192 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
The buffaloes, in common with deer and elks, have also often been imvalu- 
able to the pioncer settler, insuring him food during the first few years at 
least of his frontier life. As already noticed, Boone and his party subsisted 
almost wholly during their first winter in Kentucky on the flesh of this ani- 
mal, and throughout the prairie portions of the country, from Illinois west- 
ward to the Rocky Mountains, the buffalo has subserved a most important 
purpose in the westward progress of civilization. The vast influx of settlers 
that follows the opening of new railroads across the Plains, such as that 
which still sets into the valley of the Arkansas along the line of the Atchi- 
son, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad, thus find a sure subsistence until they 
can open up and improve their farms ; and, as one writer has remarked, “ by 
the time the last buffalo has disappeared from Kansas, the frontier will be 
subdued to civilization and be self-supporting.” 
From lack of speedy and cheap means of transportation the consumption of 
buffalo meat was, until recently, necessarily limited to the people living near 
or within its actual range, and to parties traversing the country it inhabited. 
Upon the opening of the Kansas railways, however, many car-loads, as 
already shown by the above-given statistics, were shipped durmg winter to 
the Eastern cities. While Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and the other 
larger cities of the Mississippi Valley formed the principal markets for its 
sale, it was also sent in large quantities to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, 
Baltimore, and the other chief cities of the East.* When arriving in good 
condition, as was usually the case, it rivals beef and venison in cheapness, i 
not in quality, besides having the special feature of novelty. 
The meat of the buffalo is often spoken of as being dry and tough, and far 
inferior in quality to beef. This is in a measure true, the flesh of middle- 
aged and elderly bulls being of this character, that of old bulls being eaten 
only when none other can be obtained. The flesh of a young fat cow, or of 
a yearling or two-year-old bull, however, is not surpassed by the finest beef, 
from which it cannot usually be distinguished. During some two months 
spent on the Kansas plains in 1871-72, I ate it daily, and would never ask 
* As already noticed, upward of one million pounds were shipped, as saddles, over the Kansas Pacific 
Railway during the winter of 1871 — 72, besides hundreds of barrels of tongues and cured “hams” during 
the same period. Since that time the shipments over this road have greatly diminished, but the reduc- 
tion was for a year or two more than balanced by the additional shipments over the Atchison, ‘Topeka, 
and Santa Fé road, which in 1873 were over one and a half million (1,617,600) pounds. In 1874, how- 
ever, the shipment was less than half this amount, there having been already a marked decline in the 
amount of buffalo products transported over this road also. 
