seventeenth century buffaloes inhabited the banks of the Potomac between
this city and the lower falls. In 1624 an English fur trader named Henry
Fleet came hither to trade with the Anacostian Indians, who then
inhabited the present site of the city of Washington, and with the
tribes of the Upper Potomac. In his journal (discovered a few years
since in the Lambeth Library, London) Fleet gave a quaint description of
the city's site as it then appeared. The following is from the
explorer's journal:

"Monday, the 25th June, we set sail for the town of Tohoga, where we
came to an anchor 2 leagues short of the falls. * * * This place,
without question, is the most pleasant and healthful place in all this
country, and most convenient for habitation, the air temperate in summer
and not violent in winter. It aboundeth with all manner of fish. The
Indians in one night commonly will catch thirty sturgeons in a place
where the river is not above 12 fathoms broad, and as for deer,
buffaloes, bears, turkeys, the woods do swarm with them. * * * The 27th
of June I manned my shallop and went up with the flood, the tide rising
about 4 feet at this place. We had not rowed above 3 miles, but we might
hear the falls to roar about 6 miles distant."[7]

[Note 7: Charles Burr Todd's "Story of Washington," p. 18. New York,
1889.]

MARYLAND.--There is no evidence that the bison ever inhabited Maryland,
except what has already been adduced with reference to the District of
Columbia. If either of the references quoted may be taken as conclusive
proof, and I see no reason for disputing either, then the fact that the
bison once ranged northward from Virginia into Maryland is fairly
established. There is reason to expect that fossil remains of _Bison