B I S 



465 



B I S 



This is the Taurus Mexicanus of Hernandez, who gives 

 a wood-cut of the beast, but not a good one, the Taureau 

 Sauvage of Hennepin, who also gives a figure of it, not 

 better than that of Hernandez, and probably a copy from 

 it, the Buffalo of Lawson, Cateshy, &c., of" the Hudson's 

 Bay traders, and of the Anglo- Americans generally ; the 

 Bison of Ray and Pennant, Bos Americanus of Gmelin, 

 American Wild Ox or Bison of Warden, Peecheek of the 

 Algonquin Indians, Moostoosh of the Crees, and Adgiddah 

 of the Chippewayans, according to Dr. Richardson. 



Pennant says, 'in America these animals are found in 

 the countries six hundred miles west of Hudson's Bay ; this 

 is their most northern residence. From thence they are 

 met with in great droves as low as Cibole (N.B. on the au- 

 thority of Purchas), in lat 33, a little north of California, 

 and also in the province of Mivera in New Mexico ; the 

 species instantly ceases south of those countries. They in- 

 habit Canada to the west of the lakes ; and in greater 

 abundance in the rich savannas which border the river 

 Mississippi, and the great rivers which fall into it from the 

 west, in the Upper Louisiana. There they are seen in 

 herds innumerable, promiscuously with multitudes of stags 

 and deer during morning and evening, retiring in the sultry 

 heats into the shade of tall reeds, which border the rivers 

 of America.' 



Joseph Sabine, in the appendix to Franklin's Narrative, 

 says that they are abundant in all parts of North America, 

 wherever the progress of cultivation has not interfered with 

 their range, and that they are extremely numerous on the 

 plains of the Saskatchewan river. They are also found, he 

 observes, though less plentifully, in the woods as far north 

 as Great Slave Lake. The most northern situation in which 

 they were observed by Captain (now Sir John) Franklin's 

 party was Slave Point, on the north side of the lake. In 

 the same work it is stated, that the natives say that the 

 Wood Buffaloes, as they are called, are larger than those of 

 the plains, but the difference is not material. 



Dr. Richardson, in his Fauna Boreali-Americana, gives 

 the following compendious history of the geographical range 

 of the American Bison : ' At the period when Europeans 

 began to form settlements in North America, this animal 

 was occasionally met with on the Atlantic coast ; but even 

 then it appears to have been rare to the eastward of the 

 Apalachian mountains, for Lawson has thought it to be a 

 fact worth recording, that two were killed in one season on 

 Cape Fear River.* As early as the first discovery of Canada, 

 it was unknown in that country, and no mention of it 

 whatever occurs in the Voyages du Sieur de Champlain 

 Xaintongeois, nor in the Nova, Franyia of De Monts, who 

 obtained the first monopoly of the fur trade. Theodat, 

 whose history of Canada was published in 1636, merely says 

 that he was informed that bulls existed in the remote western 

 countries. Warden mentions, that at no very distant date, 

 herds of them existed in the western parts of Pennsylvania, 

 and that as late a the year 1766 they were pretty numerous 

 in Kentucky ; but they have gradually retired before the 

 white population, and are now, he says, rarely seen to the 

 south of the Ohio, on the east side of the Mississippi. They 

 still exist, however, in vast numbers in Louisiana, roaming 

 in countless herds over the prairies that are watered by the 

 Arkansa, Platte, Missouri, and upper branches of the Sas- 

 katchewan and Peace rivers. Great Slave Lake, in lat. 60, 

 was at one time the northern boundary of their range ; but 

 of lat years, according to the testimony of the natives, they 

 have taken possession of the flat limestone district of Slave 

 Point, on the north side of that lake, and have wandered to 

 the vicinity of Great Marten Lake, in lat. 63 or 64. As far 

 as I have been able to ascertain, the limestone and sand- 

 stone formations, lying between the great Rocky Mountain 

 ridge and the lower eastern chain of primitive rocks, are the 

 only districts in the fur countries that are frequented by the 

 bison. In these comparatively level tracts there is much 

 prairie land, on which they find good grass in the summer, 

 and also many marshes overgrown with bulrushes and 

 carices.t which supply them with winter food. Salt springs 



Tho following, we presume, is the passage in Lawson to which Dr. Hi 

 i h.ir.Non alludes : > II (i. e. the buffelo, as Lawson prints if) seldom appears 

 amonrst the English inhabitants, nil chief haunt being ill the land of Meiti- 



. "9t I have known some 



ling the ledges of vast 



atipfi, which is, for the most part, a plain country; yet 1 have known some 

 kill J on the hilly part of Cape-Fair-River, they passing the ledges of vast 

 mountains from Uiu said Mesrituippi \trSuru they can eormi m-ar u.' Opposite 

 to this paragraph is the following marginal note: 'Two killed one veav in 

 Virginia at Apjwtmaticks,' meaning, we suppose, on the Appomattox, a branch 

 of the James River. (See Lawson's Hiltury of Carolina, p. 115.) 



