“I have wasted much time and a great deal of wind in vain endeavors to add one of these animals to my bag.  My figure is no longer adapted to mountain climbing, and the possession of a bison’s head of my own killing is one of my blighted hopes.

“Several of my friends have been more fortunate, but I know of no sportsman who has bagged more than one.[35]

[Note 35:  Foot-note by William Blackmore:  “The author is in error here, as in a point of the Tarryall range of mountains, between Pike’s Peak and the South Park, in the autumn of 1871, two mountain buffaloes were killed in one afternoon.  The skin of the finer was presented to Dr. Frank Buckland.”]

“Old mountaineers and trappers have given me wonderful accounts of the number of these animals in all the mountain region ‘many years ago;’ and I have been informed by them, that their present rarity is due to the great snow-storm of 1844-’45, of which I have already spoken as destroying the plains buffalo in the Laramie country.

“One of my friends, a most ardent and pertinacious sportsman, determined on the possession of a bison’s head, and, hiring a guide, plunged into the mountain wilds which separate the Middle from South Park.  After several days fresh tracks were discovered.  Turning their horses loose on a little gorge park, such as described, they started on foot on the trail; for all that day they toiled and scrambled with the utmost caution—­now up, now down, through deep and narrow gorges and pine thickets, over bare and rocky crags, sleeping where night overtook them.  Betimes next morning they pushed on the trail, and about 11 o’clock, when both were exhausted and well-nigh disheartened, their route was intercepted by a precipice.  Looking over, they descried, on a projecting ledge several hundred feet below, a herd of about 20 bisons lying down.  The ledge was about 300 feet at widest, by probably 1,000 feet long.  Its inner boundary was the wall of rock on the top of which they stood; its outer appeared to be a sheer precipice of at least 200 feet.  This ledge was connected with the slope of the mountain by a narrow neck.  The wind being right, the hunters succeeded in reaching this neck unobserved.  My friend selected a magnificent head, that of a fine bull, young but full grown, and both fired.  At the report the bisons all ran to the far end of the ledge and plunged over.

“Terribly disappointed, the hunters ran to the spot, and found that they had gone down a declivity, not actually a precipice, but so steep that the hunters could not follow them.

“At the foot lay a bison.  A long, a fatiguing detour brought them to the spot, and in the animal lying dead before him my friend recognized his bull—­his first and last mountain buffalo.  Hone but a true sportsman can appreciate his feelings.

“The remainder of the herd was never seen after the great plunge, down which it is doubtful if even a dog could have followed unharmed.”