THE AMERICAN BISONS. 175 



only in small numbers ; while their eastern limit does not appear to extend 

 beyond the longitude of Carlton House, or to the eastward of the 106th 

 meridian. They have thus, within the last thirty years, become extermi- 

 nated over more than half of the more fertile portion of the region north of 

 the United States formerly occupied by them, including the whole of the 

 vast prairie region drained by the Assinniboine and Qu'appelle Rivers, and 

 are now confined principally to the arid plains between the two forks of the 

 Saskatchewan, where, as Professor Dawson believes, they cannot survive for 

 many years longer. Their numbers and the extent of their range north of 

 the North Saskatchewan I have at present no means of determining, but it 

 seems probable that their range has here also become greatly restricted since 

 the time of Richardson and Franklin's visits to this region. 



General Remarks respecting the rapid Diminution of ttie Buffalo, 

 and its evident destiny of speedy total extermination. 



It thus appears that the buffalo has become so reduced in numbers, and so 

 circumscribed in its range, that, instead of roaming over nearly half of the 

 continent, as formerly, it is restricted to two small widely separated areas, 

 the southern of which embraces portions of Texas, Colorado, and Kansas, 

 scarcely exceeding in area the smaller of these States, while the northern em- 

 braces only the larger portion of the Territory of Montana and an adjoining 

 area to the northward of nearly ecpial extent. Even as late as the beginning 

 of the present, century the buffalo occupied the whole of the region between 

 the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and extended from the Rio Grande 

 on the south to Great Slave Lake on the north, and also over a considerable 

 area west of the Rocky Mountains, or through thirty-five degrees of latitude 

 and about twenty degrees of longitude. This immense habitat of almost a 

 third of the continent has been reduced in three fourths of a century to a 

 region not larger in the aggregate than the present Territories of Dakota 

 and Montana. Over a large part of the former vast region they inhabited 

 they were as numerous as they now are in Western Kansas or Northern 

 Texas, and ranged at different seasons over the whole. Particular portions 

 of this area have ever formed their favorite places of resort, where they were 

 sure to be found at almost any season of the year. There is, for instance, 

 abundant historic evidence that over the plains of Kansas, especially near 

 the forks of the Platte, along the Republican, the Pawnee, the Canadian, and 



