Bed-fellows, is the most agreeable. We had lived upon Venison and Bear
till our stomachs loath'd them almost as much as the Hebrews of old did
their Quails. Our Butchers were so unhandy at their Business that we
grew very lank before we cou'd get our Dinner. But when it came, we
found it equal in goodness to the best Beef. They made it the longer
because they kept Sucking the Water out of the Guts in imitation of the
Catauba Indians, upon the belief that it is a great Cordial, and will
even make them drunk, or at least very Gay."

A little later a solitary bull buffalo was found, _but spared_,[6] the
earliest instance of the kind on record, and which had few successors to
keep it company.

[Note 6: _Ib._, p. 28.]




II. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.


The range of the American bison extended over about one-third of the
entire continent of North America. Starting almost at tide-water on the
Atlantic coast, it extended westward through a vast tract of dense
forest, across the Alleghany Mountain system to the prairies along the
Mississippi, and southward to the Delta of that great stream. Although
the great plains country of the West was the natural home of the
species, where it flourished most abundantly, it also wandered south
across Texas to the burning plains of northeastern Mexico, westward
across the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, and