traveler, who went through Kansas at about the
same time, says that he counted, on four acres of ground, no less than
sixty-seven buffalo carcasses. As was to be expected, this wholesale
and, indeed, wanton slaughter brought its own reward and condemnation.
The price of buffalo skins dropped to 50 cents, although as much as
$3.00 had been paid regularly for them. Moreover, as the number of
animals killed was greater than could be removed, the decaying carcasses
attracted wolves, and even worse foes, to the farmyard, and terrible
damage to cattle resulted.

The Indians also were disturbed. "Poor Lo" complained of the wanton and
senseless killing of the principal means of his sustenance, and when the
white man with a laugh ignored these complaints, the Indians got on the
war-path, attacked settlements, killed cattle and stole provisions, thus
giving rise to conflicts, which devoured not only enormous sums of
money, but cost the lives of thousands of people. When the locust plague
swept over the fields of Kansas and destroyed the entire crop, the
settlers themselves hungered for the buffalo meat of which they had
robbed themselves, and vengeance came in more ways than one.

The extermination of the buffalo of the southern range was completed
about 1875; to the bisons of the northern range were given a few years'
grace. But the same scenes which were enacted in the South, repeated
themselves in the North, and the white barbarians were not satisfied
until they had killed the last of the noble game in 1885. When the
massacre was nearly over, a few isolated herds were collected and
transported to Yellowstone Park, where they have increased to about 400
during the last few years, protected by the hunting laws, which are
strictly enforced. With the exception of a very few specimens, tenderly
nursed by some cattle raisers in Kansas and Texas, and in some remote
parts of British America, these are the last animals of a species, which
two decades ago wandered in millions over the vast prairies of the West.

CHAPTER V.

THE MORMONS AND THEIR WIVES.

The Pilgrimage Across the Bad Lands to Utah--Incidents of the
March--Success of the New Colony--Religious Persecutions--Murder of an
Entire Family--The Curse of Polygamy--An Ideal City--Humors of Bathing
in Great Salt Lake.

About half a century ago one of the most remarkable pilgrimages of
modern times took place. Across what was then, not inaptly, described by
writer