Bismuth

“ It is rich in minerals, including silver, copper, mercury, bismuth, molybdenum, lead and coal. The Huallaga and Mantaro rivers have their sources in this department, the latter in Lake Junin, or Chanchaycocha, 13,230 ft. above sea-level. ”

“ The people have lost the sacred hoop, the good red road, the flowering tree. We young men heard the others talk about Wasichus killing bison along Shell River where the iron road had cut the herd in two; and beyond that, farther towards where you are always facing [south] , the land stank with bison rotting. I heard them say Wasichus killed the bison for their tongues, so many that no man could ever count them. Our old men remembered Wooden Cup and what he saw and said before our grandfathers were born. But I was young. Sometime we would get together and kill all the Wasichus. ”

“ The largest and most untamable of the hollow-horns is that cousin of our patient, useful ox, the bison, or buffalo, [92] an animal rapidly becoming extinct through cruel and wanton slaughter. While few of us have seen the bison himself, his shaggy pelt is well known in the buffalo robes of our sleighs and carriages, and in the heavy overcoats made for northern travel. Next to the elephant and the rhinoceros, the bison is the largest of land-mammals.
If we lived in Arabia instead of America, we should set beside the sheep, as the special ally of men, the camel. ”

“ The only other division of the family which is represented in North America is that of the bisons, of which the fast vanishing remnant of a single species [11] (Bison bison) is all that is left of what was once an extensive and varied assemblage. The bisons differ from the true oxen in the form and structure of the skull, in the shoulder-hump, which is produced by the very long spines of the dorsal vertebræ and in consequence of which the back slopes downward from the shoulders to the croup. ”

“ Like many other animals, wild and tame, they often liked to seek elevated points from which a wide view might be had, and I have found their tracks and other signs on points high up in the mountains, where only sheep or goats would be looked for. The mountain bison, so-called—and by many hunters regarded as a species quite distinct from the buffalo of the plains—was especially given to frequenting the peaks in summer; no doubt in part to avoid the attacks of flies, but also in part—as I believe—from sheer love of climbing. ”

“ The elephant, even the biggest of its race, does not inspire awe, for we are too familiar with the docile Behemoth. Our children ride upon its back and feed it with buns. The lion is superb in appearance and demeanour, but it has not the bulk to make it terrible, behind bars. Now the bison is both unfamiliar and huge, and short-tempered besides, “with bloodshot eyes in savage rifts of hair.” A snort from it when angry will blow your hat off, a butt from its head, if meant in earnest, would flatten a tiger.
What a sight it must have been to see that “masterful tramping of the bison herds” ”

“ When you come to hunt, there will be only one bison left, for the white crow will tell the others to run away. This one bison will be I, but do not fear to kill and butcher me, for you cannot hurt me. Do not take any meat for [Pg 175] yourselves—only enough for the little children who are crying. Then you will see.’
“So Falling Star asked for a bison robe, and this he tied about him. Then he began rolling on the ground and bellowing. All at once he was a big bison bull, and he galloped away to where the other bison were feeding, and the white crow was hopping around among them. ”

“ It is good! Our grandson, Falling Star, has come to visit us!’ And the head chief said, ‘We have no meat to give you, for we are all starving. There is a white crow that talks. He always flies ahead of the hunters and tells the bison to go away; and when the hunters come, no bison are there at all, and we are starving.’
“Then Falling Star said to the head men, ‘You must do what I say. Set up a tepee in the center of the hoop and make it tight without even a smoke flap; for nobody is going to live in this tepee. Make a little fire in there before you shut it tight. There are bison not far away. ”

“ The great elevation of the forequarters, the mass of long hair clothing the head, shoulders, and fore part of the body, together with the peculiar form of the head and horns, the latter of which are cylindrical, serve at once to distinguish the bison from the other members of the ox tribe. Some of the points distinguishing the American bison from its European cousin are that the mass of hair on the fore quarters is longer, the form of the skull is different, the horns are shorter, thicker, blunter, and more sharply curved. ”

