THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 379 



with buffaloes in 1620, while surveying the southern boundary of the 

 State, about 155 miles from the coast, as already quoted; the refer- 

 ences to the discovery of buffaloes on the eastern side of the Virginia 

 mountains, quoted by Mr. Allen from Salmon's ''Present State of Vir- 

 ginia,' 7 page 14 (London, 1737), and the capture and domestication of 

 buffaloes in 1701 by the Huguenot settlers at Manikintown, which was 

 situated on the James Eiver, about 14 miles above Eichmond. Appar- 

 ently, buffaloes were more numerous in Virginia than in any other of the 

 Atlantic States. 



North Carolina. — Colonel Byrd's discoveries along the inter-state 

 boundary between Virginia and North Carolina fixes the presence of 

 the bison in the northern part of the latter State at the date of the 

 survey. The following letter to Prof. G. Brown Goode, dated Birdsnest 

 post-office, Va., August 6, 1888, from Mr. C. B. Moore, furnishes reliable 

 evidence of the presence of the buffalo at another point in North Car- 

 olina: "In the winter of 1857 I was staying for the night at the house 

 of an old gentleman named Houston. I should judge he was seventy 

 then. He lived near Buffalo Ford, on the Catawba Biver, about 4 miles 

 from Statesville, N. C. I asked him how the ford got its name. He 

 told me that his grandfather told him that when he was a boy the buf- 

 falo crossed there, and that when the rocks in the river were baro they 

 would eat the moss that grew upon them." The point indicated is in 

 longitude 81° west and the date not far from 1750. 



South Carolina. — Professor Allen cites numerous authorities, whose 

 observations furnish abundant evidence of the existence of the buffalo 

 in South Carolina during the first half of the eighteenth century. From 

 these it is quite evident that in the northwestern half of the State buf- 

 faloes were once fairly numerous. Keating declares, on the authority 

 of Colhoun, " and we know that some of those who first settled the 

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

 This appears to be the only definite locality in which the presence of 

 the species was recorded. 



Georgia. — The extreme southeastern limit of the buffalo in the 

 United States was found on the coast of Georgia, near the mouth of 

 the Altamaha Biver, opposite St. Simon's Island. Mr. Francis Moore, 

 in his "Voyage to Georgia," made in 1736 and reported upon in 1744,t 

 makes the following observation: 



"The island [St. Simon's] abounds with deer and rabbits. There are 

 no buffalo in it, though there are large herds upon the main." Else- 

 where in the same document (p. 122) reference is made to buffalo-hunt- 

 ing by Indians on the main-land near Darien. 



In James E. Oglethorpe's enumeration (A. D. 1733) of the wild beasts 

 of Georgia and South Carolina he mentions "deer, elks, bears, wolves, 

 and buffaloes."^: 



* Long's Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter's River, 1823, n, p. 26. 

 t Coll. Georgia Hist. Soc., I, p. 117. 

 t Ibid., I, p. 51. 



