IN THE BIG HORN MOUNTAINS. 55 



There were a number of valuable dogs at the post, several 

 of the officers being sportsmen. General Whistler, the com- 

 manding officer, has a pack of greyhounds that are unusually 

 fleet. His son, a young man of seventeen, is very fond of 

 the chase, and under his management the pack caught 

 ninety-three antelopes that season. This record cannot pro- 

 bably be excelled by any other pack in the country. 



There was a large herd of buffaloes, only twenty miles 

 north of the post, and I was pained to learn that a large 

 party of butchers, not hunters, were camped near there, and 

 were slaughtering them at the rate of nearly a hundred a day. 

 Only the skins were saved, and the carcasses left to rot. Even 

 the fur was worthless then. The skins were shipped East, 

 and tanned as cowhide and calfskin, and used as such in the 

 manufacture of boots and shoes. It is a burning shame and a 

 disgrace to every citizen of this portion of the country that 

 they should allow this infamous and damnable traffic to be 

 carried on under their very noses, when they have the law, 

 the courts, law officers, and every necessary means at their 

 disposal, to stop it. It only needs some one to make a 

 complaint and testify against the butchers, in order to have 

 them severely punished; but no one has nerve enough, or 

 feels interest enough in the matter, to go to this trouble, and 

 so the slaughter will go on until the last of the noble bisons 

 will fall a prey to these human coyotes, and then the *' law- 

 abiding citizen " will awake'to a realization of the loss that 

 his stupidity has entailed upon him. He will bemoan his 

 loss, but I will tell him : "It serves you right, you had 

 ample warning, and would not act ; now you deserve to be 

 deprived of meat of any and every kind all the days of your 

 life." Congress should pass a law to prohibit this slaughter, 

 and place the execution of it in the hands of the army. 

 Then, and not till then, will it be stopped. 



