Surrounded on three sides by beautiful ridges of the famous Pine Ridge hills, on the north side by a magnificent range of cliffs, known to the Sioux Indians as "Dancing Buttes," and on the west and south sides lie a succession of towering peaks, relieved by beautiful undulating swells and receding knobs. These are covered by superb growth of stately pines and nutritious grasses, on which, in times past, the buffalo, deer, elk and other game fed undisturbed, except by the wily Indian, who claimed an ownership in them.

In 1881-1882 the slaughter of the buffalo reached its highwater mark in northwestern Nebraska. Buffalo hunting it was called by courtesy, but the pursuit as then practiced possessed none of the features or attributes of the sport known as hunting. The Indians hunted the buffalo and so did those whites who shot and killed for the trophies of the chase ; but the cowardly and inhumane work that exterminated the monarch of the prairies was in no sense "hunting," though for lack of a more appropriate title the men who helped to do it were called buffalo hunters. That winter, we are told, the very deep snow made it almost impossible for herds to move, and fully twohundred and fifty thousand of these noble, harmless beasts were mercilessly slaughtered. The humanitarian will deplore this chapter of our history; the fatalist will argue that in the development of the west the buffalo was fast becoming an obstacle and their removal was provided for. Whatever may be the conclusion, there is no room to doubt the dependent fact : With the exception of a few sickly herds of less than a hundred each the buffalo is extinct.