“ The American bison, or buffalo, is a close relative of the larger bison which once inhabited Europe and survives in limited numbers in certain game preserves of Poland and the Caucasus. The size, dark shaggy coat, great head, and high arched shoulders of our bison give them a unique individuality among American big game. They once roamed in vast numbers over a broad territory, extending from Great Slave Lake, Canada, south to southern New Mexico, and from Pennsylvania and eastern Georgia to Arizona and northern Nevada. ”

“ Like the bull, he has the custom of pawing the ground with his feet; his hide is hard, his flesh is tender, and good. By these characters, which are all we can rely on from Aristotle, we see how near the bonasus approaches towards the bison. Every part, in fact, agrees, the shape of the horns excepted, but which, as we have already observed, greatly varies in animals, who are, [35] notwithstanding, of the same species. We have seen such crooked horns, taken from an hunched ox of Africa, and we shall hereafter prove, that this hunched ox is no other than the bison. ”

“ Head of young male Bison.
[Pg 40]
THE AUROCHS, OR EUROPEAN BISON. Bos Bison.
In this, as in the American species, the head is very broad, and the forehead arched; but the horns are longer, more curved, and end in a finer point than those of the American Bison. The eyes are large and dark; the hair on the forehead is long and wavy; under the chin and on the breast it forms a sort of beard. In winter, the whole of the neck, hump, and shoulders are covered with a long woolly hair of a dusky brown colour, intermingled with a short soft fur of a fawn colour. ”

“ Did she, then, while the seamen slept, steal the water from the cask to preserve the existence of those committed to her fostering charge, and far more precious to her, in her sight, than her own life? There can be no doubt she did so. She discovers that she is not observed. There is a small tin pannikin near her, and several pieces of biscuit. She crumbles the biscuit, as well as she can with her weak fingers, into the pannikin, and then pours upon them a few drops of the precious fluid. She looks at the water with longing eyes, but will not expend even one drop to cool her parched lips. ”

“ While the teeth of our cattle may have been picked up along the shores of Ashley River, it is highly probable that the great majority of similar teeth belonged to some extinct species of Bison. Probably only the discovery of horn-cores will lead to the determination of the species. Leidy probably used the name Bison latifrons in a very wide sense. In the collection at Amherst College the writer has seen an upper molar of a bison, apparently the second molar, which is 38 mm. long on the outer face. This length is too great for B. bison and the tooth probably belongs to B. latifrons. ”

“ The nose broad, with the nostrils at the side. The skull has no sub-orbital pit or fissure, and the bony orbit is prominent; grinders with a well-developed supplementary lobe; cannon bone short. In India, the groups into which this sub-family may be divided, are oxen, the buffaloes, and the yaks. There are no true bison in our limits, the commonly so-called bison being properly a wild ox. The taurine or Ox group is divided into the Zebus, or humped domestic cattle; Taurus, humpless cattle with cylindrical horns; and Gavæus, humpless cattle with flattened horns. ”

“ The other, or American bison, improperly termed buffalo (Bison americanus) , is found only in the region lying north and south between the Great Slave Lake and the Yellowstone River, and is rapidly becoming extinct in the wild state, though formerly to be met with in immense herds. The two species closely resemble each other, the American bison, however, being for the most part smaller, and with shorter and weaker hind-quarters. The bison is remarkable for the great hump or projection over its fore-shoulders, at which point the adult male is almost six feet in height ”

“ In various portions of the Rocky Mountains, especially in the region of the parks, is found an animal which old mountaineers call the ‘bison.’ This animal bears about the same relation to a plains buffalo as a sturdy mountain pony does to an American horse. His body is lighter, whilst his legs are shorter, but much thicker and stronger, than the plains animal, thus enabling him to perform feats of climbing and tumbling almost incredible in such a huge and apparently unwieldy beast. ”

