to the depth
of a rider's stirrup or the hub of a wagon-wheel. At fording-places on
the Qu'Appelle and Saskatchewan in Canada, and on the Upper Missouri,
Yellowstone, and Arkansas in the Western States, carcasses of buffalo
have been found where the stampeding herd trampled the weak under foot,
virtually building a bridge of the dead over which the vast host rushed.

Then there were "the fairy rings," ruts like the water trail, only
running in a perfect circle, with the hoofprints of countless multitudes
in and outside the ring. Two explanations were given of these. When the
calves were yet little, and the wild animals ravenous with spring
hunger, the bucks and old leaders formed a cordon round the mothers and
their young. The late Colonel Bedson of Stony Mountain, Manitoba, who
had the finest private collection of buffalo in America until his death
ten years ago, when the herd was shipped to Texas, observed another
occasion when the buffalo formed a circle. Of an ordinary winter storm
the herd took small notice except to turn backs to the wind; but if to a
howling blizzard were added a biting north wind, with the thermometer
forty degrees below zero, the buffalo lay down in a crescent as a
wind-break to the young. Besides the "fairy rings" and the
fording-places, evidences of the buffaloes' numbers are found at the
salt-licks, alkali depressions on the prairie, soggy as paste in spring,
dried hard as rock in midsummer and retaining footprints like a plaster
cast; while at the wallows, where the buffalo have been taking mud-baths
as a refuge from vermin and summer heat, the ground is scarred and
ploughed as if for ramparts.

The comparison of the buffalo herds to the northland caribou has
become almost commonplace; but it is the sheerest nonsense. From
Hearne, two hundred years ago, to Mr. Tyrrel or Mr. Whitney in the
Barren Lands in 1894-'96, no mention is ever made of a caribou herd
exceeding ten thousand. Few herds of one thousand have ever been seen.

What are the facts regarding the buffalo?

In the thirties, when the American Fur Company was in the heyday of its
power, there were sent from St. Louis alone in a single year one hundred
thousand robes. The company bought only the perfect robes. The hunter
usually kept an ample supply for his own needs; so that for every robe
bought by the company, three times as many were taken from the plains.
St. Louis was only one port of shipment. Equal quantities of robes wer