approximation, based on existing records.  In the preparation of this map I have drawn liberally from Mr. J. A. Allen’s admirable monograph of “The American Bison,” in which the author has brought together, with great labor and invariable accuracy, a vast amount of historical data bearing upon this subject.  In this connection I take great pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Professor Allen’s work.

While it is inexpedient to include here all the facts that might be recorded with reference to the discovery, existence, and ultimate extinction of the bison in the various portions of its former habitat, it is yet worth while to sketch briefly the extreme limits of its range.  In doing this, our starting point will be the Atlantic slope east of the Alleghanies, and the reader will do well to refer to the large map.

District of Columbia.—­There is no indisputable evidence that the bison ever inhabited this precise locality, but it is probable that it did.  In 1612 Captain Argoll sailed up the “Pembrook River” to the head of navigation (Mr. Allen believes this was the James River, and not the Potomac) and marched inland a few miles, where he discovered buffaloes, some of which were killed by his Indian guides.  If this river was the Potomac, and most authorities believe that it was, the buffaloes seen by Captain Argoll might easily have been in what is now the District of Columbia.

Admitting the existence of a reasonable doubt as to the identity of the Pembrook River of Captain Argoll, there is yet another bit of history which fairly establishes the fact that in the early part of the seventeenth century buffaloes inhabited the banks of the Potomac between this city and the lower falls.  In 1624 an English fur trader named Henry Fleet came hither to trade with the Anacostian Indians, who then inhabited the present site of the city of Washington, and with the tribes of the Upper Potomac.  In his journal (discovered a few years since in the Lambeth Library, London) Fleet gave a quaint description of the city’s site as it then appeared.  The following is from the explorer’s journal: 

“Monday, the 25th June, we set sail for the town of Tohoga, where we came to an anchor 2 leagues short of the falls. * * * This place, without question, is the most pleasant and healthful place in all this country, and most convenient for habitation, the air temperate in summer and not violent in winter.  It aboundeth with all manner of fish.  The Indians in one night commonly will catch thirty sturgeons in a place where the river is not above 12 fathoms broad, and as for deer, buffaloes, bears, turkeys, the woods do swarm with them. * * * The 27th of June I manned my shallop and went up with the flood, the tide rising about 4 feet at this place.  We had not rowed above 3 miles, but we might hear the falls to roar about 6 miles distant."[7]

[Note 7:  Charles Burr Todd’s “Story of Washington,” p. 18.  New York, 1889.]