58 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. 



Anon we entered a gulch, leading ever lower 

 and lower down the canon. The trees closed 

 over us, the sun was shut out, and with it light 

 and colour. The change was very marked. The 

 silence seemed oppressive, there was no stir of 

 animal life, and both my spirits and the horse's 

 became distinctly chastened. Men are like children, 

 and horses like both : their courage rises in the 

 sunlight and ebbs in the dark. The road at last 

 took a turn under a steep moraine, on whose 

 gray side the frosts and damps of midnight 

 seemed to hang from ' everlasting to everlasting,' 

 while round it fire and ice slide had worked grim 

 chaos among the old pine-trees. We were dis- 

 tinctly depressed here, my horse and I, when 

 suddenly the only ray of sunlight which had ever 

 invaded this ' dark profound ' struck on a brown 

 mass in the path in front of us, not ten paces 

 from Buckskin's nose. Silently it rose upright, 

 making (as far as I could hear) no sound at all. 

 Buckskin simply sat down, her forelegs stuck 

 straight out and her ears pricked, frozen with 

 fright. Like a stage demon the grizzly had risen 

 from the path in front of us without warning of 

 any sort, and, for a moment, I considered the 

 question of flight, and the improbability of any- 

 one in my little world at home being any the 

 wiser if I bolted. However, it was easier to get 



