The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-06-21
GIANT BISON HERD
 AWAY.
 SWEPT

GU dlOuQs-Adu6dS Ally 1llllCHs
 GIANT BISON HERD SWEPT
 AWAY.
 Since the beginning of the now vide spread movement to preserve the buffa- 10, and particularly since the organiza- tion of the American Bison society, it is interesting to consider the discovery of the animal, it's life history and methods of its extern1ination, says Dr. nest Harold Baynes in the Boston Her ala.
 Although authorities differ on this subject, the buffalo was probably first seen by white men in vAnahuac, the Aztec capital of Mexico, in 1521, when Cortez and his men paid their first visit to the menagerie of King Montezunla. Nine years later the animal was first seen in a wild state in southern Texas by a shipwrecked Spanish sailor who had very little to say about 1t beyond remarking that he had eaten the flesh, which in his judgment was finer and sweeter than the meat to be had in Spain.
 The next explorer to penetrate the buffalo country was Coronado, who crossed Arizona and New Mexico and the southern part of the Panhandle of Texas. In 1542 the expedition was crossing the plains, which were de- scribed as being "as full of crooked backed oxen as the mountain Serena in Spain of sheepe." It is from some of Coronado's men that the first published descriptions of buffalo are given. How many buffaIoes there were at this time no one knows, and probably no one ever will know, but there must have been many, many millions. The buffalos range extended over about one-third of the entire continent of North America, from the inhospiable shores of the Great Silver Lake on the north to the scorching plains of north western Mexico on the south, and from line following closely but never touch l ing the Atlantic coast on the east, and across the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah and Idaho in the west. These boundaries, of course, marked the limits of it's range; it's centre of Sbunanee was the great plains region of | the west, where at certain times, nota- bly, in the breeding season, he animals gathered in countless thousands, dark ening the earth as far as the eye could reach when at rest, and when in motion | filling the air with dust and with the | thunder notes of heir galloping hoofs Even as lac as 1871 this animal was present in this country in numbers al most beyond belief.
 A faint idea of the vast hordes whict made the prairies tremble beneath theil tread at tha irne may be had from ar account given by Colonel R. I. Dodge his Plains of the Great West"
 Tn May, 1S71 he says, T drove in { light wagon from old Fort Zara to For Larned, on the Arkansas, thirty-foul miles. At least twenty-five miles oi this distance was through an immense herd, composed of countless smaller herds of buffalo then on their journey north. The road ran along the broad level bottom, or valley, of the river.
 "The whole country appeared ont great mass of buffalo, moving slowly tt the northward; and it was only wher actually among them that 1t cqould b' ascertained that the apparently soliC
 mass was an agglomeration of innu Imerable small herds of from fifty t
 two hundred animals, separated iron
 the surrounding herds by greater 0 less space, but still separated"
 It is conservatively estimated tha
 Colonel Dodge saw at least five hun
 dred thousand buffaIoes, and these wer
 about a fraction of a great herd of a least four million, an army greater i
 number than all the men, women an
 children of Greater New York put to
 gether. The Indians of some of tn
 tribes used to think that the buffaloe
 issued from the earth in an unfailinl stream, and, indeed, it might readil
 seem difficult to account for such mum bers in any other way. Is it any won der that many men believed that
 was quite impossible to exterminate tn bison? Yet in the short space of a dog
 en years from the date on which Colo mel Dodge passed through that herd (
 four million the buffalo has ceased exist as a wild animal in this countr! This buffalo was gregarious in if : habits and at certain seasons the herd were larger and more compact than a others. Especially was this true of til breeding season, which came chiefly i July and August Then vast horde
 gathered on the plains, which were tn scenes of the greatest activity for sev
 eral weeks, during which the roarin of the bulls was continuous and coul be heard for miles. There was als much fighting among the bulls. Afte } the breeding season the herds becam less densely massed. The compac herds dissolved Into groups of froT ' twenty to a hundred or two, and tn
 usual peaceful life was resumed. sl There is na doubt that buffaloes Weg