152 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
within easy drive from the line of the road, and is often chosen by Eastern 
hunting-parties for their field of operations. 
The Kansas Pacific Railway, traversing as it does one of the favorite and 
formerly most populous portions of the range of the great Southern Herd, 
has given opportunity, since it was opened in 1870, for the destruction of 
hundreds of thousands of buffaloes. After two or three years the results 
of this wholesale slaughter began to be apparent in the thinning of the 
herds and in their erratic movements and changed habits, especially in re- 
spect to their migrations. 
During the summer of 1871 straggling bands occurred as far eastward 
in Northern Kansas as Fossil Creek, while the great herds were rarely met 
with east of the meridian of Fort Hays. In June of that year they black- 
ened the prairies from the Saline River to the Republican Fork. In Janu- 
ary, 1872, they had receded several hundred miles to the westward of their 
summer limit, ranging then over Eastern Colorado. Between the Union 
Pacific and Kansas Pacific Railroads they at this time migrated eastward 
in summer and westward in winter, passing with reluctance either of 
these great highways. At times, however, they swept across the Kansas 
Pacific Railway in immense herds, obliging the trains to await their pas- 
sage.* In consequence of this eastward and westward migration they 
had already worn deep trails running in this direction, and at right angles 
to the older set made when their migrations were mainly from the north 
southward in autumn and from the south northward in spring.} From the 
great persecution they had suffered from the hunters, who swarmed down 
upon them from all sides, their movements were already less regular than 
formerly. 
The opening of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad has had a far 
greater influence upon the buffalo than either of the other roads, in conse- 
quence of the great number of hunters who seized upon it as a favorable 
basis for the prosecution of their terrible work of destruction. The story of 
this destruction and the fatal results attending the encroachment of the set- 
tlements upon the range of the buffalo is well told in the subjoined letter 
from Dr. W. S. Tremaine, U.S. A., kindly written in answer to my inquiries 
* General Meigs writes that a conductor of the Kansas Pacific Railway informed him in the winter of 
1872-73, that ‘“‘ while he had been several times delayed by the crossing of immense herds going south 
he had never seen any buffalo returning.” — MS. Notes on the Buffalo. 
+ See Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol. VI, pp. 46, 47. 
