MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 49 



escape from being trampled under their feet or crushed to death in his own 

 ruins. At that period he supposed there could not have been less than ten 

 thousand in the neighborhood of the spring. They sought for no manner of 

 food but only bathed and drank three or four times a day and rolled in the 

 earth, or reposed, with their flanks distended, in the adjacent shades, and on 

 the fifth and sixth days separated into distinct droves, bathed, drank, and de- 

 parted in single files, according to the exact order of their arrival. They all 

 rolled successively in the same hole and each thus carried away a coat of 

 mud to preserve the moisture on their skin, and which when hardened and 

 baked by the sun, would resist the stings of millions of insects that otherwise 

 would persecute these peaceful travelers to madness or even death. 



** In the first and second years this old man with some companions killed 

 from six to seven hundred of these noble creatures, merely for the sake of the 

 skins, which to them were worth only two shillings each, and after this ' work 

 of death ' they were obliged to leave the place till the following season, or till 

 the wolves, bears, panthers, eagles, rooks, ravens, etc., had devoured the car- 

 casses, and abandoned the place for other prey. In the two following years, 

 the same persons killed great numbers out of the first droves that arrived, 

 skinned them, and left the bodies exposed to the sun and air ; but they soon had 

 reason to repent of this; for the remaining droves, as they came up in succes- 

 sion, stopped, gazed on the mangled and putrid bodies, sorrowfully moaned or 

 furiously lowed aloud, and returned instantly to the wilderness in an unusual 

 run, without tasting their favorite spring or licking the impregnated earth, 

 which was also once their most agreeable occupation ; nor did they, or any of 

 their race, ever revisit the neighborhood." — Ashe, Travels in America in 1806. 

 N. York, 181 1, pp. 47, 48. 



Cumberland Co. — Prof. Baird records finding bones of bison in caves near 

 Carlisle in the Patent Office Reports of 185 1, but on inquiry from Dr. J. A. 

 Allen stated he could not be sure that these were of B. bison without re-ex- 

 amination. — See Rhoads, Proc. A. N. Sci., Phila., 1895, P- ^44- 



Elk Co. — " Running from the southeast corner of Warren Co. through Mc- 

 Kean Co.'s southwest corner and as far as Daguscahonda [central Elk Co.], 

 was the old Buffalo Swamp." — See Hist. Elk Co., Chicago, 1890, p. 573. 

 This tract was at the headwaters of the Clarion and Allegheny Rivers, form- 

 ing an elevated and extensive meeting place for the herds passing from one 

 water shed to another in their circuit of the northwestern corner of the state. 

 It would also form a northern rendezvous from which occasional herds or 

 individuals may have strayed into the valley of the Susquehanna. Owing, 

 however, to the absence of any record of them in Cameron, Clinton, and 

 Potter Cos., this, if ever, was a rare occurrence, the buffaloes of Centre, 

 Union and Perry Cos. coming east by way of Clearfield Co., or northeast by 

 way of the Juniata via the Bedford and Somerset Co. passes from the 

 Youghiogheny and Conemaugh. — Rhoads. 



