THE BUFFALO OR BISON 121 



tween the North and South Saskatchewan, but they were 

 surrounded and attacked from all sides, and their numbers 

 diminished rapidly until all were killed." 



"The latest information I have been able to obtain in 

 regard to the disappearance of this northern band," Horna- 

 day continues, ''has been kindly furnished by Prof. C. A. 

 Kenaston, who in 1881, and also in 1883, made a thorough 

 exploration of the country between Winnipeg and Fort Ed- 

 monton for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. His 

 four routes between the two points named covered a vast 

 Rcope of country, several hundred miles in width. In 1881 

 at Moose Jaw ... he saw a party of Cree Indians who had 

 just arrived from the north-west with several carts laden 

 with fresh buffalo meat. At Fort Saskatchewan, on the 

 North Saskatchewan River, just below Edmonton, he saw 

 a party of English sportsmen who had recently been hunt- 

 ing on the Battle and Red Deer rivers, between Edmonton 

 and Fort Calgary, where they had found buffaloes, and 

 killed as many as they cared to slaughter. In one after- 

 noon they killed fourteen, and could have killed more had 

 they been more bloodthirsty. In 1883 Prof. Kenaston 

 found the fresh trail of a band of twenty-five or thirty buf- 

 faloes at the ' elbow' of the South Saskatchewan. Excepting 

 in the above instances he saw no further traces of buffalo, 

 nor did he hear of any in all the country he explored.* In 

 1881 he saw many Cree Indians at Fort Qu'Appelle in a 

 starving condition, and there was no pemmican nor buffalo 

 meat at the fort. In 1883, however, a little penmiican 

 found its way to Winnipeg where it sold at 15 cents per 

 pound, an exceedingly high price. It had been made that 



* In October, 1884, a Canadian Pacific tri-weekly train from Calgary to 

 Winnipeg was boarded at way stations by passengers laden with rifles, sad- 

 dles, and other equipment till it was crowded to capacity. Inquiry elicited 

 the information that seven buffalo had been reported in the Cypress Hills, 

 This was undoubtedly the last remnant of the vast herds which once roved 

 the prairies of Western Canada, and, inspired by a desire to slaughter, at least 



