no HUNTING TRIPS 



Sandy, OTallon Creek, Little Beaver, and 

 Box Alder, these skeletons or dried car- 

 casses were in sight from every hillock, 

 often lying over the ground so thickly that 

 several score could be seen at once. A 

 ranchman who at the same time had made a 

 journey of a thousand miles across Northern 

 Montana, along the Milk River, told me 

 that, to use his own expression, during the 

 whole distance he was never out of sight of 

 a dead buffalo, and never in sight of a live 

 one. 



Thus, though gone, the traces of the buf- 

 falo are still thick over the land. Their 

 dried dung is found everywhere, and is in 

 many places the only fuel afforded by the 

 plains; their skulls, which last longer than 

 any other part of the animal, are among the 

 most familiar of objects to the plainsman; 

 their bones are in many districts so plentiful 

 that it has become a regular industry, fol- 

 lowed by hundreds of men (christened 

 " bone hunters " by the frontiersmen), to go 

 out with wagons and collect them in great 



