DIFFICULT RAVINE. 349 



While riding across a small prairie lying at the foot of the 

 mountains, I found a great number of elk-horns which had 

 evidently been shed, some of them being very old, and some 

 only shed the year before, and among these I picked a beautiful 



little pair of horns of a deer which is now almost extinct 



the fantail. They were very much like the horns of the black- 

 tailed deer, but about a quarter the size ; from the state they 

 were in, I should say that they had been there about two 

 years. 



I rejoined the waggon at night and heard that the Colonel 

 had killed three blacktails during the day ; I had seen several, 

 but as we had plenty of meat I had not fired at them. On the 

 second day we reached the Crazies, and found ourselves on 

 the edge of an immense ravine about three hundred feet deep, 

 and filled with a dense mass of trees and underbrush, and there 

 was no way by which the waggon could cross. It was too late 

 to go any further that night, so we camped, and had to carry 

 water for ourselves and animals through the dense brush and up 

 a bank at an angle of 45, doing most of our labour in the 

 dark. We had been told that we should come across a hunter's 

 cabin on reaching the mountains, but we must have wandered 

 out of our proper course, as we could find no traces of it. It 

 was most unfortunate, as the owner of the cabin had lived in it 

 for many years and knew the whole country, so that we could 

 have got valuable information from him. 



The next morning the Colonel and I rode along the edge of 

 the ravine to find a crossing, and at last came to one which 

 might be made to do, needing, however, a good deal of digging 

 and brush cutting ; so we went back and brought the waggon 

 to the top of it ; and then all of us set to work, and by evening 



