JO NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



surveyor could not have chosen a more direct course, or firmer or 

 better ground. I have often travelled these tracks with safety and 

 admiration. I perceived them chosen as if by the nicest judgment ; 

 and when at times I was perplexed to find them revert on them- 

 selves nearly in parallel lines, I soon found it occasioned by swamps, 

 ponds, or precipices, which the animals knew how to avoid ; but 

 that object being effected, the road again swept into its due course, 

 and bore towards its destination as if under the direction of a 

 compass. 



An old man, one of the first settlers in this country, built his 

 log house on the immediate borders of a salt spring. He informed 

 me that for the first several seasons, the buffaloes paid him their 

 visits with the utmost regularity ; they travelled in single files, always 

 following each other at equal distances ; forming droves, on their 

 arrival, of about three hundred each. The first and second years, 

 so unacquainted were these poor brutes with the use of this man's 

 house or with his nature, that in a few hours they rubbed the house 

 completely down ; taking delight in turning the logs off with their 

 horns, while he had some difficulty to escape from being trampled 

 under their feet, or crushed to death in his own ruins. At that 

 period he supposed there could not have been less than ten thousand 

 in the neighborhood of the spring. They sought for no manner 

 of food ; but only bathed and drank three or four times a day, and 

 rolled in the earth ; or reposed, with their flanks distended, in the 

 adjacent shades; and on the fifth and sixth days separated into 

 distinct droves, bathed, drank, and departed in single files, accord- 

 ing to the exact order of their arrival. They all rolled successively 

 in the same hole ; and each thus carried away a coat of mud, to 

 preserve the moisture on their skin ; and which, when hardened and 

 baked by the sun, would resist the stings of millions of insects 

 that otherwise would persecute these peaceful travellers to madness 

 or even death. 



In the first and second years this old man with some companions 

 killed from six to seven hundred of these noble creatures, merely 

 for the sake of the skins, which to them were worth only two 

 shillings each ; and after this " work of death," they were obliged 

 to leave the place till the following season ; or till the wolves, bears, 

 panthers, eagles, rooks, ravens etc. had devoured the carcasses, and 

 abandoned the place for other prey. In the two following years, the 

 same persons killed great numbers out of the first droves that 

 arrived, skinned them, and left the bodies exposed to the sun and 

 air ; but they soon had reason to repent of this ; for the remaining 

 droves, as they came up in succession, stopped, gazed on the mangled 

 and putrid bodies, sorrowfully moaned or furiously lowed aloud, 

 and returned instantly to the wilderness in an unusual run, without 

 tasting their favorite spring, or licking the impregnated earth, 

 which was also once their most agreeable occupation ; nor did they, 

 or any of their race, ever revisit the neighborhood. 



The simple history of this spring, is that of every other in the 



