AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS. 203 



four winds. It was no easy task to get the 

 horses across some of the boggy places with- 

 out miring ; or to force them through the 

 denser portions of the forest, where there was 

 much down timber. Riding with a pack- 

 train, day in and day out, becomes both mo- 

 notonous and irritating, unless one is upheld 

 by the hope of a game-country ahead, or by 

 the delight of exploration of the unknown. 

 Yet when buoyed by such a hope, there is 

 pleasure in taking a train across so beautiful 

 and wild a country as that which lay on the 

 threshold of our hunting grounds in the Sho- 

 shones. We went over mountain passes, with 

 ranges of scalped peaks on either hand ; we 

 skirted the edges of lovely lakes, and of 

 streams with boulder-strewn beds ; we plunged 

 into depths of sombre woodland, broken by 

 wet prairies. It was a picturesque sight to 

 see the loaded pack-train stringing across one 

 of these high mountain meadows, the motley 

 colored line of ponies winding round the 

 marshy spots through the bright green grass, 

 while beyond rose the dark line of frowning 

 forest, with lofty peaks towering in the back- 

 ground. Some of the meadows were beau- 

 tiful with many flowers goldenrod, purple 

 aster, bluebells, white immortelles, and here 

 and there masses of blood-red Indian pinks. 

 In the park-country, on the edges of the ever- 

 green forest, were groves of delicate quaking- 

 aspen, the trees often growing to quite a 

 height ; their tremulous leaves were already 

 changing to bright green and yellow, occa- 

 sionally with a reddish blush. In the Rocky 

 Mountains the aspens are almost the only 



