lake, but this is the most northern situation in which they were
observed by Captain Franklin's party."[17]

[Note 17: Sabine, Zoological Appendix to "Franklin's Journey," p. 668.]

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 Basquian Hill, and running
thence by the Athapescow 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.[18]

[Note 18: Fauna Boreali-Americana, vol. 1, p, 279-280.]

_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 Mr. E. W. Nelson to Mr. J. A. Allen, under date of July 11,
1877:[19] "I have met here [St. Michaels, Alaska] two gentlemen who
crossed the mountains from British Columbia and came to Fort Yukon
through British America, from whom I have derived some information about
the buffalo (_Bison americanus_) which will be of interest to you. These
gentlemen descended the Peace River, and on about the one hundred and