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134 



THE AMERICAE" BISON'S. 



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crossed it ; though they entered the highlands, they turned back before 



meeting with buffaloes. 



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It hence appears that at this early date the buffalo frequented none of 



W 



Rivers, and only reached the Gulf coast at the mouth of the Guadaloupe 

 and San Antonio Elvers; and that it probably extended thence south- 



ward along the coast as far at least as the mouth of the Rio Grande del 



Norte. 



The former existence of the buffalo in the valley of the Pecos seems to be 



well substantiated. Speaking of Espejo's march down the Pecos Kiver in 

 1584, Davis says: "They passed down a river they called Rio de las Vacas, ' 

 or the river of oxen [the river Pecos, and the same Cow Eiver that Vaca 

 describes], and was so named because of the great number of buffaloes that 

 fed upon its banks. They travelled down this river the distance of one hun- 

 dred and twenty leagues, all the way passing through great herds of buf- 



Moes."* 



As already noticed, Coronado met with vast herds of buffaloes in 1542 on 



the plains near Cicuic, on the Upper Pecos Kiver. From Cicuic Coronado 

 marched eastward across the plains of Northern Texas to about the one hun- 

 dredth meridian, and thence returned again to Quivira,t making a journey 



■ "All that way &. plaines are as full of crooke- 



of " three himdred leagues. 



backed oxen, as the mountaine Serena in Spaine is of sheepe."1: 



These " crookebacked oxen" Gomara (as translated by Hakluyt) has thus 

 described : " These Oxen are of the bignesse and colour of our Bulles, but 

 their homes are not so great. They have a great bunch upon their fore 

 shoulders, and more haire on their fore part than on their hinder part: and it 

 is like wooU. They have as it were an horse-mane upon their backe bone, 

 and much haire and very long from the knees downeward. They have great 

 tuflfes of haire hanging downe their foreheads, and it seemeth that they have 

 beardes, because of the great store of haire hanging downe at their chinnes 

 and throates. The males have very long tailes, and a great knobbe or fiocke 

 at the end : so that in some respect they resemble the Lion, and in some 

 other the Camell. They push with their homes, they runne, they overtake 

 and kill an horse when they are in their rage and anger. Finally, it is a 



* Davis's Spanish Conquest of JS^ew Mexico, p. 260. See also Hakluyt, Voyages, Vol III, p. 472. 



t See K. H. Kern's Map of Coronado's route, as before cited. 



t Hakluyt, Voyages, Vol. HI, p. 455. (Translated from Gomara's Historia de las Indias, Cap. 214.) 





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