Twenty years hence, when not even a bone or a buffalo-chip remains above
ground throughout the West to mark the presence of the buffalo, it may
be difficult for people to believe that these animals ever existed in
such numbers as to constitute not only a serious annoyance, but very
often a dangerous menace to wagon travel across the plains, and also to
stop railway trains, and even throw them off the track. The like has
probably never occurred before in any country, and most assuredly never
will again, if the present rate of large game destruction all over the
world can be taken as a foreshadowing of the future. In this connection
the following additional testimony from Colonel Dodge ("Plains of the
Great West," p. 121) is of interest:

"The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad was then [in 1871-'72] in
process of construction, and nowhere could the peculiarity of the
buffalo of which I am speaking be better studied than from its trains.
If a herd was on the north side of the track, it would stand stupidly
gazing, and without a symptom of alarm, although the locomotive passed
within a hundred yards. If on the south side of the track, even though
at a distance of 1 or 2 miles from it, the passage of a train set the
whole herd in the wildest commotion. At full speed, and utterly
regardless of the consequences, it would make for the track on its line
of retreat. If the train happened not to be in its path, it crossed the
track and stopped satisfied. If the train was in its way, each
individual buffalo went at it with the desperation of despair, plunging
against or between locomotive and cars, just as its blind madness
chanced to direct it. Numbers were killed, but numbers still pressed on,
to stop and stare as soon as the obstacle had passed. After having
trains thrown off the track twice in one week, conductors learned to
have a very decided respect for the idiosyncrasies of the buffalo, and