e-heads, kettles and bull-boats and
saddles, roof and rug and curtain wall for the hunting lodge, and, most
important of all, food that could be kept in any climate for any length
of time and combined the lightest weight with the greatest
nourishment--all these were supplied by the buffalo.

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Saskatchewan and from the Alleghanies to
the Rockies the buffalo was to the hunter what wheat is to the farmer.
Moose and antelope and deer were plentiful in the limited area of a
favoured habitat. Provided with water and grass the buffalo could thrive
in any latitude south of the sixties, with a preference for the open
ground of the great central plains except when storms and heat drove the
herds to the shelter of woods and valleys.

Besides, in that keen struggle for existence which goes on in the animal
world, the buffalo had strength to defy all enemies. Of all the
creatures that prey, only the full-grown grisly was a match against the
buffalo; and according to old hunting legends, even the grisly held back
from attacking a beast in the prime of its power and sneaked in the wake
of the roving herds, like the coyotes and timber-wolves, for the chance
of hamstringing a calf, or breaking a young cow's neck, or tackling some
poor old king worsted in battle and deposed from the leadership of the
herd, or snapping up some lost buffalo staggering blind on the trail of
a prairie fire. The buffalo, like the range cattle, had a quality that
made for the persistence of the species. When attacked by a beast of
prey, they would line up for defence, charge upon the assailant, and
trample life out. Adaptability to environment, strength excelling all
foes, wonderful sagacity against attack--these were factors that partly
explained the vastness of the buffalo herds once roaming this continent.

Proofs enough remain to show that the size of the herds simply could not
be exaggerated. In two great areas their multitude exceeded anything in
the known world. These were: (1) between the Arkansas and the Missouri,
fenced in, as it were, by the Mississippi and the Rockies; (2) between
the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, bounded by the Rockies on the west
and on the east, that depression where lie Lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba, and
Winnipegoosis. In both regions the prairie is scarred by trails where
the buffalo have marched single file to their watering-places--trails
trampled by such a multitude of hoofs that the groove sinks