THE GREAT BUFFALO RANGE. 25 



north: how far it may have gone in this direction 

 we hardly think has ever been accurately ascertained ; 

 but at any rate it extended as far as the limits of 

 agriculture are ever likely to be carried. In our own 

 day buffalo were exceedingly numerous all over this 

 country : numbers of them were killed throughout the 

 coldest winters, near Fort Edmonton, a celebrated post 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the north branch 

 of the Saskatchewan River, situated in latitude 5332 / 

 N., longitude ii35 / W. ; and we have always under- 

 stood from traders and trappers who frequented these 

 wild regions, that buffalo were occasionally to be found 

 far to the northward of that place; in regions where 

 the rigorous cold was almost perpetual, and where 

 these icy winds were common. In fact, there can be 

 no doubt that the buffalo often made its way beyond 

 the limits of "The Region of the Great Plains," into 

 the open glades of our next division, " The Great 

 Forest Region of the Temperate Zone," which bends 

 far to the northward in this direction. 



Throughout the long winters, a mantle of snow, many 

 feet in depth, we need hardly say, buried all this great 

 wilderness country for many months in every year; 

 and it is indeed a wonderful and remarkable fact in 

 natural history, to think that a large grass-feeding 

 animal like the buffalo could possibly maintain itself 

 throughout the arctic cold of the long nights in that 

 intensely rigorous season. The fact, at all events, 

 speaks volumes for the extreme hardiness of that noble 

 animal, whose extinction from its native wilds can never 

 be too long, or too deeply regretted. 



So far as we could gather, the buffalo did not usually 

 seek its food by pawing, or burrowing in the snow 



