THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON 491 



build up "a big business," every new line which traverses a country 

 containing game does its utmost, by means of advertisements and 

 posters, to attract the man with a gun. Its game resorts are all laid 

 bare, and the market hunters and sportsmen swarm in immediately, 

 slaying and to slay. 



Within the last year the last real retreat for our finest game, the 

 only remaining stronghold for the mountain sheep, goat, caribou, elk, 

 and deer — northwestern Montana, northern Idaho, and thence west- 

 ward — has been laid open to the very heart by the building of the St. 

 Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Eailway, which runs up the valley of 

 the Milk Kiver to Fort Assinniboiue, and crosses the Eocky Mountains 

 through Two Medicine Pass. Heretofore that region has been so diffi- 

 cult to reach that the game it contains has been measurably secure 

 from general slaughter; but now it also must " go." 



The marking out of the great overland trail by the Argonauts of ? 49 

 in their rush for the gold fields of California was the foreshadowing of 

 the great east-and-west breach in the universal herd, which was -made 

 twenty years later by the first transcontinental railway. 



The pioneers who "crossed the plains" in those days killed buffaloes 

 for food whenever they could, and the constant harrying of those animals 

 experienced along the line of travel, soon led them to retire from the 

 proximity of such continual danger. It was undoubtedly due to this 

 cause that the number seen by parties who crossed the plains in 1SI9 

 and subsequently, was surprisingly small. But, fortunately for tbe 

 buffaloes, the pioneers who would gladly have halted and turned aside 

 now and then for the excitement of the chase, were compelled to hurry 

 on, and accomplish the long journey while good weather lasted. It was 

 owing to this fact, and the scarcity of good horses, that the buffaloes 

 found it necessary to retire only a few miles from the wagon route to 

 get beyond the reach of those who would have gladly hunted them. 



Mr. Allen Varner, of Indianola, Illinois, has kindly furnished me 

 with the following facts in regard to the presence of the buffalo, as 

 observed by him during his" journey westward, over what was then 

 known as the Oregon Trail. 



"The old Oregon trail ran from Independence, Missouri, to old Fort 

 Laramie, through the South Pass of the Eocky Mountains, and thence 

 up to Salt Lake City. We left Independence on May 6, 1849, and 

 struck the Platte Eiver at Grand Island. The trail had been traveled 

 but very little previous to that year. We saw no buffaloes whatever 

 until we reached the forks of the Platte, on May 20, or thereabouts. 

 There we saw seventeen head. From that time on we saw small 

 bunches now and then; never more than forty or fifty together. We 

 saw no great herds anywhere, and I should say we did not see ovei 

 five hundred head all told. The most western point at which we saw 

 buffaloes was about due north of Laramie Peak, and it must have been 

 about the 20th of June. We killed several head for meat during our 



