"Wild Cows and Bulls. 231 



to tlie Sliazee, and the Shatagee lakes with, showed 

 me in a book the old Missionary's Journal, and I shall 

 never forget the only things written in it about the 

 game. I read it carefully, and know it all by heart. 



" ' Travelling through great prairies,' he writes, 

 * we saw in divers quarters immense herds of wild 

 bulls and cows ; and their horns resembled, in some 

 respects, the antlers of the stag.' 



" In another place he says, ' Droves of twenty cows 

 plunge into the waters to meet us — some are killed by 

 way of amusement with, an axe.'* As near as I can 

 calculate, this was on the St. Lawrence, down below 

 the Thousand Islands, in the region of the outlet of 

 the Champlain. 



" Now, these wild bulls and cows couldn't have 

 been moose, unless the nater of the beast has changed ; 

 for in all the woods there's not an animal so shy and 

 and wild, and that shuns a man with sucli care. He's 

 a cunning animal, and bas ways that are not such as 

 the missionary describes. He's a solitary animal, and 

 lives away off in the deepest recesses of the woods, 

 and don't congregate in droves. It don't seem to me 

 that the buffalo ever left the rich pastures of the West, 



* Documentary History of New York, vol. i. 



