300 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



Before it was dark they trotted away from the parade- 

 ground back to the mountains. 



The next day we rode off to the Yellowstone River, 

 camping some miles below Cottonwood Creek. It was 

 a very pleasant camp. Major Pitcher, an old friend, had 

 a first-class pack-train, so that we were as comfortable 

 as possible, and on such a trip there could be no pleasanter 

 or more interesting companion than John Burroughs 

 " Oom John," as we soon grew to call him. Where 

 our tents were pitched the bottom of the valley was nar- 

 row, the mountains rising steep and cliff-broken on either 

 side. There were quite a number of blacktail in the 

 valley, which were tame and unsuspicious, although not 

 nearly as much so as those in the immediate neighborhood 

 of the Mammoth Hot Springs. One mid-afternoon three 

 of them swam across the river a hundred yards above our 

 camp. But the characteristic animals of the region were 

 the elk the wapiti. They were certainly more numer- 

 ous than when I was last through the Park twelve years 

 before. 



In the summer the elk spread all over the interior of 

 the Park. As winter approaches they divide, some going 

 north and others south. The southern bands, which, at 

 a guess, may possibly include ten thousand individuals, 

 winter out of the Park, for the most part in Jackson's 

 Hole though of course here and there within the limits 

 of the Park a few elk may spend both winter and summer 

 in an unusually favorable location. It was the members 

 of the northern band that I met. During the winter time 

 they are nearly stationary, each band staying within a very 



