BUFFALO BILL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 126, 18 November 1911, Page 8

BUFFALO BILL.

RETIRES FROM SHOW LIFE. [ New York, November 12. Colonel Cody, otherwise ''Buffalo Bill," the erstwhile mighty hunter and celebrated scout, has retired from show life. 1 It is reported from Richmond, Virginia,! that his Wild West Exhibition has been broken up. A FAMOUS SHOWMAN. The story of how Colonel Cody won the name of "Buffalo Bill" is interesting. When the first railway track was being laid across America it was continually broken by herd's of buffaloes, and eventually the contractors paid Colonel Cody £IOO a month to supply their laborers with buffalo meat, thus, as it were, ''killing two birds with one stone." Accompanied by only one man, on a wiry pony, Colonel Cody would set out, round 'Up the buffaloes, and turn them in the direction of the railway. Then, when they were near enough, he would pick them off, while travelling at full speed, with bullets. Thus he not only provided the meat, but, so to speak, delivered it at the door of the consumer.

For eighteen months he thus kept an army of men in food, killing nearly five thousand buffaloes. "Well, it was -because of shooting these buffaloes," said the Colonel to an interviewer, "that the boys out there on the plain called me 'Buffalo Bill.' I kicked it at first, but the name has stuck to me.'