392 



often a dangerous menace to wagon travel across the plains, and also 

 to stop railway trains, and even throw them off the track. The like 

 has probably never occurred before in any country, and most assuredly 

 never will again, if the present rate of large game destruction all over 

 the world can be taken as a foreshadowing of the future. In this con- 

 nection the following additional testimony from Colonel Dodge (" Plains 

 of the Great West," p. 121) is of interest : 



" The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Eailroad was then [in 1871-72] in 

 process of construction, and nowhere could the peculiarity of the buffalo 

 of which I am speaking be better studied than from its trains. If a 

 herd was on the north side of the track, it would stand stupidly gazing, 

 and without a symptom of alarm, although the locomotive passed within 

 a hundred yards. If on the south side of the track, even though at a 

 distance of 1 or 2 miles from it, the passage of a train set the whole herd 

 in the wildest commotion. At full speed, and utterly regardless of the 

 consequences, it would make for the track on its line of retreat. If the 

 train happened not to be in its path, it crossed the track and stopped 

 satisfied. If the train was in its way, each individual buffalo went at it 

 with the desperation of despair, plunging against or between locomotive 

 and cars, just as its blind madness chanced to direct it. Numbers were 

 killed, but numbers still pressed on, to stop and stare as soon as the 

 obstacle had passed. After having trains thrown off the track twice in 

 one week, conductors learned to have a very decided respect for the 

 idiosyncrasies of the buffalo, and when there was a possibility of strik- 

 ing a herd 'on the rampage' for the north side of the track, the train 

 was slowed up and sometimes stopped entirely." 



The accompanying illustration, reproduced from the " Plains of the 

 Great West," by the kind permission of the author, is, in one sense, 

 ocular proof that collisioUs between railway trains and vast herds of 

 buffaloes were so numerous that they formed a proper subject for illus- 

 tration. In regard to the stoppage of trains and derailment of locomo- 

 tives by buffaloes, Colonel Dodge makes the following allusion in the 

 private letter already referred to : "There are at least a hundred re- 

 liable railroad men now employed ou the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe 

 Eailroad who were witnesses of, and sometimes sufferers from, the wild 

 rushes of buffalo as described on page 121 of my book. I was at the 

 time stationed at Fort Dodge, and I was personally cognizant of several 

 of these ' accidents.' " 



The following, from the ever pleasing pen of Mr. Catlin, is of decided 

 interest in this connection: 



"In one instance, near the mouth of White Eiver, we met the most 

 immense herd crossing the Missouri Eiver [in Dakota], and from an 

 imprudence got our boat into imminent danger amongst them, from 

 which we were highly delighted to make our escape. It was in the 

 midst of the 'running season/ and we had heard the l roaring' (as it is 

 called) of the herd when we were several miles from them. When 



