THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 5 



himself taking his afternoon siesta. I snapped him 

 with a telephoto lens, but the photograph was not 

 sharp. Then as he got ponderously on to his thick 

 hairy legs and turned a shaggy front in our direction 

 we made a bolt for the fence, a quarter of a mile or so 

 distant, and left the wapiti to look after themselves. 

 Jones told us afterwards that our haste was unneces- 

 sary, as the veteran had a game leg, but we were not 

 taking any chances. 



The destruction of so fine an animal as the Ameri- 

 can bison makes pitiable reading ; but however much 

 we may deplore their extermination we cannot but 

 see that it was unavoidable. The land covered in the 

 early part of the nineteenth century by their vast 

 herds, whose primitive numbers are estimated by 

 some authorities as 50,000,000, and by others at 

 double that figure, was also the land best adapted for 

 cultivation and the land most needed by an advancing 

 civilisation. It was the same old story which is 

 being repeated even in our own day in those parts 

 of the world which the all- conquering white is en- 

 gaged in occupying. Natural conditions had to give 

 way to artificial. Those vast herds have shrunk now 

 to a miserable 1500 or 1600 individuals which linger 

 on in private preserves and zoological gardens. The 

 only animals still existing in their natural state 

 are the small herd, seldom seen, which live in the 

 thick timber near the Yellowstone Lake ; and the 

 herd of wood bison which hide themselves in the 

 woods and plains of Athabasca. Caught when young 



