THE AMERICAN BISONS. 171 
The Earl of Southesk, in his recently published narrative of his sporting 
adventures in British North America in 1859,* makes but few references to 
the buffalo, and adds nothing of much importance to our knowledge of its 
distribution. He speaks, however, of their occurrence on the plains west of 
Fort Ellice, and of meeting with large herds between the North and South 
branches of the Saskatchewan. He also met with their recent remains near 
Old Bow Fort, on the South Saskatchewan, at the base of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. “The plains,” he says, “are all strewn with skulls and other vestiges 
of the buffalo, which came up this river last year in great numbers. They 
were once common in the mountains. At the Kootanie Plain I observed 
some of their wallowing-places, and even so high as a secluded little lake 
near where the horses were taken up to the ice bank, I saw traces of them. 
They are now rapidly disappearing everywhere.” A few were also seen 
near the Touchwood Hills, west of Fort Pelly, in November, which was about 
the most easterly point at which they were seen.t 
Captain W. F. Butler, writing in 1872, thus speaks of the region of the 
Touchwood Hills: “This region bears the name of the Touchwood Hills. 
Around it, far into endless space, stretch immense plains of bare and scanty 
vegetation, plains scored with the tracks of countless buffalo, which, until a 
few years ago, were wont to roam in vast herds between the Assinniboine 
and the Saskatchewan. Upon whatever side the eye turns when crossing 
these great expanses, the same wrecks of the monarch of the prairie lie 
thickly strewn over the surface. Tundreds of thousands of skeletons dot 
the short, scant grass; and when fire has laid barer still the level surface 
the bleached ribs and skulls of long-killed bison whiten far and near the dark 
burnt prairie.” $ 
Captain Butler crossed the plains from Fort Ellice in a northwest direction 
to Fort Carlton (Carlton House), and journeyed thence up the North Sas- 
katchewan River to the base of the Rocky Mountains; but he seems not to 
have met with any living buffalo throughout his journey. He again refers 
to the vast diminution the buffalo has undergone, and mentions the whole- 
sale slaughter formerly practised by the Cree Indians on the plains of the 
Saskatchewan, and describes a hunt he himself participated in on the plains 
of Nebraska. Referring to the rapidity with which the buffalo is vanishing 
* Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains, 1875. 
t Ibid., pp. 52, 254, 306. 
{ The Great Lone Land, p. 217, 1873. 
