GREAT HERDS ON THE PLAINS 9 
northern plains of Mexico, the ‘‘Great American Desert,” 
the Rocky Mountain parks on the continental divide to an 
elevation of 11,000 feet and the bleak and barren plains of 
western Canada, up to the land of the musk-ox. From north 
to south it ranged 3,600 miles, and from east to west about 
2,000 miles. 
The centre of abundance of the Buffalo was the Great 
Plains lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi 
Valley. When the herds assembled there, they covered the 
earth seemingly as with one vast, brown buffalo-robe. 
It is safe to say that no man ever saw in one day a greater 
panorama of animal life than that unrolled before Colonel 
R. I. Dodge, in May, 1871, when he drove for twenty-five 
miles along the Arkansas River, through an unbroken herd 
of Buffaloes. By my calculation he actually saw on that 
memorable day nearly half a million head. It was the great 
southern herd, on its annual spring migration northward, and 
it must have contained a total of about three and one-half 
million animals. At that date the northern herd contained 
about one and one-half millions. In those days mighty hosts 
of Buffaloes frequently stopped or derailed railway trains, 
and obstructed the progress of boats on the Missouri and Yel- 
lowstone Rivers. 
In 1869 the general herd was divided, by the completion 
of the Union Pacific Railway, into a “northern herd” and 
‘southern herd.” The latter was savagely attacked by hide 
hunters in the autumn of 1871, and by 1875, with the exception 
of three very small bunches, it had been annihilated. 
In 1880 the completion of the Northern Pacific Railway led 
