^^^. ^ 



200 



THE AMERICAN EISOl^S. 



shillings and sixpence in England ! " But^ though the enterprise itself dis- 

 astrously failed, mainly through mismanagement and gross indiscretion^ its 

 indirect results were nevertheless beneficial to the colony * 



Dr. Richardson also states that the wool of the buffalo " has been manufac- 

 tured in England into a remarkably fine and beautiful cloth, and in the col- 

 ony of Osnaboyna, on the Red Riverj a warm and durable coarse cloth is 



formed of it."t 



Although the soft woolly hair of the buffalo is evidently well adapted 

 for the manufacture of cloth; I have heard of no other attempts towards its 

 utilization. Of late, however, a traffic has sprung up along the line of the 

 Kansas railroads in the bones, which are gathered for the purpose of ship- 

 ment east for the manufacture of a fertilizing material. Mr. C. F. Morse, 

 the General Superintendent of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, 

 writes, under date of June 2, 1875, that the "bone business is still quite 

 heavy, and will probably last for one or two years longer." From his ac- 

 companying statements of buffalo products shipped over that road durin 

 the last three years, it appears that the shipment of bones in 1872 amounted 

 to eleven hundred and thirty-five thousand three hundred pounds; for 1873, 

 twenty-seven hundred and forty-three thousand one hundred and ten pounds ■ 

 for 1874, sixty-nine hundred and fourteen thousand nine himdred pounds, or 

 treble the amount of the previous year, and six times that of 1872. 



Among the products of the buffalo, mention of "buffalo chips," or bots de 

 vache^ as the French vojjageiirs term it, should not be omitted. This material, 

 as most persons doubtless well know, is smiply the dried excrement of the 

 buffalo, which the traveller on the treeless plains finds a very serviceable sub- 

 stitute for wood. As Dr. Elliott Coues has recently remarked, in an inter- 



h 



esting and yovy humorously written article on this subject, "As an agent 

 in the progress of civilization, the spirit of which is expressed in the remark 

 that westward the course of empire takes its way, the buffalo-chip rises to 

 the plane of the steam-engine and the electric telegraph, and acquires all 

 the dignity which is supposed to enshroud questions of national importance 

 or matters of political economy. I am not sure, indeed, that it is not enti- 

 tled to still higher rank, for it is certain, at any rate, that we move in some 

 parts of the West without either steam or electricity (mules replacing both), 

 where it would be as impossible to live without buffalo chips as to exist 



* Ross (Alexander), The Red Eiver Settlement, pp. 69-72. 

 f Fauna Borcali-Ameiicana, Vol. I, p. 282. 



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