THE AMERICAN BISONS. 97 



later, many of whom have given detailed enumerations of the animals they 

 met with. While every species of mammal now known to exist there, from 

 the squirrel to the deer, is mentioned, the buffalo is absent from them 

 all.* It was also absent from this region at the time when Lawson, Brickell, 

 and Catesby explored the Carolinas with special reference to their natural 

 products. 



The Buffalo not found within the present limits of Florida. — The buffalo is also 

 believed by some to have been found within the present limits of Florida, 

 and tbroughout the Gulf States down to the Gulf of Mexico. Tbis, however, 

 is a mistake, mainly arising, probably, from the former vast extent of Florida 

 as compared with its present limits.! 



These writers are Forbes,}: who as recently as 1821 wrote, "The buffalo 

 is said to be among the number of wild beasts, but not commonly seen"! 

 Davis also says, on the authority of Romans, that " their tracks have been 

 seen as far south and southeast as the Withlacooche River." § But from the 

 context of Romans's work, and from the known range of the buffalo at the 

 time he wrote (1776), he must have been mistaken in respect to the identity 

 of the tracks. Romans saj^s :".... at the junction of Flint River and the 

 river in the south extreme of this division is the head of Manatee River, 

 between which and the Amaxiira I saw a vast number of deer, and the marks 



* Among the authors here referred to are Robert Horn (Briefe Description of the Province of Carolina 

 on the Coasts of Floreda, etc., 166G) ; Samuel Wilson (An Account of the Province of Carolina, in America, 

 etc, 1682); " T. A." [Thomas Ash] (Carolina; or a Description of the Present State of that Country and 

 the Natural Excellencies thereof, etc., by T. A., Gent., 1682) ; and John Archdale (A New Description of 

 that fertile and pleasant Province of Carolina, etc., 1707). Reprinted in Carroll's Hist. Coll. of S. Car., 

 Vol. II. See also Hakluyt, Voyages, etc., Vol. IV, for these papers. 



f As is well known, for many years subsequent to the disastrous expedition of De Soto, Florida, as 

 claimed by Spain, embraced all the Atlantic coast as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and for more 

 than a century after, or till 1651, extended northward to the present southern boundary of Virginia, and 

 comprised an immense unexplored region in the interior. Not until 1721 was its western boundary re- 

 stricted to its present limits. In 1764, the year following its acquisition by the British crown, its western 

 boundary was again temporarily extended to the Mississippi River. — Monette's Hist of the Valley of the 

 Mississippi, Vol. I, pp. 65-77. 



In 1745 the British possessions in North America embraced only that portion of the United States 

 north of the present limits of Florida, east of the Alleghanies, exclusive, however, of those portions of 

 New York and Vermont north of the 44th parallel. The whole vast interior belonged to the French, and 

 while almost the whole basin of the Mississippi was denominated Louisiana, or the Province of Louis, the 

 northeastern part, including not only the present Canadas, but nearly all the territory north of the Ohio, 

 was called Canada, or New France. — Ibid., Vol. I, map. 



t Sketches, Historical and Topographical, of the Floridas ; more especially of East Florida, p. 67. 



§ Conquest of New Mexico, 1869, p. 67, footnote. 



