82 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



Wisconsin Rivers, but he appears not to have met with the buffalo till he 

 reached the Wisconsin River.* 



Charlevoix, who traversed the satne country in 1720, and who has left us 

 in his letters a full account of his journey up the St. Lawrence, and thence 

 westward through Lakes Ontario and Erie, only heard of their existence on 

 the southern shore of Lake Erie, he himself coasting along the northern 

 shore. Concerning the game of the country bordering Lake Erie he says, 

 •• Water-fowl swarmed everywhere : I cannot say there is such Plenty of 

 (lame in the Woods, but I know that on the South Side there are vast Herds 

 of wild Cattle." t Again he says, " But at the end of five or six leagues 

 [from Detroit River], inclining towards the Lake Erie to the South West, 

 one sees vast Meadows which extend above a hundred Leagues every 

 Way, and which feed a prodigious Number of those Cattle which I have 

 already mentioned several Times."! He gives, however, an account of the 

 "chase" in Canada, in which he describes the method of hunting the buffalo, 

 but the locality is specified as " the Southern and Western Parts of New 

 France, Oil both Sides of the Mississippi," § which was then generally called 

 Canada. 



In the account of the Voyage of Father Simon Le Moine to the country 

 of the - Iroquois Onondagoes" in 1653- : >1 we find what at first sight seems 

 to be indisputable evidence of the existence of the buffalo at the eastern end 

 of Lake Ontario, in both New York and Canada. In this account we find 

 the following : K At the other side of the Rapid] I perceived a herd of fetid 

 r,nr.<* which were passing at their ease in great state. Five or six hundred 

 are -ecu sometimes in these regions in one drove."** In the "Relation de la 

 Nouvelle France en I'Annee L665," we find the following description of the 

 St. Lawrence River: "This is one of the most important rivers that can be 

 seen, whether we regard its beauty or its convenience, for we meet there 

 almosl throughout, n vast number of beautiful islands, some large, others 



* An Arc, .mil ,,f tin I >i new Countries and Nation) in X America in 1878. Transla- 



tion in French's lli-t Coll. !.;•.. r.i.t II. pp. 879 



t Letters, Goadby's English Kd, 1763, p 170. Dodsley's English Edition says "a prodigious quantity 

 of Buffaloes " | Vol, II. p. 8). 



; ibid., pi 78. Dodsley's Translation says again, " tl (buffaloes" (Vol II. p I s ). 



$ Ibid., p, 68, 



|| This locality i* jnsl below St. Ignatius, on the Si Lawrence, nol far fi Lake Ontario 



« \ ia original. Relatk 



■ • 1 1 ntai ii. v a \ ork, \ ol I 



