765), on one of his land-viewing trips for
the Ohio Company, and tells us that he saw a "vast migrating herd" of
buffalo cross the river here. In the beginning of colonization in this
valley, buffalo and elk were to be seen in herds of astonishing size;
traces of their well-beaten paths through the hills, and toward the
salt licks of Kentucky and Illinois, were observable until within
recent years. Gordon, an early traveler down the Ohio (1766), speaks
of "great herds of buffalo, we observed on the beaches of the river
and islands into which they come for air, and coolness in the heat
of the day;" he commenced his raids on them a hundred miles below
Pittsburg. Hutchins (1778) says, "the whole country abounds in Bears,
Elks, Buffaloe, Deer, Turkies, &c."[B] Bears, panthers, wolves,
eagles, and wild turkeys were indeed very plenty at first, but soon
became extinct. The theory is advanced by Dr. Doddridge, in his _Notes
on Virginia_, that hunters' dogs introduced hydrophobia among the
wolves, and this ridded the country of them sooner than they would
naturally have gone; but they were still so numerous in 1817, that the
traveler Palmer heard them nightly, "barking on both banks."

Venomous serpents were also numerous in pioneer days, and stayed
longer. The story is told of a tumulus up toward Moundsville, that
abounded in snakes, particularly rattlers. The settlers thought to dig
them out, but they came to such a mass of human bones that that
plan was abandoned. Then they instituted a blockade, by erecting a
tight-board fence around the mound, and, thus entrapping the reptiles,
extirpated the colony in a few days.

Paroquets were once abundant west of the Alleghanies, up to the
southern shore of the Great Lakes, and great flocks haunted the salt
springs; but to-day they may be found only in the middle Southern
states. There were, in a state of nature, no crows, blackbirds, or
song-birds in this valley; they followed in the wake of the colonist.
The honey bee came with the white man,--or rather, just preceded him.
Rats followed the first settlers, then opossums, and fox squirrels
still later. It is thought, too, that the sand-hill and whooping
cranes, and the great blue herons which we daily see in their stately
flight, are birds of these later days, when the neighborhood of man
has frightened away the enemies which once kept them from thriving
in the valley. Turkey buzzards appear to remain alone of the ancient
birds; th