The Antelope-Goat of the Pacific Slope. 91 



Passingly, it may be mentioned that the Great Northern 

 and the Canadian Pacific (Crow's Nest branch) traverse the 

 Kootenay country, which is one of the best grounds for them. It 

 is a region which the writer visited before any of the three trans- 

 continental northern railways were built, and when it still took as 

 many weeks to reach it as now it takes days, and when a leaky 

 canoe or a fagged horse were the only means of travel. 



But it had its good sides, too; for, unlike the traveller of 1899 

 who steps from his luxurious Pullman, a " car-weary " and slack 

 individual, whose soft muscles are hardly fitted to tackle the 

 inaccessible haunts of this game, his predecessor, on the other 

 hand, reached the hunting ground in prime condition. The 

 inside as well as the outside of the man was thoroughly toughened 

 by weeks of rough camp " grub " and hard beds, with mother 

 earth as a mattress, a saddle as pillow, and the star-lit sky as a 

 tent. They were experiences which made him capable of 

 enduring the hardships, and of enjoying the sport, and caused 

 him probably, when it was over, to vow to return again another 

 year and do likewise, or perhaps even better. 



In taking the reader back to the good old days, I will ask 

 him to accompany me on my first successful attempt at shooting 

 antelope-goat on the head waters of the Big Hole river, and then 

 request to be favoured with his company on an expedition to 

 the aforesaid north-westerly corner of Montana, and the southern 

 part of Kootenay. The former is a land of serrated mountain 

 chains, rushing rivers, beautiful lochs, fine forests, and open 

 prairies, more verdant and pleasing to the eye than the parched 

 steppes of eastern Montana, and less difficult to travel through 

 than the wilds of the Selkirks of British Columbia, immediately 

 to the north. 



In the three preceding years I had hunted on the breezy 

 mountain ranges of Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and eastern 

 Montana, but I had failed utterly to find my game elsewhere than in 

 the imagination of romancing trappers and guides, a circumstance 

 that created in my mind a decided tendency to look upon all 



