THE BUFFALO OR BISON 123 
for millions of immigrants and that now produce so large 
a part of the world’s staple crops. 
Time, however, will not efface the traces of the buffalo’s 
occupation of the continent. They blazed the trails that 
later became important highways. As A. B. Hulbert, in his 
‘Historic Highways of America,’ has pointed out, the buf- 
falo selected the route through the Alleghanies by which 
the white man entered and took possession of the Mississippi 
Valley. They found the best routes across the continent, 
and ‘“‘human intercourse will move constantly on paths 
first marked by the buffalo. It is interesting that he found 
the strategic passageways through the mountains; it is also 
interesting that the buffalo marked out the most practical 
paths between the heads of our rivers, paths that are 
closely followed today by the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and 
Ohio, Chesapeake and Ohio, Wabash and other great 
railroads.” 
To-day the only wild buffalo exist in Canadian territory, 
and it will be of interest now to discuss this herd. 
THe WILD or Woop Bison 
In the area comprising a portion of northern Alberta 
and the Northwest Territories that is bounded on the north 
_ by Great Slave Lake, on the west by the Hay River, on the 
southeast by the Peace River, and on the east by the 
Slave River, there roams to-day the only wild remnant 
of the former millions of buffalo that inhabited this con- 
tinent. By their segregation they have formed a dis- 
tinct race or sub-species known as Bison bison atha- 
basce Rhoads. This race is larger in size and darker in 
colour than the typical buffalo of the plains; also, its hair is 
said to be more dense and silky, and the horns are larger and 
more incurved (Plate XII). 
Samuel Hearne was the first traveller to record the occur- 
