Hunting in the S el kirks. 149 



The caribou had wandered all over the boQ^s and 

 through the shallow pools, but evidently only at night or 

 in the dusk, when feeding or in coming to drink ; and we 

 again went on. Soon the timber disappeared almost en- 

 tirely, and thick brushwood took its place ; we were in a 

 high, bare alpine valley, the snow lying in drifts along the 

 sides. In places there had been enormous rock-slides, 

 entirely filling up the bottom, so that for a quarter of a 

 mile at a stretch the stream ran underground. In the 

 rock masses of this alpine valley we, as usual, saw many 

 conies and hoary woodchucks. 



The caribou trails had ceased, and it was evident that 

 the beasts were not ahead of us in the barren, treeless 

 recesses between the mountains of rock and snow ; and 

 we turned back down the valley, crossing over to the 

 opposite or south side of the stream. We had already 

 eaten our scanty lunch, for it was afternoon. For several 

 miles of hard walking, through thicket, marsh, and rock- 

 slide, we saw no traces of the game. Then we reached 

 the forest, which soon widened out, and crept up the 

 mountain sides ; and we came to where another stream 

 entered the one we were following. A high, steep shoul- 

 der between the two valleys was covered with an open 

 growth of great hemlock timber, and in this we again 

 found the trails and beds plentiful. There was no breeze, 

 and after beating through the forest nearly to its upper 

 edge, we began to go down the ridge, or point of the 

 shoulder. The comparative freedom from brushwood 

 made it easy to walk without noise, and we descended 

 the steep incline with the utmost care, scanning every 



