144 GAME. 



Topeka, arid Santa Fe, to St. Louis, Memphis, and else- 

 where ; of the immense numbers of robes which go to 

 California, Montana, Idaho, and the Great West ; nor of 

 the still greater numbers taken each year from the terri- 

 tory of the United States by the Hudson Bay Company. 



All these will add another million to the already 

 almost incredible mortuary list of the nearly extinct 

 buffalo. 



f 



MOUNTAN OR WOOD BUFFALO. 



In various portions of the Eocky Mountains, especially 

 in the region of the parks, is found an animal which old 

 mountaineers call the ' bison.' This animal bears about 

 the same relation to the plains buffalo as a sturdy moun- 

 tain pony does to a well-built American horse. His body 

 is lighter, whilst his legs are shorter, but much thicker 

 and stronger, than the plains animal, thus enabling him to 

 perform feats of climbing and tumbling almost incredible 

 in such a huge and apparently unwieldy beast. 



These animals are by no means plentiful, and are 

 moreover excessively shy, inhabiting the deepest, darkest 

 defiles, or the craggy, almost precipitous, sides of moun- 

 tains, inaccessible to any but the most practised moun- 

 taineers. 



From the tops of the mountains which rim the parks, 

 the rains of ages have cut deep gorges, which plunge 

 with brusque abruptness, but nevertheless with great 

 regularity, hundreds or even thousands of feet to the 

 valley below. Down the bottom of each such gorge 

 gurgles a clear, cold stream of the purest water, fertilising 

 a narrow belt of a few feet of alluvial, and giving birth 

 and growth to a dense jungle of spruce, quaking asp, and 

 other mountain trees. One side of the gorge is generally 

 a thick forest of pine, while the other side is a meadovv- 

 like park covered with splendid grass. Such gorges are 

 the favourite haunt of the mountain buffalo. Early in the 



