Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/26

 .—The only evidence on record ot the occurrence of the bison in Oregon is the following, from Professor Allen's memoir (p. 119): "Respecting its former occurrence m eastern Oregon, Prof. O. C. Marsh, under date of New Haven, February 7, 1875, writes me as follows: 'The most western point at which I have myself observed remains of the buffalo was in 1873 on Willow Creek, eastern Oregon, among the foot hills on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains. This is about latitude 44°. The bones were perfectly characteristic, although nearly decomposed.'"

The remains must have been those of a solitary and very enterprising straggler.

(British).—At two or three points only did the buffloes of the British Possessions cross the Rocky Mountain barrier toward British Columbia. One was the pass through which the Canadian Pacific Railway now runs, 200 miles north of the international boundary. According to Dr. Richardson, the number of buffaloes which crossed the mountains at that point were sufficiently noticeable to constitute a feature of the fauna on the western side of the range. It is said that buffaloes also crossed by way of the Kootenai Pass, which is only a few miles north of the boundary line, but the number which did so must have been very small.

As might be expected from the character of the country, the favorite range of the bison in British America was the northern extension of the great pasture region lying between the Missouri River and Great Slave Lake. The most northerly occurrence of the bison is recorded as an observation of Franklin in 1820 at Slave Point, on the north side of Great Slave Lake. "A few frequent Slave Point, on the north side of the lake, but this is the most northern situation in which they were observed by Captain Franklin's party."

Dr. Richardson defined the eastern boundary of the bison's range in British America as follows: "They do not frequent any of the districts formed of primitive rocks, and the limits of their range to the eastward, within the Hudson's Bay Company's territories, may be correctly marked on the map by a line commencing in longitude 97°, on the Red River, which flows into the south end of Lake Winnipeg, crossing the Saskatchewan to the westward of the Basqnian Hill, and running thence by the AthapescowAthabasca [sic] to the east end of Great Slave Lake. Their migrations westward were formerly limited to the Rocky Mountain range, and they are still unknown in New Caledonia and on the shores of the Pacific to the north of the Columbia River; but of late years they have found out a passage across the mountains near the sources of the Saskatchewan, and their numbers to the westward are annually increasing.

Great Slave Lake.—That the buffalo inhabited the southern shore of this lake as late as 1871 is well established by the following letter from