^ 



r 



I 1 



114 



THE AMEEICAE" EISOKS 



extracts from the journal of John Donelson, respecting a voyage made by 

 him from Fort Patrick Henry, on the Holston Kiyer to the French Salt 

 Springs on the Cumberland River, in December, 1780. Donelson says that 

 he "procured some buffalo meat on the Cumberland, near its mouth," and 



We 



The 



We 



the buffalo to preserve life." ^ Subsequently, in speaking of the salt or sul- 

 phur springs on the Cumberland, apparently near the present site of Nash- 



"The open space around and near the 



ville, we find the following 

 sulphur or salt springs, instead of being an ' old field,' as had been supposed 

 by Mr. Mausker, at his visit here in 1769, was thus freed from trees and 

 underbrush by the innumerable herds of buffalo and deer and elk that came 

 to these waters. .... Trails, or buffalo paths, were deeply worn in the 



earth from this to other springs All the rich lands were covered with 



cane-brakes; through these there were paths made by the buffalo and other 



"« 



?5 



t 



Ramsey states that in 1769 and 1770 an exploring party of ten persons 

 passed up the Cumberland, and that " where Nashville now stands they dis- 

 covered the French Lick, and found around it immense numbers of buffalo 



and other wild game. The country was crowded with them. Their bellow- 



J 



ings sounded from the hills and forest." | According to the same authority, 

 the buffjilo was at one time also numerous in the valleys of East Tennessee. 

 He states that in 1764 Daniel Boone left his home on the Yadkin to explore, 

 in company with others, the then unknown country to the westward. " Cal- 

 laway," says Ramsey, "was at the side of Boone when, approaching the spurs 

 of the Cumberland Mountain, and in view of the vast herds of buffalo grazing 

 in the valleys between them, he exclaimed : ^ am richer than the man men- 

 tioned in Scripture, who owned the cattle on a thousand hills, 

 wild beasts of more than a thousand valleys ! 



1 own the 



' ?? 



Whether or not the bufflxlo 



rano-ed formerly to the Tennessee River, I have been imable to determine, 

 although, as already noticed, there is pretty good evidence that it did not 

 extend beyond this boundary. The existence of a stream named Buffalo 

 River, near the Great Bend of the Tennessee, seems to render it probable 

 that it extended nearly or quite to the Tennessee itself Gallatin gives the 



* Putnam's Middle Tennessee, pp. 74, 75. 



t Ibid., p. 81. . 



X The Annals of Tennessee, to the End of the Eighteenth Century, etc., p. 105. 



§ Ibid., p. 69. 



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