Kansas is as large as Great Britain, larger than the whole of New England combined, and a veritable empire in itself.  It is a State of magnificent proportions, and of the most unique and delightful history.  Three and a half centuries ago, Coronado, the great pioneer prospector and adventurer, hunted Kansas from end to end in search of the precious metals which he had been told could be found there in abundance.  He wandered over the immense stretch of prairies and searched along the creek bottoms without finding what he sought.  He speaks in his records of “mighty plains and sandy heaths, smooth and wearisome and bare of wood.  All the way the plains are as full of crooked-back oxen as the mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep.”

These crooked-back oxen were of course buffaloes, or, more correctly speaking, species of the American bison.  No other continent was ever blessed with a more magnificent and varied selection of beasts and birds in forests and prairies than was North America.  Kansas in particular was fortunate in the possession of thousands of herds of buffaloes.  Now it has none, except a few in a domesticated state, with their old regal glory departed forever.  When we read the reports of travelers and trappers, written little more than half a century ago, and treating of the enormous buffalo herds that covered the prairies as far as the eye could reach, we wonder whether these descriptions can be real, or whether they are not more in the line of fables and the outgrowth of a too vivid imagination.

If, thirty years ago, some wiseacre had come forward and predicted that it would become necessary to devise means for the protection of this enormous amount of game, he would have been laughed out of countenance.  Yet this extraordinary condition of affairs has actually come to pass.  Entire species of animals which belonged to the magnificent fauna of North America are already extinct or are rapidly becoming so.  The sea-cow is one of these animals; the last specimens of which were seen in 1767 and 1768.  The Californian sea-elephant and the sea-dog of the West Indies have shared a like fate.  Not a trace of these animals has been found for a long time.  The extinction of the Labrador duck and the great auk have often been deplored.  Both of these birds may be regarded as practically extinct.  The last skeleton of the great auk was sold for $600, the last skin for $650, and the last egg brought the fabulous sum of $1,500.

Last, not least, the American bison is a thing of the past!

It has been historically proven that at the time of the discovery of America, the buffalo herds covered the entire enormous territory from Pennsylvania to Oregon and Nevada, and down to Mexico, and thirty years ago the large emigrant caravans which traveled from the Eastern States across the Mississippi to the gold fields of California, met with herds of buffaloes, not numbering thousands, but hundreds of thousands.  The construction trains of the first Pacific Railroad were frequently interrupted and delayed by wandering buffalo herds.