The American Wilderness n 



groves of giant trees ; and north of them, along the 

 coast, the rain-shrouded mountain chains of Oregon 

 and Washington, matted with the towering growth 

 of the mighty evergreen forest. 



The white hunters, who from time to time first 

 penetrated the different parts of this wilderness, 

 found themselves in such hunting grounds as those 

 wherein, long ages before, their Old- World fore- 

 fathers had dwelled ; and the game they chased was 

 much the same as that their lusty barbarian ances- 

 tors followed, with weapons of bronze and of iron, 

 in the dim years before history dawned. As late 

 as the end of the seventeenth century the turbulent 

 village nobles of Lithuania and Livonia hunted the 

 bear, the bison, the elk, the wolf, and the stag, and 

 hung the spoils in their smoky wooden palaces ; and 

 so, two hundred years later, the free hunters of 

 Montana, in the interludes between hazardous min- 

 ing quests and bloody Indian campaigns, hunted 

 game almost or quite the same in kind, through the 

 cold mountain forests surrounding the Yellowstone 

 and Flathead lakes, and decked their log cabins and 

 ranch houses with the hides and horns of the slaugh- 

 tered beasts. 



Zoologically speaking, the north temperate zones 

 of the Old and New Worlds are very similar, differ- 

 ing from one another much less than they do from 

 the various regions south of them, or than these 

 regions differ among themselves. The untrodden 



