106 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
Meadows here extend beyond Sight, in which the Buffalo go in Herds of 2 
or 3 hundred.”* In describing the country bordering the Illinois River, 
below the junction of the Kankakee, he says: “In this Route we see only 
vast Meadows, with little Clusters of Trees here and there, which seem to 
have been planted by the Hand ; the Grass grows so high in them, that one 
might lose one’s self amongst it; but everywhere we meet with Paths that 
are as beaten as they can be in the most populous Countries; yet nothing 
passes through them but Buffaloes, and from Time to Time some Herds of 
Deer, and some Roe-Bucks.” Later he writes: “The 6th [of October, 1721] 
we saw a great Number of Buffaloes crossing the River in a great Hurry” ; 
and adds that they soon provided themselves with food “ by killing a Buffalo 
or Roe-Buck, and of these we had the Choice.” t 
Vaudreuil alludes to their abundance on Rock River in 1718. From the 
bluffs along this river, he says, “you behold roaming through the prairie 
herds of buffalo of Hlinois.”— Pittman, writing fifty years later, describes the 
country of the Illinois Indians as abounding with “buffalo, deer, and wild 
fowl.” § 
The buffalo seems also to have been abundant over large portions of In- 
diana. Charlevoix, writing of the Ohio River in 1720, says: “ All the Country 
that is watered by the Ouabache [Ohio], and by the Ohio [Wabash] which 
runs into it, is very fruitful: It consists of vast Meadows, well-watered, 
where the wild Buffaloes feed by Thousands.” || Vaudreuil, writing at about 
the same time, says, in his “Memoir on the Indians between Lake Erie and 
the Mississippi” : “ Whoever would wish to reach the Mississippi easily would 
need only to take this Beautiful river [Ohio] or the Sandosquet [Sandusky] ; 
he could travel without any danger of fasting, for all who have been there 
have repeatedly assured me that there is a vast quantity of Buffalo and of 
all other animals in the woods along that Beautiful River; they were often 
obliged to discharge their guns to clear a passage.” 
There is further evidence also of the former abundance of the buffalo in 
* Letters, Goadby’s English Edition, pp. 280, 281. 
+ Letters, Goadby’s English Edition, p. 290. 
{ New York Coll. of MSS., Paris Doc. VII, p. 890. 
§ Pittman (Captain Philip), Present State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi, p. 51, 1770. 
The region referred to is described in the context as being enclosed by the Mississippi on the west, the 
Illinois on the north, the Ohio on the south, and the Wabash (Ouabache) and “ Miamis ” on the east. 
|| Letters, Goadby’s English ed., p. 303. 
q New York Coll. of MSS., Paris Doc., VU, p. 886. 
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