THE AMERICAN BISONS. 61 



Doubtless the same individuals never moved more than a few hundred miles 

 in a north and south direction, the annual migration being doubtless merely 

 a moderate swaying northward and southward of the whole mass with the 

 changes of the seasons. We certainly know that buffaloes have been accus- 

 tomed to remain in winter as far north as their habitat extends. North of 

 the Saskatchewan they are described as merely leaving the more exposed 

 portions of the plains during the deepest snows and severest periods of cold 

 to take shelter in the open woods that border the plains. We have, for in- 

 stance, numerous attestations of their former abundance in winter at Carleton 

 House, in latitude 53°, as well as at other of the Hudson's Bay Company's 

 posts. 



The local movements of the buffaloes are said to have been formerly very 

 regular, and the hunters conversant with their habits knew very well at 

 what points they were most likely to find them at the different seasons of 

 the year. Of late, however, the buffaloes have become much more erratic, 

 owing to the constant persecutions to which they have been for so long a 

 time subjected. In Northern Kansas the old trails show that their move- 

 ments were formerly in the usual north and south direction, the trails all 

 having that course. Since the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway, 

 however, their habits have considerably changed, an east and west migration 

 having recently prevailed to such an extent that a new set of trails, running 

 at right angles to the earlier, have been deeply worn. Until recently the 

 buffaloes ranged eastward in summer to Fort Harker, but retired westward 

 in winter, few being found at this season east of Fort Hays. In summer 

 and early autumn, hunting-parties, as late as 1872, made their headquarters 

 at Hays City; later in the season at Ellis and Park's Fort; while in mid- 

 winter they had to move their camps as far west as Coyote, Grinnell. and 

 Wallace, or to a distance of one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles west 

 of their fall camps, in consequence of the westward winter migration of the 

 buffaloes. Two reasons may be assigned for this change of habit : first, their 

 reluctance to cross the railroad, and secondly, the greater mildness of the win- 

 ters to the westward of Ellis as compared with the region east of this point. 

 During the winter of 1871-72 I found that for a period of several weeks. 

 in December and January, the country east of Ellis was covered with ice 

 and encrusted snow sufficiently deep to bury the grass below the reach of 

 either the buffaloes or the domestic cattle. In the vicinity of Ellis the 

 amount of snow and ice began rapidly to diminish, while a little further 



