with the buffalo. In 1602 the Franciscan monks who discovered Nuevo Leon
encountered in the neighborhood of Monterey numerous herds of these
quadrupeds. They were also distributed in Nouvelle Biscaye (States of
Chihuahua and Durango), and they sometimes advanced to the extreme south
of that country. In the eighteenth century they concentrated more and
more toward the north, but still remained very abundant in the
neighborhood of the province of Bexar. At the commencement of the
nineteenth century we see them recede gradually in the interior of the
country to such an extent that they became day by day scarcer and
scarcer about the settlements. Now, it is not in their periodical
migrations that we meet them near Bexar. Every year in the spring, in
April or May, they advance toward the north, to return again to the
southern regions in September and October. The exact limits of these
annual migrations are unknown; it is, however, probable that in the
north they never go beyond the banks of the Rio Bravo, at least in the
States of Cohahuila and Texas. Toward the north, not being checked by
the currents of the Missouri, they progress even as far as Michigan, and
they are found in summer in the Territories and interior States of the
United States of North America. The route which these animals follow in
their migrations occupies a width of several miles, and becomes so
marked that, besides the verdure destroyed, one would believe that the
fields had been covered with manure.

"These migrations are not general, for certain bands do not seem to
follow the general mass of their kin, but remain stationary throughout
the whole year on the prairies covered with a rich vegetation on the
banks of the Rio de Guadelupe and the Rio Colorado of Texas, not far
from the shores of the Gulf, to the east of the colony of San Felipe,
precisely at the same spot where La Salle and his traveling companions
saw them two hundred years before. The Rev. Father Damian Mansanet saw