Hunting at High Altitudes 



With Cochran I crossed the Yellowstone on the 

 ice to the stage station 59 on the north side, in order 

 to get the news of the outside world. On our way 

 we passed through the river bottom, covered with 

 timber and willow brush, and there stumbled on 

 a pitiable sight. At the beginning of the blizzard 

 all the cattle from the distant ranches had sought 

 shelter in the river bottoms. Without food and 

 with only the shelter afforded by the timber in such 

 a blizzard, and with the temperature so low, it is a 

 wonder that any of these cattle survived. As it 

 was, there was hardly a head of them that was 

 not frozen. All were so poor and shrunken that 

 it looked impossible for them to survive until 

 spring. At the stage station we learned that some 

 stages were got through from Fort Keogh, and one 

 was expected on the next day. It was afterward 

 ascertained that during the blizzard the tempera- 

 ture at Bozeman and at the Crow Agency regis- 

 tered 40 degrees below zero. With such tempera- 

 ture and with a fifty-mile-an-hour blizzard, it is 

 difficult to see how either man or beast exposed to 

 it could survive. 



We made preparations to leave for Bozeman 

 early on the 27th, expecting to make old Crow 

 Agency by night. The roads had been swept clean 

 of snow, exposing many icy places, but the tern- 



