193 AMERlCAISr GAME BIRD SHOOTIISTG. 



afterwards, for every tree, shrub, rock, and peak seemed 

 to echo it iu thunderous tones for several minutes. The 

 Indian who remained with us was evidently frightened at 

 this unusual phenomenon, though his fear was not the 

 result of any apprehensions al)Out deatli, for Indians are 

 indifferent to that, too often, but it was rather a sense of 

 alarm that nature — or what is the same thing to him, the 

 bad spirits of the other world — was angry at us, and in- 

 tended to do us some mischief. The ice-bound billows 

 of tlie mountains, the towering jjinnacles and rolling 

 plains of snow_, the crash and rumble of the thunder and 

 the play of the lightning, the loud blast that sweeps the 

 rugged hills or gives the forest a deeply agitated voice, 

 even the goats that flit like white spectres among rocks 

 and chasms, are, to the savage, the handiwork or expres- 

 sion of good or bad spirits, and when he sees or hears 

 them in any unusual form he becomes frightened, 

 although he may silently adore them. 



While returning to the forest, we saw a flock of moun- 

 tain sheep some distance to our right, but as we were sep- 

 arated from them by a deep chasm, we made no effort to 

 shoot them, mucli as we might have liked to do so. The 

 Indian looked -upon their presence as a good omen, and 

 expected that we should be fortunate in our enterprise, 

 but this, like other superstitions, turned out to be wrong, 

 for bagging ptarmigans was not the aim of our expedi- 

 tion. Soon after entering the woods we flushed another 

 pack of white-tails, and bagged seven, and from that time 

 until we returned to dinner we picked them up in ones 

 and twos until we had secured twenty-one brace. The 

 Indian did not consider this good work, however, for he 

 said that some of their boys had frequently killed nearly 

 twice that number in a day when the birds left the 

 higher latitudes, in winter, and sought refuge m the 

 regions below, where the snow was not so deep and 

 food was more abundant. Ptarmigans remain at a 



