206 The Wilderness Hunter 



camp robber. The familiarity of these birds is as- 

 tonishing, and the variety of their cries generally 

 harsh, but rarely musical extraordinary. They 

 snatch scraps of food from the entrances of the 

 tents, and from beside the camp fire ; and they shred 

 the venison hung in the trees unless closely watched. 

 I have seen an irate cook of accurate aim knock 

 one off an elk-haunch, with a club seized at ran- 

 dom ; and I have known another to be killed with a 

 switch, and yet another to be caught alive in the 

 hand. When game is killed they are the first birds 

 to come to the carcass. Following them come the 

 big jays, of a uniform dark-blue color, who bully 

 them, and are bullied in turn by the next arrivals, 

 the magpies; while when the big ravens come, they 

 keep all the others in the background, with the ex- 

 ception of an occasional wide-awake magpie. 



For a steady diet no meat tastes better or is more 

 nourishing than elk venison; moreover the different 

 kinds of grouse give variety to the fare, and deli- 

 cious trout swarm throughout the haunts of the 

 elk in the Rockies. I have never seen them more 

 numerous than in the wonderful and beautiful Yel- 

 lowstone Canyon, a couple of miles below where the 

 river pitches over the Great Falls, in wind-swayed 

 cataracts of snowy foam. At this point it runs like 

 a mill-race, in its narrow winding bed, between im- 

 mense walls of queerly carved and colored rock 

 which tower aloft in almost perpendicular cliffs. 



