



!; f 



THE AMEMCAK BISON'S. 



79 



Newfoundland." Parkhurst writes : " Nowe againe^ for Venison plentie, es- 

 pecially to the North about the grand baie, and in the South neere Cape 



Race and Plesance : there are many other kinds of beasts, as Luzarnes, and 

 other mighty beastes like to camels in greatnesse^ and their feete cloven^ I 

 did see them farre off not able to discerne them perfectly, but their steps 

 shewed that their feete were cloven, and bigger than the feete of Camels, I 

 suppose them to bee a kind of Buffes which I read to be in the countreyes 



adjacent, and very manj^ in the firme lande." ^ Though it is supposed by 

 some that the musk ox may have been referred to in this allusion to a "kind 

 of Buffes," there is apparently little reason to doubt that these "Buffes" were 

 the moose, which the early voyagers found on the adjacent mainland in 

 great numbers; yet Marcy f and others have supposed this to be a possi- 



e reference to the buffalo, probably from the occurrence of the word 

 "Buffes." 



Another similar reference to the occurrence of an animal like an ox in 

 Newfoundland is contained in the report of Sir HumjDhrey Gilbert's voyage 

 to this island in 1583. In an enumeration of the "commodities thereof" are 

 mentioned "Beasts of sundry kindes, red deare, bufHes or a beast, as it 



r 



seemeth by the tract & foote very large, in nianer of an oxe."t In the 

 account of the "first voyage made to the coast of America "by Captains 

 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, in 1584, it is said that they treated with 

 the Indians for " Chamoys, Buffe and Deere skinnes" ;§ and Thomas Hariot, 

 in his " briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia," written 

 in 1587, mentions "Deer skinnes dressed after the manner of Chamoes, or 

 undressed," among the commodities of the country. || The same writer 

 speaks later of the "beasts" of Virginia, and says, ^^I have the names of 

 eight and twenty severall sorts, .... of which there are only twelve kinds 

 that we have yet discovered, and of those that be good meat, we know only 

 them before mentioned," among which there is no mention of any " Buffes," 

 "Buffles," "wild Cattle," or anything that can be regarded as at all like the 



buffalo.^ 



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* Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., Vol m, p. 173, London, 1600. (The Edition of 1810 is the one quoted in 

 this memoir.) 



f Exploration of the lied River o£ Louisiana, p. 104, 1853. 



I Hakluyt, Voyages, etc.. Vol. Ill, p. 195. 

 § Ibid., p. 303. 



II Ibid., p. 327. . 

 IT Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., p. 333. 



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