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152 



THE AMEEICAl^ EISOI^S. 



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within easy drive from the line of the road, and is often chosen by Eastern 

 hunting-parties for their field of operations. 



The Kansas Pacific Railway, traversing as it does one of the favorite and 

 formerly most populous portions of the range of the great Southern Herd, 

 has given opportunity, since it was opened in 1870, for the destruction of 

 hundreds of thousands of buffaloes. After two or three years the results 

 of this wholesale slaughter began to be apparent in the thmning of the 

 herds and in their erratic movements and changed habits, especially in re- 

 spect to their migrations. 



During the summer of 1871 straggling bands occurred as far eastward 

 in Northern Kansas as Fossil Creek, while the great herds were rarely met 

 with east of the meridian of Fort Hays. In June of that year they black- 

 ened the prairies from the Saline River to the Republican Fork. In Janu- 

 ary, 1872, they had receded several hundred miles to the westward of their 

 summer limit, ranging then over Eastern Colorado. Between the Union 

 Pacific and Kansas Pacific Railroads they at this time migrated eastward 

 summer and westward in winter, passing with reluctance either of 

 these great highways. At times, however, they swept across the Kansas 

 Pacific Railway in immense herds, obliging the trains to await their pas- 



In consequence of this eastward and westward migration they 

 had already worn deep trails running in this direction, and at right angles 

 to the older set made when their migrations were mainly from the north 

 southward in autumn and from the south northward in spring.f From the 



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great persecution they had suflfered from the hunters, who swarmed down 

 upon them from all sides, their movements were already less regular than 



formerly. 



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The opening of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad has had a far 

 greater influence upon the buffalo than either of the other roads, in conse- 

 quence of the great number of hunters who seized upon it as a favorable 

 basis for the prosecution of their terrible work of destruction. The story of 

 this destruction and the fiital results attending the encroachment of the set- 

 tlements upon the range of the buffalo is well told in the subjoined letter 

 from Dr. W. S. Tremaine, U. S. A., kindlv written in answer to my inquiries 



sage. 



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* General Meigs writes tliat a conductor of the Kansas Pacific Railway informed him in the winter of 

 1872- 73, that '^ while he had been several times delayed by the crossing of immense herds going south 

 he had never seen any buffalo returning." — MS. Notes on the Buffalo. 



f See Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol. A^I, pp. 4fi, 47. . " 



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