Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-05

the menagerie of a heather king" The IA
nous Montezuma, as Lord Macaulay's
schoolbov is no doubt aware, was most en-
lightened monarch; and in addition to his
many other distinguished attributes, he be-
came the Barnum OF his day. When Cortez
reached Anahuac, in 1921, he fonnd in the
second square of the royal palace a collec-
ton of wild beasts, presented to Montezuma,
OF taken by his hunters. Among these was
the American bison, brought FROM the prov
inee of CoUhuila, over 400 miles away.
BUFFALO BILLS PROTOTYPE.
In 1880 Alvar Nunez Cabeza, "of the cat
tie" prototype of Buffalo Bill" found
bisons in Southeastern Texas. This was the
first discovery of the buffalo in a wild state
From that date Spanish and English ex-
plorers found the "wild cattle" as they
called them, in various parts of the conti-
nent. The range of the bison in those early
days started at the Atlantic coast, and ex-
tending westward through the dense, path
less prairies stretched even to the spurs of
the Rocky Mountains Had he remained
unmolested and uninhuenced BY man, it is
more than likely he would have crossed the
Sierras and roamed far and wide through
the valleys of the Pacific slope. But fate
had ordained it otherwise. The white mans
rifle resounded amid the forests; ms bullets
whizzed across the ssge-brush, and the buff
falo fell before him in countless thousands.
There is painting by Mr.. J. 81. Moser, in
the National Museum. which brings home
to the mind with extraordinary force the
terrific destruction done among the
shaggy nomads who once mar
shalled their Innumerable herds from
California to Maine. The picture represents
q vast stretch of prairie, spreading far be-
yoBd the gazer's kens, and sparkling here
and there with pools of sunlit water. Over
all this waste lie heaped the blanching bones
of long dead buffaloes. Millions and mil
lions of bones; millions and millions of
dusky skulls, from which hide and flesh
have years ago been torn, are strewn by the
sides Of the impid water, and along the
blllowy undulstions into the hot, missy
distance.
There "the millions lie-their- tomb is
worthy of their numbers continent, sky
rooted and mountain-walled, is their match
less mausoleum.
No species of quadruped ever multiplied
to such an extent as the American bison.
Forty years ago the total number of buffa-
loes in America exceeded in numbers all the
quadrupeds which South Africa possessed.
Near the spot where Clarion, Pa, now
stands the early pioneers saw
BUFFABoES IN THOUSANDS
come week after week to drink of a salt
spring in the neighborhood. w. John Fill
son, writing of Blue Licks, Ky, in 1879,
says: ''The amazing herds of buffaloes
which resort thither ELL the traveller with
amazement and terror" Colonel Daniel
Boone declared that in the Red river region
of Kentucky "the buffaloes were more num-
erous than cattle in the settlements" Boone
also found vast herds of bufaloes grazing
in the valleys of East Tennessee. Marquette,
declared that the Illinois river praries were
''covered with buffaloes;S and Father Henne-
pin, writes of the Chicago district, that
there must be an innumerable quantity of
wild bulls in that county, since the earth is
covered with their horns. Their
pathways are beaten like our great roads,
and no herb grows therein"
Near the mouth of White river, in Da-
kots, Lewis and Clark saw herd, in 1906.
of which they wrote thus: "They are now
so numerous, that from an eminence we dis
covered more than we had ever seen at any
timer" These travellers Furthermore state
that it was impossible to count the moving
mass which covered the whole plain. :"
Colonel Dodge, Of "Great West" fame,
wrote in 1877: "The great herd on the
Arkansas could not have averaged over 20
individuals to the acre, but was not less than
25 miles wide, and was about FIVE days in
passing a given point. From the top of
Pawnee Rock 1 could see from six to ten
miles in almost every direction. This whole
vast space was covered with buffalo, looking
at q distance like one compact mass, the
visual angle not permitting the ground to
be seen. have seen such a sight at times.
but never on 50 large scale. That was the
last Of the great herds"
If Colonel Dodge be correct in the par
ticulars giVen-and there is no reason to
doubt his accuracy, the advancing herd
must have numbered at the least over 4.O0O,-
900 bufalOes And yet in four years that