Like the dry rivers we
passed before, this seemed to have discharged its waters recently, but
the watermark indicated that its greatest depth had not been more than
two feet. This stream, if it deserve the name, we called Bigdry (Big
Dry) River."
And Big Dry it remains on the maps unto this day. In this region the
party recorded this observation:--
"The game is now in great quantities, particularly the elk and buffalo,
which last is so gentle that the men are obliged to drive them out
of the way with sticks and stones. The ravages of the beaver are very
apparent; in one place the timber was entirely prostrated for a space of
three acres in front on the river and one in depth, and great part of it
removed, though the trees were in large quantities, and some of them as
thick as the body of a man."
Yet so great have been the ravages of man among these gentle creatures,
that elk are now very rarely found in the region, and the buffalo have
almost utterly disappeared from the face of the earth. Just after
the opening of the Northern Pacific Railway, in 1883, a band of sixty
buffaloes were heard of, far to the southward of Bismarck, and a party
was organized to hunt them. The _bold_ hunters afterwards boasted that
they killed every one of this little band of survivors of their race.
The men were now (in the middle of May) greatly troubled with boils,
abscesses, and inflamed eyes, caused by the poison of the alkali that
covered much of the ground and corrupted the water.
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