The Extermination of the American Bison by William Temple Hornaday
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page 17 of 332 (05%)
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americanus_ will yet be found both in Maryland and the District of
Columbia, and I venture to predict that this will yet occur. VIRGINIA.--Of the numerous references to the occurrence of the bison in Virginia, it is sufficient to allude to Col. William Byrd's meetings with buffaloes in 1620, while surveying the southern boundary of the State, about 155 miles from the coast, as already quoted; the references to the discovery of buffaloes on the eastern side of the Virginia mountains, quoted by Mr. Allen from Salmon's "Present State of Virginia," page 14 (London, 1737), and the capture _and domestication_ of buffaloes in 1701 by the Huguenot settlers at Manikintown, which was situated on the James River, about 14 miles above Richmond. Apparently, buffaloes were more numerous in Virginia than in any other of the Atlantic States. NORTH CAROLINA.--Colonel Byrd's discoveries along the interstate boundary between Virginia and North Carolina fixes the presence of the bison in the northern part of the latter State at the date of the survey. The following letter to Prof. G. Brown Goode, dated Birdsnest post-office, Va., August 6, 1888, from Mr. C. R. Moore, furnishes reliable evidence of the presence of the buffalo at another point in North Carolina: "In the winter of 1857 I was staying for the night at the house of an old gentleman named Houston. I should judge he was seventy then. He lived near Buffalo Ford, on the Catawba River, about 4 miles from Statesville, N. C. I asked him how the ford got its name. He told me that his grandfather told him that when he was a boy the buffalo crossed there, and that when the rocks in the river were bare they would eat the moss that grew upon them." The point indicated is in longitude 81° west and the date not far from 1750. |
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