574 BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



I say, learn a lesson from the Indians who preceded us, and 

 not extend our slaughter beyond reasonable limits. If we 

 will not spare the game from choice, then society must 

 interpose, and comj)el us to do what we should do volun 

 tarily. Imagine a country entirely destitute of wild ani- 

 mals, where all the native fauna have become extinct, and 

 to most men it would seem like a desert, many of its 

 choicest charms would be gone, and it would become the 

 most fitting abode for the miser, whose happiness consists 

 in counting his gold. 



When the white man drove the Bison beyond the Mis- 

 souri River, it gathered in countless herds on the great 

 plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and filled the country 

 from Texas to the Saskatchew^an. But twenty years ago 

 that whole country was covered with the Bison,. in numbers 

 almost beyond computation, and there was the grandest 

 hunting-ground ever known in any part of the world. So 

 great were their numbers that it was thought they never 

 could be exterminated; and yet, a single score of years has 

 sufficed to blot them from the face of the earth, with but 

 very few exceptions. Had Congress done its duty, and 

 stretched out its arm to j)rotect this, the grandest game 

 animal in the w^orld, we should now have a preserve which 

 would be the boast of every true American; but it is too 

 late now — that great opportunity is forever gone. A few 

 may be preserved in the Yellowstone Park, but only 

 enough for specimens; the area is too limited for more. 

 Other large game may be there i3reserved, but only to the 

 same extent. Had the Government acted upon General 

 Sheridan' s recommendation, made some years ago, to greatly 

 enlarge that park by the addition of a mountain district 

 adjoining it, which can never be useful for anj^ other pur- 

 pose, then indeed we might in time have had a collection of 

 wild animals peculiar to our country, apiDroximating, at 

 least, their condition in a wild state. 



Had each white man who went to hunt the Buffalo been 

 as reasonable in his tastes as the ignorant red man; had he 

 killed to supply his reasonable wants, and no more— law or 



