The American Wilderness. 3 



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 pene- 

 trated the different parts of this wilderness, found them- 

 selves in such hunting grounds as those wherein, long 

 ages before, their Old-World forefathers had dwelt ; and 

 the game they chased was much the same as that their 

 lusty barbarian ancestors 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 tur- 

 bulent 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 mining 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 slaughtered beasts. 



Zoologically speaking, the north temperate zones of 

 the Old and New Worlds are very similar, differing from 

 one another much less than they do from the various 

 regions south of them, or than these regions differ among 

 themselves. The untrodden American wilderness resem- 

 bles both in game and physical character the forests, the 

 mountains, and the steppes of the Old World as it was 

 at the beginning of our era. Great woods of pine and 

 fir, birch and beech, oak and chestnut ; streams where the 



