The buffalo and the elk had once ranged eastward to the Alleghanies and were familiar to early wanderers through the wooded wilderness; but in no part of the east had their numbers ever remotely approached the astounding multitudes in which they were found on the Great Plains.

The curious prong-buck or prong-horned antelope was unknown east of the Great Plains.

So was the blacktail, or mule deer, which our adventurers began to find here and there as they gradually worked their way northwestward.

So were the coyotes, whose uncanny wailing after nightfall varied the sinister baying of the gray wolves; so were many of the smaller animals, notably the prairie dogs, whose populous villages awakened the lively curiosity of Lewis and Clark.
Good Qualities of Lewis and Clark.
In their note-books the two captains faithfully described all these new animals and all the strange sights they saw.

They were men with no pretensions to scientific learning, but they were singularly close and accurate observers and truthful narrators.