THE COWARDLY COUGAR 



criminal extravagance, and something should 

 be done about it. 



Facing us, from twelve to twenty miles 

 distant as the crow would fly if he had the 

 nerve to tackle such a flight, stood the North 

 Wall, our destination and the home of the 

 cowardly cougar we had come to humiliate. 

 It appeared to be a level mesa, somewhat 

 higher than the seven-thousand-foot plateau 

 where we were. That mesa deserves a word 

 of description, for although vast numbers of 

 tourists annually gaze upon it, although last 

 year a good many thousand people descended 

 Bright Angel Trail as far as the river, very few 

 indeed have gone beyond and essayed the 

 difficult ascent of the other side. 



The country immediately north of the 

 Canon is a veritable wilderness and as inac- 

 cessible as any you will be likely to find. It 

 is covered by a magnificent forest and a gov- 

 ernment restriction against hunting, trapping, 

 plural marriages, and other primitive pas- 

 times, all of which are more or less honored in 

 the breach, especially by local Mormons. It is 

 guarded from trespassers on the south by the 

 titanic, mile-deep void, formed as a conse- 

 quence of the unprecedented behavior of the 



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