1 80 The Elk of the Pacific Coast 



great government to survey, but where Nature 

 has done all she could to pile sublimity on high 

 and yet leave soil enough for the shaggy robe of 

 timber that makes the mountains still the home 

 of the elk. In other places she has substituted 

 shade and silence hedged about with such a vast 

 tangle of green, brown, and grey from great trunks 

 and broken limbs that you feel still more as if you 

 were living in a different sphere. 



Here you may find great hills standing almost 

 on end, ridge joining ridge in endless chain, where 

 you may descend a thousand feet from the top 

 only to find it break off in a precipice of dozens 

 or hundreds of feet into a canyon still farther be- 

 low. Nowhere can you find a place where you 

 can take your horse down, and if you find one 

 where you can make a toboggan of your trousers, 

 it is by no means certain that you can return. I 

 was once on such a ridge for four days with a 

 party of four and nine horses. It was but six 

 miles long and not over two thousand feet above 

 the gulches that yawned all around it into the dif- 

 ferent forks of the Coquille River in Oregon, yet 

 we had to spend all our time in trying to descend 

 to the river. A big drove of elk was just ahead 

 of us, their tracks were everywhere, and many 

 more were on the same ground. Everything 

 showed that we were in their chosen home. 

 There was hardly a sapling of any size from 



