12 HUNTING TRIPS 



on the war-path in a final desperate effort to 

 preserve them. After bloody fighting and 

 protracted campaigns they were defeated, 

 and the country thrown open to the whites, 

 while the building of the Northern Pacific 

 Railroad gave immigration an immense im- 

 petus. There were great quantities of game, 

 especially buffalo, and the hunters who 

 thronged in to pursue the huge herds of the 

 latter were the rough forerunners of civili- 

 zation. No longer dreading the Indians, 

 and having the railway on which to transport 

 the robes, they followed the buffalo in season 

 and out, until in 1883 the herds were practi- 

 cally destroyed. But meanwhile the cattle- 

 men formed the vanguard of the white set- 

 tlers. Already the hardy southern stockmen 

 had pressed up with their wild-looking herds 

 to the very border of the dangerous land, and 

 even into it, trusting to luck and their own 

 prowess for their safety ; and the instant the 

 danger was even partially removed, their cat- 

 tle swarmed northward along the streams. 

 Some Eastern men, seeing the extent of the 



