2 Sport and Life. 



Nature marked the elevation of this pass, for it was on a level 

 with timber-line, which in thq$e latitudes is reached at a height of 

 goooft. or 95ooft. 



We had made a long day of it, for water, though nigh at hand, 

 was ungetatable, and better reason were we not heading for 

 the promised land, to gain which we had made strenuous efforts ? 

 To man and beast it was to be a veritable paradise. To me it meant 

 a practically primeval hunting ground, abundantly stocked with 

 wapitis by the thousand, bighorns, grizzlies, as well as with the 

 grotesquely-shaped white antelope goat of the Rockies, which latter 

 was the special object of my expedition. For my trapper companions 

 it meant a big harvest of peltry, for had not reliable Indians reported 

 that the rivers and lakes of this, then practically unknown, region 

 were teeming with beaver and otter? And, lastly, to the horses, 

 poor brutes, it held out the promise of grass up to their bellies, good 

 clear water, and complete rest, wherein to recuperate after the 

 hardships of forced rides and heavy packs, endured upon a 

 desperately meagre diet of sagebrush and alkali water. 



A last preposterously steep slope of sharp-edged shale, on which 

 it seemed impossible for man or beast to gain a firm foothold, and 

 we had at last conquered that forbidding eastern face of the Big 

 Windriver chain, and were standing on the height of land from 

 which we saw both the Atlantic and the Pacific slopes of the great 

 Continental backbone stretching away into dim distance that seemed 

 so vast as almost to promise a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, quite 

 600 miles westwards of us. The view that burst on our eyes 

 contrasted strangely with the one upon which we were turning our 

 backs. For the arid, treeless steppes and bizarrely-shaped hills of 

 bright red and yellow tints, which are the principal features of the 

 parched mauvaise terre landscape of Western Wyoming, were 

 replaced by a glorious vista of boundless dark green forests, 

 emerald glens and bottom lands, snow-topped mountains of grand 

 Alpine type, at the base of which lay embosomed beautiful lakes, 

 or flowed great rivers whose long green stretches were broken 

 here and there by the white water of rapids. Even the panting, 



