York and Vermont north of the 44th parallel. The whole vast interior belonged to the French, and 
while almost the whole basin of the Mississippi was denominated Louisiana, or the Province of Lowis, the 
northeastern part, including not only the present Canadas, but nearly all the territory north of the Ohio, 
was called Canada, or New France. — Jbid., Vol. I, map. 
ft Sketches, Historical and Topographical, of the Floridas; more especially of East Florida, p. 67. 
§ Conquest of New Mexico, 1869, p. 67, footnote. 
