THE AMEEICAN^ EISOA^S. 



81 



term for the moose. 



The name " orignac " or ^^ 



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of the early 



French explorers appears to have been applied indifferently to both the 

 moose (Alces malchis) and the elk ( Cerviis canadensis)^ but never to 



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falo. Champlain, in speaking of the game he found about Lake Cham- 

 plain, makes no reference to the buffalo, neither do any of the subsequent 

 writers of the seventeenth century. In regard to the "EUans/' we find in 

 -Lescarbot'a account the following: "The winter being come, the Savages 

 of the Countrey did assemble themselves from farre to Port Eoyall, for to 

 trucke with the Frenchmen fgr such things as they had, some bringing 

 Beavers skins and Otters .... and also Mlans or Stagges, whereof good 



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We thus see that the term hufft 



products of the elk and moose. Charlevoix's description of the Orignal, 

 however, is strictly applicable to the moose, and to no other animal. 

 Charlevoix says : " What they here [in Canada] call the Orignal, is 

 what in German?/, Poland, and Muscovy they call the Elk, or Great Beast. 

 .... Its Horns are not less long than those of a Hart, and much wider. 

 They are flat and forked like those of a Deer, and are renewed every 

 Year."t 



Hennepin ascended the ^ St. Lawrence and crossed the lakes to the 

 prairies of Indiana and Illinois in 1679-80, but Hennepin in his narra- 

 tive of his travels does not speak of meeting with the bjiffalo until he had 

 reached the Illinois River in December, 1679.$ In his account of the pro- 

 ductious of Canada, he says, "There are to be had Skins of Elks, or Orignaux, 

 as they are called in Canada, of the white Wolf or Lynx, of black Poxes, 

 , ... of common Poxes, Otters, Martens, wild Cats, wild Goats, Harts, 

 Porcupines," etc. 



the buffalo with such particularity || as to leave no doubt that if he had met 

 with or known of the occurrence of the buffalo in w^hat is now known 



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as Canada, he would not have failed to enumerate it among the products 

 of that country. 



In 1763 Marquette passed up the St. Law^^ence, and through the Great 

 Lakes to the Mississippi Valley, by way of Lake Michigan and the Fox and 



In the account he has given of his travels he describes 



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* Purchas, Pilgrims, Vol. IV, p. 1613. 



t Letters to the Dutchess of Lcsdiguieres. Goadby's English Ed., London, 1763, p. 64. 



J New Discovery of a great Country in America, English Ed., 1698, p. 90. 



§ Voyage into North America, English Ed,j 1679, pp. 136, 137. 



II New Discovery, etc., p. 91, 



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