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THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



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covered with jBiie timber and full of deer, bears, tvild 



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which supply abundance of provisions necessary for the travellers, who find 

 it everywhere, and sometimes entire herds of fallow deer"t 



We have here a tei-m {vaches sauvages) employed which was often used 

 by the early French writers to designate the buffalo, and also the account of 

 large herds being seen, which seems still farther to imply that the animals 

 were unquestionably buffaloes, yet the locality is one which was frequently 

 passed over by travellers during the previous fifty years, not one of whom 

 mentions the occurrence of the buffalo on the St. Lawrence, nor is any men- 

 tion of its occurrence there made by subsequent writers. 

 furthermore, a heavily wooded country, situated several hundred miles from 

 the prairies, and from the most easterly known range of the buffalo. These 

 facts alone tend to render these accounts improbable, but fortunately we are 

 not left in doubt as to the character of the animals here mentioned, for in 

 the sequel of Father Le Moine's Journal the following passages render it 

 certain that the animals referred to were either deer or elk : 



day of Sept. I never saw so many deer, but we had no inclination 



The region is 



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to hunt. 



What 



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for we left all the venison there, re^serving the hides and some of the most 

 delicate morsels. 



"2''^ of the month. Travelling through vast prairies, we saAV in divers 

 quarters immense herds of wild bulls and cows 3 1 their horns resemUe in some 

 respects the antlers of the stag. 



Our game does not leave us ; it seems that venison and game 

 follow us everywhere. Droves of twenty cows plunge into the water, as if 

 to meet us. Some are killed, for sake of amusement, by blows of an axe." 



From the context we learn that the locahty was but a few leagues above 

 Montreal, on the St. Lawrence. These bands of "bulls 

 doubtless elks ( Cervits canadensis), j] 



" 3^^ and 4 



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COWS were 



* 



* " Yaches sauvages." Relation de la Nouv. France en Tannee 1665, pp. 49, 50. Mr. J. G. Shea also 

 observes: " The animal called by the Canadian French vache sauvage was the American elk, or moose," 

 and cites Boucher (Hist. ISTat. du Canada) as authority. "Boucher," says Shea, "expressly states that 

 the buffaloes were found only in the Ottawa country, that is, in the far West, while the vache sauvage, 

 or Original and the ane sawi^a^e, or Caribou, were seen in Canada." — Discovery and Exploration of the 

 Mississippi Valley, p. 16, footnote. 



t Documentary History of Few York, Yol. I, p. 62. 



J The original says, " grand troupeaux de bceufs & dc vaches sauvages." — Eel etc., 1653 - 54, p. 90. 



§ Ibid., pp. 43, 44. Translated from Relation de la Kouv. France, 1653-54, pp. 95, 96. 



II Hunters, both in Northern New England and in the West, commonly speak of the male moose and 



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elk as " bull moose " and " bull elk," and the females as "cow moose " and " cow elk." 



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