THE AMERICAN BISON 179 



a menagerie. It was thus seen by Cortez in 152 1, when 

 he reached Anahuac, where the Mexican king, Monte- 

 zuma, maintained a collection of wild animals, among 

 them a bison, which must have been brought a distance 

 of 400 miles at the least. It was first met with wild, in 

 1530, by Alvar Nunez Cabeza, in south-eastern Texas, 

 while an English traveller, Samuel Argoll, saw it some- 

 where near Washington in 161 2. At one time it existed 

 in enormous quantities, the prairies being absolutely 

 black with them as far as the eye could reach. Col. 

 Dodge tells us in his " Plains of the Great West " that, 

 even so late as May 187 1, he drove thirty-four miles in 

 a light waggon from old Foi't Zara to Fort Larned on the 

 Arkansas. For at least twenty-five miles of this distance 

 he passed through one immense herd, composed of count- 

 less smaller herds of buffalo then on their journey north. 

 The whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo, 

 moving slowly to the northward ; it was only when 

 actually among them that it could be ascertained that 

 the apparently solid mass was an agglomeration of innu- 

 merable small herds of from 50 to 200 animals. Its range 

 once extended over about a third of the whole of Xorth 

 America. In some places, as m Georgia, it almost 

 reached the Atlantic coast, extending thence westward 

 through the Alleghany Mountains and forests to the 

 prairies of the Mississippi — always its special home — and 

 southward to north-eastern Mexico; also across the 

 Rocky Mountains to New Mexico and Utah, and north- 

 ward to the Great Slave Lake. Headers who may be 

 interested to know further details about the bison and its 

 approach to extermination are referred to J. A . Allen's 

 admirable monograph, •' The American Bison, Living and 

 Extinct ; " and to William T. Hornaday's work, " The 

 Extermination of the American Bison," published at 



