I«2 



The Wilderness Hunter, 



buoyed by such a hope, there is pleasure in taking a train 

 across so beautiful and wild a country as that which lay on 

 the threshold of our hunting grounds in the Shoshones. 

 We went over mountain passes, with ranges of scalped 

 peaks on either hand ; we skirted the edges of lovely lakes, 

 and of streams with boulder-strewn beds ; we plunged into 

 depths of sombre woodland, broken by wet prairies. It 

 was a picturesque sight to see the loaded pack-train string- 

 ing across one of these high mountain meadows, the motley 

 colored line of ponies winding round the marshy spots 

 through the bright green grass, while beyond rose the dark 

 line of frowning forest, with lofty peaks towering in the 

 background. Some of the meadows were beautiful with 

 many flowers — goldenrod, purple aster, bluebells, white 

 immortelles, and here and there masses of blood-red Indian 

 pinks. In the park-country, on the edges of the evergreen 

 forest, were groves of delicate quaking-aspen, the trees 

 often growing to quite a height ; their tremulous leaves 

 were already changing to bright green and yellow, occa- 

 sionally with a reddish blush. In the Rocky Mountains 

 the aspens are almost the only deciduous trees, their foliage 

 offering a pleasant relief to the eye after the monotony 

 of the unending pine and spruce woods, which afford so 

 striking a contrast to the hardwood forest east of the 

 Mississippi. 



For two days our journey was uneventful, save that we 

 came on the camp of a squawman — one Beaver Dick, an 

 old mountain hunter, living in a skin tepee, where dwelt 

 his comely Indian wife and half-breed children. He had 

 quite a herd of horses, many of them mares and colts ; 