t Carex it the Dame of a genus of Cyperaceae, a family of plants nearly 

 allied to the graues. 



and lakes also abound on the confines of the limestone, and 

 there are several well-known salt-licks, where bisons are sure 

 to be found at all seasons of the year. They do not frequent 

 any of the districts formed of primitive rocks, and the limits 

 of their range to the eastward, within the Hudson Bay 

 Company's territories, may be nearly correctly marked on 

 the map by -a line commencing in long. 97 on the Red 

 River, which flows into the south end of Lake Winipeg, 

 crossing the Saskatchewan to the westward of Basquiau 

 Hill, and running from thence by the Athapescow to the 

 east end of Great Slave Lake. Their migrations to the 

 westward were formerly limited by the Rocky Mountain 

 range, and they are still unknown in New Caledonia, and 

 on the shores of the Pacific to the north of the Columbia 

 river, but of late years they have found out a passage across 

 the mountains, near the sources of the Saskatchewan, and 

 their numbers to the westward are said to be annually in- 

 creasing. In 1806, when Lewis and Clarke crossed the 

 mountains at the head of the Missouri, bison-skins were an 

 important article of traffic between the inhabitants on the 

 east side and the natives to the westward. Farther to the 

 southward, in New Mexico and California, the bison appears 

 to be numerous on both sides of the Rocky Mountain chain.' 



Before we describe the habits of the American bison, thu 

 modes of hunting it, and the uses to which the several parts 

 of the animal are put, it may be well to give some idea of 

 the vast wildernesses where it roams in unrestrained free- 

 dom. We know not how to convey this idea better than in 

 the words of Washington Irving, who 'possesses the magic 

 art of converting the reader into a spectator of the scene de- 

 scribed. In his Tour on the Prairies, the following pano- 

 ramic views are presented to us : 



' After a toilsome march of some distance through a 

 country cut up by ravines and brooks, and entangled by 

 thickets, we emerged upon a grand prairie. Here one of 

 the characteristic scenes of the " far west" broke upon us, 

 an immense extent of grassy, undulating, or, as it is termed, 

 "rolling" country, with here and there a clump of trees 

 dimly seen in the distance like a ship at sea, the landscape 

 deriving sublimity from its vastness and simplicity. To the 

 south-west, on the summit of a hill, was a singular crest of 

 broken rocks, resembling a ruined fortress. It reminded 

 me of the ruin of some Moorish castle crowning a height in 

 the midst of a lonely Spanish landscape. To this lull we 

 gave the name of Cliff Castle. 



' The prairies of these great hunting regions differed, in 

 the character of their vegetation, from those through which 

 I had hitherto passed. Instead of a profusion of tall flower- 

 ing plants, and long flaunting grasses, they were covered 

 with a shorter growth of herbage called buffalo-grass, some- 

 what coarse, but, at the proper season, affording excellent 

 and abundant pasturage. At present it was growing wiry, 

 and in many places it was too much parched fur grazing. 



' The weather was verging into that serene but somewhat 

 arid season called the Indian summer. There was a smoky 

 haze in the atmosphere that tempered the brightness of the 

 sunshine into a golden tint, softening the features of the 

 landscape, and giving a vagueness to the outlines of distant 

 objects. This haziness was daily increasing, and was attri- 

 buted to the burning of the distant prairies by the Indian 

 hunting parties. We had not gone far upon the prairie be- 

 fore we came to where deeply-worn footpaths were seen tra- 

 versing the country. Sometimes two or three would keep 

 parallel to each other, and but a few paces apart. These 

 were pronounced to be traces of buffaloes, where large droves 

 had passed.' p. 1 53. 



Turn we now to a more refreshing scene : ' About ten 

 o'clock in the morning we came to where this line of rugged 

 hills swept down into a valley, through which flowed the 

 north fork of the Red River. A beautiful meadow, about 

 half a mile wide, enamelled with yellow autumnal flowers, 

 stretched for two or three miles along the foot of the hills, 

 bordered on the opposite side by the river, whose banks were 

 fringed with cotton- wood trees, the bright foliage of which 

 refreshed and delighted the eye, after being wearied by the 

 contemplation of monotonous wastes of brown forest. 



' The meadow was finely diversified by groves and clumps 

 of trees, so happily disposed that they seemed as if set out 

 by the hand of art. As we cast our eyes over this fresh and 

 delightful valley, we beheld a troop of wild horses quietly 

 grazing on a green lawn about a mile distant to our right, 

 while to our left, at nearly the same distance, were several 

 buffaloes, some feeding, others reposing and ruminating 



No. 263. 



[THE PENNY CYCLOPEDIA.] 



VOL. IV. 3 O 



