THE AMEBIC AN BISONS. 171 



The Earl of Southesk, in his recently published narrative of his sporting 

 adventures in British North America in 1859,* makes but few references to 

 the buffalo, and adds nothing of much importance to our knowledge of its 

 distribution. He speaks, however, of their occurrence on the plains west of 

 Fort Ellice, and of meeting with large herds between the North and South 

 branches of the Saskatchewan. He also met with their recent remains near 

 Old Bow Fort, on the South Saskatchewan, at the base of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. " The plains," he says, " are all strewn with skulls and other vestiges 

 of the buffalo, which came up this river last year in great numbers. They 

 were once common in the mountains. At the Kootanie Plain I observed 

 some of their wallowing-places, and even so high as a secluded little lake 

 near where the horses were taken up to the ice bank, I saw traces of them. 

 They are now rapidly disappearing everywhere." A few were also seen 

 near the Touchwood Hills, west of Fort Pelly, in November, which was about 

 the most easterly point at which they were seen.t 



Captain W. F. Butler, writing in 1872, thus speaks of the region of the 

 Touchwood Hills : " This region bears the name of the Touchwood Hills. 

 Around it, far into endless space, stretch immense plains of bare and scanty 

 vegetation, plains scored with the tracks of countless buffalo, which, until a 

 few years ago, were wont to roam in vast herds between the Assinniboine 

 and the Saskatchewan. Upon whatever side the eye turns when crossing 

 these great expanses, the same wrecks of the monarch of the prairie lie 

 thickly strewn over the surface. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons dot 

 the short, scant grass ; and when fire has laid barer still the level surface 

 the bleached ribs and skulls of long-killed bison whiten far and near the dark 

 burnt prairie." t 



Captain Butler crossed the plains from Fort Ellice in a northwest direction 

 to Fort Carlton (Carlton House), and journeyed thence up the North Sas- 

 katchewan River to the base of the Rocky Mountains ; but he seems not to 

 have met with any living buffalo throughout his journey. He again refers 

 to the vast diminution the buffalo has undergone, and mentions the whole- 

 sale slaughter formerly practised by the Cree Indians on the plains of the 

 Saskatchewan, and describes a hunt he himself participated in on the plains 

 of Nebraska. Referring to the rapidity with which the buffalo is vanishing 



* Saskatchewan anil the Rocky Mountains, 1875. 



f Ibid., pp. 52, 254, 306. 



t The Great Lone Land, p. 217, 1873. 



