| Summary: | NOTES. Note A. Page 2.—There is a long gentle slope, or descent of about three hundred feet from the Elk Valley to the valley plain. Eight to ten miles west from the river the surface formation beneath the topsoi! gradually changes from lacustrine and alluvial deposits to bowlder clay, thus forming a sort of geological boundary. Between this boundary and the foot of the actual slope is an expanse of till, which differs from the bowlder clay of the higher land only in having its surface nearly Hat. The change of the surface from the Hat valley plain to the main valley slope is liardlv perceptible, the one form of the surface imperceptibly merging into the other. However, Upham notes that the first rise of the surface on the railroad line occurs between Ojata and Emerado, about 13% miles west of Red river. Altitude, 805 feet, or 35 feet higher above sea-level than Grand Forks. No topographical map of the county has yet been published, this feature having been neglected in theplat books and other maps. Note B. Page 43.—In all of the extant literature concerning the Red River Valley the writer has never met with any statement relative to the time when the last buffalo was seen within its limits, though stories of buffalo hunting and stampedes are abundant in print. The point mentioned has some importance historically. D. M. Holmes who came in 1871, states that no buffalo were ever seen in this county since his arrival here. S. C. Cady says that he killed 'buffalo between Fort Abercrombie and Fort Ransom in 1868, but is of the opinion that they never ranged as far east as the Red river during that year. John Lindstrom, speaking of the portion of the valley south of Goose river, notes that the last buffalo seen in that section was killed in 1867 Geo. B. Winship states that while teaming in the vallev in 1868, he occasionally heard reports of buffalo being seen in the region about the headwaters of Turtle, Forest and Park rivers, but that they never ventured as far castas the valley plain that year. It is fairly certain that if any of these animals came into the western side of the Red River Valley as late as 1868, none were ever seen anywhere within its confines later than that year. Note C. Pages 59, 60.—According to the recollections of R. M. Probstfield Nicholas Huffman was born in a small village of Rhenish Prussia, in either the coiintv ofMalmedyorof Montoie. district of Aachen (Aix la Chanele[about the year 1830. The family of which he was a member, came to his country .? 1851 and settled in St. Anthony, Minn. After the siege of Fort AbScrombie in 1862, Huffman went to St Cloud, where he spent the following wmto. Returning lo tlie valley in the summer of 1863, he worked for David -McCau- ley. In the spring of 1861. ho came to Georgetown, and worked for a firm who had leased the International of the Hudson Bay company so as to transport the company merchandise between Georgetown and Fori' Garry. The whiter following 1864 to that ot 1865 he was in partnership with Reuben Messer who kept a trading station at Georgetown, buying furs of the Indians and trappers. The winter of 1805-66 Huflman, Messer and others were in the region of the Coteaudes Prairies trading with the Indians, and the party barely escaped perishing of s arvation and exposure to storms. From that time until he entered the employment of \V. C. Nash, he remained around McCauleyville and Fo„r' £b(;,rcr,onlV],e; working for David McCaulev and others. R. M. Probstfield came to the Red River vallev in the spring of 1859, at the same time that Capt. Northup's steamboat expedition did, though he was not a member of that party. He settled on the Minnesota side of Red river about lour miles above Georgetown, and his name is linked with the history of the upper part of the valley. During Huffman's residence in the valley, Mr. Probstfield knew him intimately as a close friend, and the following brief tribute to his memory, from the pen of the latter, is worthy of permanent record: "A nobler, more disinterested, tender-hearled, and scrupelously honest fellow, I have never known. He was a deep and independent thinker but so unostentatious that most of those who knew him superficially, took him lor ii coarse, illiterate, common-place fellow. He was, in fact, a precious diamond in the rough, tinground, uncut, and unpolished, as society would express it. His memorv will ever be dear to me." Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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