CHAP, vii.] MIGRATION OF BISONS AND REINDEER. 189 



ravine of the Wynnetts and the pass by Mam Tor lead 

 from the vale of Hope and Castleton into the plains of 

 Cheshire and Lancashire, and it evidently marks the route 

 by which the animals passed to and fro from one set of 

 pastures to another, after the manner of the bison in 

 North America and the reindeer in Siberia. 



Migration of Bisons and Reindeer. 



The bisons in North America, so rapidly disappearing 

 like the Ked Indian at the advance of the white man, 

 are described as forming herds of enormous size, going 

 wherever instinct leads them in search of pastures, " now 

 through the dark gorges of the Kocky Mountains, now 

 trailing into the valleys of the Eio del Norte, now pour- 

 ing down the wooded slopes of the Saskatchewan." 

 " Nothing could stop them on their march ; great rivers 

 stretched before them with steep overhanging banks, and 

 beds treacherous with quicksands and shifting bar ; huge 

 chasms and earth rents, the work of subterranean forces, 

 crossed their line of inarch, but still the countless thou- 

 sands swept on. Through day and night the earth 

 trembled beneath their tramp, and the air was filled with 

 the deep bellowing of their unnumbered throats. Crowds 

 of wolves and flocks of vultures dogged and hovered 

 along their way, for many a huge beast half sunk in 

 quicksand, or bruised and maimed at the foot of some 

 precipice, marked their line of march like the wrecks 

 lying spread behind a routed army." l The bison are 

 also described, by the Northern Boundary Commissioners, 

 as wintering in vast herds in the fertile grass lands of 

 Dakota. They were shot from the waggons with pistols, 

 and pressed in such numbers upon the party that the 



1 Wild North Land, Major Butler, p. 53. 



