114 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 



of dense forest, across the Alleghany Mountain system to the 

 prairies along the Mississippi, and southward to the delta 

 of that great stream. Although the great plains country 

 of the west was the natural home of the species, where it 

 flourished most abundantly, it also wandered south across 

 Texas to the burning plains of northeastern Mexico, west- 

 ward across the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah, 

 Idaho, and northward across a vast treeless waste to the 

 bleak and inhospitable shores of the Great Slave Lake it- 

 self." 



Early Distribution in Canada. — The favourite range of the 

 buffalo in Canada was the northern extension of the great 

 plains region, lying between the Missouri River and the 

 Great Slave Lake. The most northerly record of its occur- 

 rence was made by Franklin in 1820, when he found it at 

 Slave Point, on the north side of Great Slave Lake. In 

 1829 Richardson defined the easterly distribution of the 

 buffalo in Canada as follows: "They do not frequent any 

 of the districts formed of primitive rocks, and the limits of 

 then' range to the eastward, within the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany's territories, may be correctly marked on the map by 

 a line commencing in longitude 97 degrees on the Red River, 

 which flows into the south end of Lake Winnipeg, crossing 

 the Saskatchewan to the northward of Basquian Hill* and 

 running thence to the Athapescowf ; thence to the east end of 

 Great Slave Lake. Their migrations westward were formerly 

 limited to the Rocky Mountain range and they are still 

 unknown in New Caledonia and on the shores of the Pacific 

 to the north of the Columbia River; but of late years they 

 have found out a passage across the mountains near the 

 sources of the Saskatchewan and their numbers to the 

 westward are annually increasing." 



As late as 1871 the buffalo inhabited the shore of Great 

 Slave Lake, as is shown by a letter from E. W. Nelson to 



* Pasquia Hills, t Lake Athabaska. 



