THE AMERICAN" BISONS. 95 



about eighty miles distant from Augusta."* Again, in speaking of the 

 middle region of the Carolinas, he says : " The buffalo ( Urns), once so 

 very numerous, is not at this date [1773] to be seen in this part of the 

 country." t 



Hewit, also, in his " Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the 

 Colonies of South Carolina," published originally in London in 1779, thus refers 

 to the buffalo in enumerating the natural productions of " Carolina," in his 

 description of its condition about the year 1674 : " Numbers of deer, timor- 

 ous and wild, ranged through the trees, and herds of buffaloes were found 

 grazing in the savannas." t Keating also says, on the authority of Col- 

 houn : " And we know that some of those who first settled the Abbeville 

 district in South Carolina, in 1756, found the buffalo there." § 



Further evidence of the existence of the buffalo in the western parts of 

 North and South Carolina is furnished by maps of these States, prepared 

 about 1771- 1775,|| on which a tributary of Coldwater River, in what is now 

 Cabarrus County, North Carolina, is called Buffalo Creek ; while two of the 

 upper tributaries of the Broad River bear the names respectively of Buffalo 

 Creek and Bullock Creek. In South Carolina, on the sources of the Saluda 

 River, in the present County of Abbeville, a swamp is laid down as Buffalo 

 Swamp. I fail to find, however, any of these names preserved on recent maps. 



Peter Kalm, in his " Travels in North America," under date of November, 

 1748, also thus alludes to their existence " in Carolina." " The wild oxen 

 have their abode principally in the woods of Carolina, which are far up in the 

 country. The inhabitants frequently hunt them and salt them like common 

 beef, which is eaten by servants and the lower class of people. But the hide 

 is of little use, having too large pores to be made use of for shoes. How- 

 ever, the poorer people in Carolina spread their hides on the ground instead 

 of beds." ^[ Again he speaks of " the wild Cows and Oxen .... which are 

 to be met with in Carolina, and other provinces to the south of Pennsylvania. 

 .... This American species of oxen," he says, " is Linnams's Bos Bison, /8."** 



* Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, etc , 1 773 - 75, pp. 35, 46. 

 t Ibid, p. 46. 



% Carroll's Hist. Coll. S Car., Vol. I, p. 78. 



§ Long's Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter's River, etc., 1823, Vol. II, p. 26. 

 || A map of North and South Carolina. Accurately compiled from the old maps of James Cook, pub- 

 lished in 1771, and of Henry Mouzon, in 1775. Carroll's Hist. Coll. South Carolina, 1836, Vol. I. 

 IT Travels into North America, Forster's Translation, Vol. I, p. 287. 

 ** Ibid., Vol. I, p. 207. 



