Appendix. 371 



They are American bison, curiosities even in this Western city and on 

 these hills, which, only a few years ago. shook with the tread of the mighty 

 armies of their ancestors. What magnificent monsters they are, and how 

 grandly they loom up over their puny kindred on the neighbouring hills, 

 the domestic cattle ! 



There are sixty in the herd, and Jumbo is the monarch. Plainsmen 

 who have slaughtered his kinsmen by the hundred say they never saw a finer 

 animal. He weighs 3Ooolb. ; his brown beard nearly sweeps the ground ; 

 his strong black horns are almost lost in a magnificent crest of silky brown 

 hair, and his shoulders are level with the head of a tall man. " Devilish 

 Dick," as he is called, is almost as fine a specimen, but there is a vicious 

 gleam in his eye which prevents a very close inspection of his points. Four 

 years ago one of the cowboys came a little too near this tremendous brute, 

 and one sudden toss of the massive head sent the cowboy to the country 

 where there are not supposed to be buffaloes. 



This is the C. J. Jones herd of buffaloes, one of the few melancholy 

 remnants of the millions that once swarmed over the plains, and almost 

 the only hope of the perpetuation of the species. 



The disgraceful story of the extermination of the American bison has 

 no parallel in the history of game slaughter. 



Forty years ago it would have been as easy to number the leaves of the 

 forest as to calculate the strength of the vast hosts which swarmed over 

 all the Western plains and hills, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and 

 from Canada to the Gulf. Of all the quadrupeds which ever inhabited the 

 earth, naturalists tell us. no one species ever marshalled such innumerable 

 armies as did the American bison. As late as 1871 it is estimated that 

 there were in the great southern herd, which covered the country south of 

 the line of the Union Pacific Railway, between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 

 head. In that year the railroads penetrated the country and the systematic 

 slaughter began. 



The report of the Smithsonian Institution gives these figures for the 

 " hunting " for the three following years : i 



In 1872 white hunters killed 1,491.489 buffaloes and utilised the hides 

 of 497,163, in 1873 the number slaughtered was 1,508,658 and the number 

 used was 754,329. In 1874 only 158,583 were killed and 126,867 wcre 

 used. Of the gigantic army of 3.158,730 butchered by white men during 

 these three years, over half were left lying untouched where they fell. 



To-day even the bones which whitened the plains for miles have 

 disappeared, and there is not known to survive a single specimen in a 

 wild state. 



In 1887 there was a herd of 200 under Government protection in the 



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