Essex County Herald

Desperation of the Buffalo.

A curious fact illustrating the habits of those monarchs of the plains, the buffalo, is cited by an author, and is a leaf from the unwritten history of the buffalo taken from the era when the Pacific railways first spanned the continent. The winter of 1871-2 was unusually severe in Arkansas. The ponds and the smaller streams to the north were all frozen solid, and the buffalo were forced to the rivers for water. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad was then in process of construction, and nowhere could the peculiarity of the buffalo be better studied than from its trains. If a herd was on the north side of the track it would stand stupidly gazing and without symptom of alarm though the locomotive passed within a hundred yards. If on the south side of the track, even though at a distance of one or two miles from it, the passage of a train set the whole herd in the wildest commotion. At its full speed, and utterly regardless of consequences, it would make for the track on its line of retreat. If the train happened not to be in its path it crossed the track, and stopped satisfied. If the train was in the way each individual buffalo went at it with the desperation of despair, plunging against or between locomotive and car, just as the blind madness chanced to take them. Numbers were killed, but numbers still pressed on to stop and stare as soon as the obstacle was passed. After having trains ditched twice in one week, conductors learned to have a very decided respect for the idiosyncrasies of the buffalo, and when there was a possibility of striking a herd "on the rampage" for the north side of the track, the train was slowed up and sometimes stopped entirely.