“ It was worth a long journey to stand thus and watch that small band of bison, representatives of a race whose myriads once covered all America, for though less than two hundred in number, they were feeding and warring precisely as their ancestors had fed and warred for a million years. Small wonder that the red men believe the white invader must have used some evil medicine, some magic power in sweeping these majestic creatures from the earth. ”

“ When the Indians determine to destroy bisons, as they frequently do, by driving them over a precipice, one of their swiftest-footed and most active young men is selected, who is disguised in a bison skin, having the head, ears, and horns adjusted on his own head, so as to make the deception very complete; and, thus accoutred, he stations himself between the bison herd and some of the precipices that often extend for several miles along the rivers. The Indians surround the herd as nearly as possible, when, at a given signal, they show themselves, and rush forward with loud yells. ”

“ Bison.—This animal is found in herds in the prairies in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains: it is continually receding before the advance of man, and will soon be entirely banished to the far west. Schoolcraft says that the species is confined to the regions situated between the thirty-first and forty-ninth degrees of north latitude, and west of the Mississippi river. The only part of the country east of this river, where the bison now remains, is that included between the falls of St. Anthony and Sandy Lake, a range of about six hundred miles. ”

“ The railroad company has been glad to furnish them pasturage for the sake of adding to the attractions of the park, in which there are also forty-three head of deer, including two as fine bucks as ever trotted over the national deer trail toward the salt-licks in northern Utah.
“While the bison at Bismark Grove are splendid specimens of their class, “Cleveland” is decidedly the pride of the herd, and as grand a [Pg 462] creature as ever trod the soil of Kansas on four legs. He is just six years old and is a perfect specimen of the kings of the plains. ”

“ The only indigenous North American quadruped sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufficiently multiplied in numbers, to form really large herds, is the bison, or, as he is commonly called in America, the buffalo; and this animal is confined to the prairie region of the Mississippi basin, a small part of British America, and Northern Mexico. ”

“ For the first time in his life Bissy enjoyed the gratification of realising handsomely on his own native shrewdness. Grandfather, always preoccupied and unsuspecting, was content to laugh, to shrug his shoulders, and secretly to admire the elfish self-importance which had so much worldly foresight in it. He had the same clues to identification as the limb himself, but they lay unnoticed by him. Men and women always passed him by like shadows. ”

“ The buffalo is also a more fierce and daring animal. Our bison is as large as the largest ox, and roams in vast herds over the prairies of the west. Sometimes several thousand are seen in a flock, and as they proceed, fighting, lowing, leaping, and tearing the earth with their horns, the noise is terrific. The earth at such a time seems to tremble as if shaken by an earthquake. The bison is not now found east of the Mississippi, though it probably inhabited in former times, the whole country to the shores of the Atlantic. ”

“ So for several minutes I watched the great, clumsy, shaggy beasts, as they grazed in the open glade. Mixed with the eager excitement of the hunter was a certain half-melancholy feeling as I gazed on these bison, themselves part of the last remnant of a nearly vanished race. Few, indeed, are the men who now have, or evermore shall have, the chance of seeing the mightiest of American beasts in all his wild vigor. ”

“ The uses which are made of the various parts of the Bison are numerous. The hide, which is thick and rather porous, is converted by the Indians into mocassins for the winter; they also make their shields of it. When dressed with the hair on, it is made into clothing by the natives, and most excellent blankets by the European settlers; so valuable, indeed, is it esteemed, that three or four pounds sterling a piece are not unfrequently given for good ones in Canada, where they are used as travelling cloaks. ”

“ Southward appear, coming as it were from below the horizon, some dark specks, scattered widely from east to west, and moving slowly. On they come, each instant increasing in numbers, till they form one dark line. They are animals with huge heads and dark shaggy manes, browsing as they advance, clearing the herbage before them. They are a herd of bison, known by the wild hunters of the west as buffaloes—countless apparently in numbers—powerful and ferocious in appearance, with their short thick horns and long heads. ”