114 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 
of dense forest, across the Alleghany Mountain system to the 
prairies along the Mississippi, and southward to the delta 
of that great stream. Although the great plains country 
of the west was the natural home of the species, where it 
flourished most abundantly, it also wandered south across 
Texas to the burning plains of northeastern Mexico, west- 
ward across the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah, 
Idaho, and northward across a vast treeless waste to the 
bleak and inhospitable shores of the Great Slave Lake it- 
self.” 
Early Distribution in Canada.—The favourite range of the 
buffalo in Canada was the northern extension of the great 
plains region, lying between the Missouri River and the 
Great Slave Lake. The most northerly record of its occur- 
rence was made by Franklin in 1820, when he found it at 
Slave Point, on the north side of Great Slave Lake. In 
1829 Richardson defined the easterly distribution of the 
buffalo in Canada as follows: ‘‘They do not frequent any 
of the districts formed of primitive rocks, and the limits of 
their range to the eastward, within the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
pany’s territories, may be correctly marked on the map by 
a line commencing in longitude 97 degrees on the Red River, 
which flows into the south end of Lake Winnipeg, crossing 
the Saskatchewan to the northward of Basquian Hill* and 
running thence to the Athapescowt; thence to the east end of 
Great Slave Lake. Their migrations westward were formerly 
limited to the Rocky Mountain range and they are still 
unknown in New Caledonia and on the shores of the Pacific 
to the north of the Columbia River; but of late years they 
have found out a passage across the mountains near the 
sources of the Saskatchewan oa their numbers to the 
westward are annually increasing.”’ 
As late as 1871 the buffalo inhabited the shore of Great 
- Slave Lake, as is shown by a letter from E. W. Nelson to 
* Pasquia Hills, } Lake Athabaska. 
