A Sportsman 171 



recovered, by the settlers and caravans crossing the 

 plains. Colonel Inman, from a consensus of opinion 

 formed by the officers, estimated that from three to five 

 millions of buffalo were contained in the moving masses 

 which passed north at that period. 



The only other parallel case that I am aware of 

 where a large body of animals has held an extensive 

 region in monopoly is that of the kangaroo in Aus- 

 tralia, which, sharing the fate of the buffalo, is found 

 now only in small numbers in the unsettled parts of 

 the island, being wholly unknown now in its old 

 haunts. When Captain Cook, in his notable first voy- 

 age to Australia in 1770, brought back knowledge of 

 the kangaroo to the notice of the world, it abounded in 

 many millions over the arable areas of the island con- 

 tinent. They were then as tame as domestic cattle, 

 and a long time after sheep were introduced grazed 

 with them in pleasant companionship. But the sheep 

 men soon found that they restricted the feed, and as 

 the sheep increased, large drives were made of the 

 kangaroos into stockaded pens with extended wings 

 after the manner now followed in Southern California 

 for capturing jack-rabbits, and when taking in a sweep 

 of twenty-five square miles, it was not unusual to 

 capture from three to five thousand kangaroos at a 

 single swoop. Then, the gates being closed, the old 

 male kangaroos being shot as dangerous, the balance 

 were beaten to death with clubs, and after the re- 

 moval of their skins were left to waste upon the ground. 



It is now estimated that eighty millions of sheep 

 are grazed in Australia, and that if the kangaroos were 

 now existing, as originally, not more than ten or fif- 

 teen million sheep could be carried along. 



