124 THE BUFFALO. 



30,000 Indians fed on the flesh of the slaughtered buffa- 

 loes. 



The civilized fur-traders, however, with greater forethought, 

 take means to preserve the flesh of the animals they kill in 

 the neighbourhood of the forts, so that it may last them 

 through the summer. For this purpose they dig a square 

 pit capable of containing seven or eight hundred carcasses. As 

 soon as the ice in the river is of sufficient thickness, it is cut 

 with saws into square blocks, of a uniform size, with which 

 the floor of the pit is regularly paved. The blocks are then 

 cemented together by pouring water in between them, and 

 allowing it to freeze into a solid mass. In like manner the 

 walls are built up to the surface of the ground. The head 

 and feet being cut off, each carcass, without being skinned, is 

 divided into quarters ; and these are piled in layers in the pit, 

 till it is filled up, when the whole is covered with a thick 

 coating of straw, which is again protected from the sun and 

 rain by a shed. In this manner the meat is preserved in 

 good condition through the whole summer, and is considered 

 more tender and better flavoured than when freshly killed. 



Even in the winter the buffalo continues to range over the 

 plains in a far northern latitude. Mr. Kane mentions seeing 

 a band, numbering nearly ten thousand, at the very northern 

 confines of the Fertile Belt, where the snow was very deep at 

 the time. They, however, had never before appeared in such 

 vast numbers near the Company's establishments. Some, on 

 on that occcasion, were shot within the gates of Fort Edmon- 

 ton. They had killed with their horns twenty or thirty horses, 

 in their attempt to drive them from the patches of grass 

 which the horses had laid bare with their hoofs. They were 

 probably migrating northward, to escape the human migra- 



