Note (return) — Chapter X

Croghan was at Letart (1765), on one of his land-viewing trips for the Ohio Company, and tells us that he saw a "vast migrating herd" of buffalo cross the river here. In the beginning of colonization in this valley, buffalo and elk were to be seen in herds of astonishing size; traces of their well-beaten paths through the hills, and toward the salt licks of Kentucky and Illinois, were observable until within recent years. Gordon, an early traveler down the Ohio (1766), speaks of "great herds of buffalo, we observed on the beaches of the river and islands into which they come for air, and coolness in the heat of the day;" he commenced his raids on them a hundred miles below Pittsburg. Hutchins (1778) says, "the whole country abounds in Bears, Elks, Buffaloe, Deer, Turkies, &c."B Bears, panthers, wolves, eagles, and wild turkeys were indeed very plenty at first, but soon became extinct. The theory is advanced by Dr. Doddridge, in his Notes on Virginia, that hunters' dogs introduced hydrophobia among the wolves, and this ridded the country of them sooner than they would naturally have gone; but they were still so numerous in 1817, that the traveler Palmer heard them nightly, "barking on both banks."