My First Trip to the Selkirks 107 



from six to ten feet; but the slides themselves are nearly 

 free from snow, and here the bears are forced to come to 

 look for food. 



The slides are thickly grown with many kinds of brush, 

 and here and there show little parks where, on the south- 

 ern slopes, the grass sprouts early. Here, too, grow two 

 plants, the dog-tooth violet and the spring beauty, each 

 springing from a little bulb like a small onion, and the 

 ground is sometimes so dug over and torn upj by bears 

 searching for these bulbs, that it looks as though a band 

 of prospectors had been at work. 



Strangely enough, though both of these plants grow in 

 the Bitter Root Mountains, I have never seen signs of a 

 grizzly's having dug for them there. On the other hand, a 

 plant called the shooting star, with a leaf like a small 

 horseradish leaf, which also grows plentifully in both 

 places, is greedily eaten by the Idaho grizzlies, and wholly 

 ignored by those of the Selkirks. 



The usual way of hunting in these Selkirk valleys is to 

 make one's way along one side of the streams and scan 

 the slides across the gorge. The hills are so steep and the 

 brush so thick that it is impossible to see anything on one's 

 own side of the creek, and indeed it is hard enough when 

 one does see anything, to make one's way to within range. 

 For the brush, what with the weight of constant snows, and 

 repeated bendings of the head to passing avalanches, all 

 grows downhill, and it is all but impossible to worm one's 

 way up against it. We cut many a mile of trail and felled 

 many a foot log across the streams, before we got through 

 with Wilson's Creek. 



However, when we first reached this forbidding and 



