376 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
IV. BISON OR BUFFALO (Bison americanus) 
In writing of big game in North America, it is impossible 
to write for more than the immediate present. That which 
was ten years ago has already ceased to be, and it is probable 
that the conditions, both of game and country, will change 
almost as much in the coming decade as they have done in 
that which has just passed. 
Ten years ago, as I travelled along the Northern Pacific 
Railway line, the skin-hunters were at work in the neighbour- 
hood of Glendive and Little Missouri, and I had an opportunity 
of killing my buffalo like my predecessors. Unfortunately for 
me, I agreed with Colonel Dodge’s plainsmen in ‘scarcely 
considering the buffalo game.’ Now the herds are gone, and 
neither I nor any other man will see the prairies again ‘all one 
vast robe.’ All that remains of the vast herds which used to 
roam ‘over the whole of the Eastern United States to the 
Atlantic Ocean, and southward into Florida,’ are two or three 
half-domesticated herds (one which was Colonel Bedson’s and 
one in the Kootenay country among the Flat-head Indians), 
and a small band of wild beasts, protected by the United 
States, .in the Yellowstone Park. ‘Forest and Stream,’ 
January 29, 1892, puts this last herd at about 400 head, with 
an increase of too head per annum. West of Winnipeg the 
buffalo paths are still visible, worn deep in the grey prairies by 
millions of passing feet ; but the herds have gone, and the men 
and beasts who lived upon them. All that is left are a few 
piles of bleaching bones and a few weather-worn skulls, and 
even these have almost all been gathered and turned into 
dollars by the manure manufacturer and the trophy-monger. 
In this practical money-grubbing age it does not do to lament 
the good old days, unless you want to be laughed at; but — 
it is hard, nevertheless, to look on the ocean of grassland — 
when the spring flowers are coming, and not regret the great 
waves of animal life which used to sweep over it. Such — 
MEET Ae” Mea Poa 
Sa a aN a al = 
