The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1902-07-18
too rapid and will strike 10 before
high noon.

The ineterior departments census
of buffaloes caused surprise among
those who have been chasing the
bison among the extinct aniamls,
but most of the 1l43 full and mixed
blood buffaloes in existance in the
United States are now in the con-
dition of herded .beeyes. Less tnan
a hundred are running wild-ffry
in Colorado and twenty two in
YELLOW stone park-and as these
aniamls are protected by laws which
provide no open season for hunters
of buffalo meat, the buafflo may be
said to be extinct as a wild animal.
This is not surprising, in view of
the rapid settlement of the country
in which the buffalo once roamed,
but nevertheless the extinction of
the buafflo affords a good lesson for
those who ridicule game laws as
being unnecessary.
Miss A.C. Laut, whose familiarity
with events of the past on the
northern and western frontiers has
enabled her to furnish the ground
work of two successful novels, has
something to say in the current
number of Outing, concerning the
time when hthe baffloes had only
the Indians and he wolves for
enemies. She states that in the
forties, when the American Fur
Company was in the height of it's
prosperity and power, 1oc, 900
buafflo robes we're in single year
shipped from st. Louis alone.
Equal quantities of robes were
being sent from Mackinaw, Detroit,
Montreal a nd Hudson Bay, and a
million would not cover the number
of robes sent east each year du ring
the forties. As to the number
of buffaloes on the plains twenty
years latrer, Miss Laut says:
In 1868 hmm, Sheridan and Custer
rode continuously for three days
through one herd in, the Arkansas
region; and in 1869 trains on the
Kansas Pacific were held from 9 in
the morning until at night to pei
nit the passage of one herd across
the track. Army officers relate that
in 1862 herd that covered an area OF
seventy by thirty miles moved north
from Arkansas to the Yellowstone.
Catlin and Inman and army men
and employees of the fur companies
considered a drove of 100, 900 buffalo
a common sight along the line of
the Santa Fe trail. Inman computes
that from. st. Louis alone the bones
of 81, OO0,O buafflo were shipped
between 1868 and 1881.
In those days tracks we're worn
to a dept equal to the height of a
riders stirrups or the hubs of a
wagon, by buffaloes travelling across
the plains in single file and this
evidence that, the animals then
existed in countless numbers was
supplemented by other remarkable
wearings Of the surface, where herds
had surrounded calves with Gordon
to ward off wild AMI mails. The OK
tinction of these vast herds of
anjlnalss in the short time Of thirty
years is proof that with out game
laws all the larger animals would
soon become extinct. The nations
which have colonies in South Africa
have already enacted laws for the
protection of elephants and other
large animals to prevent them
from going the way of the buaffle:
Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin.
After the quixotic Watterson the
defiant and irreconcilable Bryan.
The P1ckwickian compliments which
Hill lavished on the STANDARD
bearer" do not deter Mr.. Bryan from
the harmoizers with hi