THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
whilst from the paucity of specimens it cannot be asserted that the extinct 
buffalo of the Alleghanies was in any way different. 
The bison or buffalo was first discovered by the explorers of the six- 
teenth century. Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, reached the City of 
Mexico in 1521, and saw there in a menagerie the first specimen. This had 
been sent as a present to Montezuma and it is interesting to note that 
it was exhibited at least 300 miles south of its natural range. In 1530, 
nine years later, Alva Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was wrecked on the Gulf 
Coast, and when travelling inland he met with herds of the bison on their 
native range. 
In Davis’s “ Spanish Conquest of New Mexico,” 1869, p. 67, Cabeza is 
thus quoted: 
“ Cattle come as far as this. I have seen them three times, and eaten 
of their meat. I think they are about the size of those in Spain. They 
have small horns like those of Morocco, and the hair long and flocky, 
like those of the Merino. Some are light brown ( pardillas ), and others 
black. To my judgment, the flesh is finer and sweeter than that of 
this country (Spain). The Indians make blankets of those that are not 
full grown, and of the larger they make shoes and bucklers. They 
come as far as the sea -coast of Florida and in a direction from the 
north, and range over a district of more than 400 leagues. In the whole 
extent of plain over which they roam, the people, who live bordering 
upon it, descend and kill them for food; and thus a great many skins 
are scattered throughout the country.” 
It was in 1540 that Coronado crossed the southern part of Texas, entering 
from the west through Arizona and New Mexico. He reached the home 
of the “ crooked -backed oxen ” in 1542. Castaneda, one of his party, 
says: “We were much surprised at meeting innumerable herds of bulls 
without a single cow, and other herds of cows without bulls.” 
The first Englishman to see the northern herd of buffalo was Sir Samuel 
Argoll, afterwards deputy -governor of Virginia, and he came upon them 
in 1612 near Washington, in the district of Columbia. He pushed his ship 
up the Potomac River and discovered the head of it, and then journeyed a 
short distance inland with Indians, who killed a couple of the “cattle as 
big as kine,” and says (“Purchas Pilgr.,” 1625, Vol. IV, p. 1765), they are 
“ heavy, slow, and not so wild as other Beasts of the wilderness.” 
The history of the buffalo is a gradual shrinkage on its eastern range 
as the white man invaded the country and moved westwards. Each century 
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