I have elsewhere[AB] drawn attention to the fact, that according to a passage of the trustworthy Gomara[AC], there lived, as late as the sixteenth century, an Indian tribe in the north-west of Mexico, in 40° north lat., whose greatest wealth consisted in hordes of tamed buffaloes (_bueyes con una giba_). Yet, notwithstanding the possibility of taming the buffalo, and the abundance of milk it yields, and notwithstanding the herds of Lamas in the Peruvian Cordilleras, no pastoral tribes were met with on the discovery of America. Nor does history afford any evidence of the existence, at any period, of this intermediate stage of national development. It is also a remarkable fact that the North American bison or buffalo has exerted an influence on geographical discoveries in pathless mountain districts. These animals advance in herds of many thousands in search of a milder climate, during winter, in the countries south of the Arkansas river. Their size and cumbrous forms render it difficult for them to cross high mountains on these migratory courses, and a well-trodden buffalo-path is therefore followed wherever it is met with, as it invariably indicates the most convenient passage across the mountains. Thus buffalo-paths have indicated the best tracks for passing over the Cumberland Mountains in the south-western parts of Virginia and Kentucky, and over the Rocky Mountains, between the sources of the Yellowstone and Plate rivers, and between the southern branch of the Columbia and the Californian Rio Colorado. European settlements have gradually driven the buffalo from the eastern portions of the United States. Formerly these migratory animals passed the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, advancing far beyond Pittsburgh.[AD]