THE WAPITI 273 



reasons. But throughout our country there are large re- 

 gions entirely unsuited for agriculture, where, if the peo- 

 ple only have foresight, they can, through the power of 

 the State, keep the game in perpetuity. There is no hope 

 of preserving the bison permanently, save in large private 

 parks; but all other game, including not merely deer, 

 but the pronghorn, the splendid bighorn, and the stately 

 and beautiful wapiti, can be kept on the public lands, if 

 only the proper laws are passed, and if only these laws 

 are properly enforced. 



Most of us, as we grow older, grow to care relatively 

 less for sport than for the splendid freedom and abound- 

 ing health of outdoor life in the woods, on the plains, 

 and among the great mountains; and to the true nature 

 lover it is melancholy to see the wilderness stripped of 

 the wild creatures which gave it no small part of its 

 peculiar charm. It is inevitable, and probably necessary, 

 that the wolf and the cougar should go; but the bighorn 

 and white goat among the rocks, the blacktail and wapiti 

 grouped on the mountain side, the whitetail and moose 

 feeding in the sedgy ponds these add beyond measure 

 to the wilderness landscape, and if they are taken away 

 they leave a lack which nothing else can quite make 

 good. So it is of those true birds of the wilderness, the 

 eagle and the raven, and, indeed, of all the wild things, 

 furred, feathered, and finned. 



A peculiar charm in the chase of the wapiti comes 

 from the wild beauty of the country in which it dwells. 

 The moose lives in marshy forests; if one would seek 

 the white goat or caribou of the northern Rockies, he 



