Page 23 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE PART I. EXTERMINATION
CHAPTER I
THE FORMER ABUNDANCE OF WILD LIFE
"Bymylaborsmyvineyardflourished. ButAhabcame. Alas!forNahotli."
In order that the American people may correctly understand and judge the question of the extinction or preservation of our wild life, it is necessary to recall the near past. It is not necessary, however, to go far into the details of history; for a few quick glances at a few high points will be quite sufficient for the purpose in view.
Any man who reads the books which best tell the story of the development of the American colonies of 1712 into the American nation of 1912, and takes due note of the wild-life features of the tale, will say without hesitation that when the American people received this land from the bountiful hand of Nature, it was endowed with a magnificent and all-pervading supply of valuable wild creatures. The pioneers and the early settlers were too busy even to take due note of that fact, or to comment upon it, save in very fragmentary ways.
Nevertheless, the wild-life abundance of early American days survived down to so late a period that it touched the lives of millions of peoplenowliving. Anyman55yearsofagewhowhenaboyhadataste for "hunting,"—for at that time there were no "sportsmen" in America, —will remember the flocks and herds of wild creatures that he saw. and which made upon his mind many indelible impressions.
"Abundance" is the word with which to describe the original animal life that stocked our country, and all North America, only a short half- century ago. Throughout every state, on every shore-line, in all the millions of fresh water lakes, ponds and rivers, on every mountain range, in every forest, and even on every desert, the wild flocks and herds held sway. It was impossible to go beyond the settled haunts of civilized man and escape them.
It was a full century after the complete settlement of New England and the Virginia colonies that the wonderful big-game fauna of the great plains and Rocky Mountains was really discovered; but the bison