THE CEMETERY OF THE BUFFALOES. 377 



a source of supply to the caravans that venture into their 

 depths en route for Santa Fe or California.* My readers 

 will form some idea of the numbers killed, when I inform 

 them that every year, in Canada and the United States, 

 upwards of nine hundred thousand hides are sold j yet 

 these hides are all female, the hide of the male being too 

 thick, and not easily tanned. 



The Indians, whose revenue wholly consists of the pro- 

 ceeds obtained from the sale of these hides, preserve, 

 moreover, a certain quantity for their own use, which 

 they employ in their tents, beds, canoes, and domestic 

 utensils. I ought to add, in concluding the statistics 

 of this systematic destruction, that the caravans which 

 cross the prairies seem to find a pleasure in strewing their 

 route with the carcasses of bisons. Finally, it is the 

 mission of eagles of all sizes, of the bustards and the 

 vultures, to whiten the skeletons of the bovine race, which 

 in certain passes westward of the Kocky Mountains are 

 so numerous, that the region has been appropriately called 

 the " cemetery of the buffaloes." 



On reading the foregoing remarks, my readers, perhaps, 

 will shake their heads incredulously. I would not wish 

 to leave a doubt on their minds in reference to the exact 

 truthfulness of my narrative, and before terminating this 

 chapter, will copy here, in confirmation of what I have 

 advanced, the following paragraph from a letter addressed 

 by the late Governor Stevens, one of the boldest explorers 

 of the American prairies, to the editor of the New Orleans 

 Daily Picayune : 



* The completion of the Pacific Railway has rendered these caravans an 

 affair of the past. 



