relative position to the complete mass. It appears also that in this annual oscillation with the seasons it gradually retired from the extreme southern limit and encroached beyond its northern limit, till the position at the north mentioned was arrived at. This is indicated by the statement of an Amerind of the Athabasca country, who in explaining his age to Mackenzie, said that "he remembered the opposite hills and plains now interspersed with groves of poplars, when they were covered with moss, and without any animal inhabitant but the reindeer. By degrees, he said, the face of the country changed to its present appearance, when the elk came from the east and was followed by the buffalo; the reindeer then retired to ... a considerable distance."[5] It is therefore quite probable that, had not the European arrived to interfere, the buffalo eventually would have gone farther north and would have spread over Alaska. It was perfectly at home in the cold northland so long as the summers permitted grass and herbage to mature. The Saskatchewan country was full of them all winter, though they were forced to paw away the snow to reach the grass. The range east and west was also extensive, though this was not the direction of its annual movement. Its eastern limit was the extent of the Mississippi valley north of the Tennessee; and possibly as far as Lake Champlain. While seemingly not as numerous in this eastern part of its range as farther west, yet there were large numbers, and the hunters of the early days of European settlement often killed them. Albert Gallatin states that while in western Virginia in 1784 he subsisted chiefly on buffalo meat. The city of Buffalo takes its name from this animal, which formerly fed on its site. That they were abundant in this eastern region long before Gallatin's time is established by the large quantities of their bones found around the salt licks of the Ohio valley. At Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, these accumulations are so great as to indicate, beyond question, a very remote date for the beginning of the range of the buffalo in this region. Beneath them the bones of the mastodon are discovered.[6] It is strange that no bison remains have thus far been found in the ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley; nor are there any images of them on Moundbuilder pipes. It is also strange that, despite the abundance of buffalo throughout the greater part of the West, pictures of it made by the natives should be so rare. The Sioux lived with and on the bison, yet they seldom drew it, while their robes are covered with drawings of horses and other animals.