136 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
us, for the grass, short as it was, rose up after having been trodden down, as 
straight and fresh as ever. 
“ Another very astonishing thing is that on the eastern margin of one of 
the salt lakes, towards the south, was found a spot almost half a musket shot 
long, entirely covered with buffalo bones, to the height of twelve feet, and 
eighteen feet broad, which is surprising in a desert country, where no one 
could have brought these bones together. It is pretended that when the 
lake is troubled by the North winds, it throws upon the opposite shore the 
bones of all animals which have perished in coming to drink.” * 
Any one who has seen the buffaloes on their native plains can but recog- 
. nize the faithfulness of these details, which are remarkable for their minute- 
ness and exact truthfulness. They are further worthy of note from being 
the first descriptions of the buffalo ever published. 
During the exploration of the different portions of the Great Plains, from 
the time of Lewis and Clarke, Pike, Long, and others, dows to the later ex- 
peditions of Frémont, Stansbury, Emory, Marcy, StimpsoA, Pope, Sitgreaves, 
and others, and the explorations for “a railroad route from the Mississippi 
River to the Pacific Ocean” in 1853-55, buffaloes, or recent traces of them, 
were found everywhere from the Missouri and Upper Mississippi Rivers west- 
ward to the remotest valleys of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, 
from the plains of Texas northward to the 49th parallel. In the further 
account of this vast territory it is hence necessary to trace only their extir- 
pation over the very large portion from which they have disappeared. . 
Extirpation in Texas und New Mexico. — Long prior to the time of the later 
explorations above mentioned, the buffalo had disappeared from the eastern 
border of the plains south of the Platte River. Even as early as the begin- 
ning of the present century the range of the buffalo had begun to be mate- 
rially restricted, these animals having at that time been apparently wholly 
exterminated south of the Rio Grande, while they had also disappeared from 
the adjoining portions of Texas. They appear also to have wholly disap- 
peared in Texas south of the Colorado River prior to the year 1840. Before 
this date they had also receded far from the coast, and no longer ranged west 
of the Pecos River, either in Texas or New Mexico; they occupying at this 
time only a narrow oblique belt through the middle portion of the State, 
varying from one hundred to two hundred miles in breadth, and widening 
rapidly as it approached the northern border of the State. From Texas 
* Davis’s Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, pp. 206, 207, footnote. 
