48 



Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



in the splendid starlight, one can just make out, and more forcibly, 

 feel, the solemn bulk of the mountains against the heavens. 



Eastward, the river loses itself around a curve in a pleasant 

 vista of willow brush and reed beds, its calm surface a sapphire- 

 like blue in contrast to the rich gold of the hay meadows that on 

 its southern bank rise gradually to the crown of Horse Butte, 



=^«^fc^'^". ^ 



St*r/ 



''^"•^^^M-^'i ^^^ "Eastward, the river loses itself" 



;*=UJL^^ 



whose eastern end, fir forested, is just visible past the side of the 

 sheltering hill across the water. There is a hint of blue-green sage 

 in the mid-distance, above which rises, across almost the entire 

 eastern horizon a belt of firs, whose darkness renders more dis- 

 tantly blue than ever the low band of hills that marks the eastern 

 horizon, in whose center drops the Madison canyon, a great 

 square-sided gap through whose far depths there sometimes shows 

 an infinitely far-off mass of cloud, minute by distance, glowing 

 in the light that pours through the gap at evening with a precious- 

 ness of color that stirs a painter's heart to a fresh thankfulness for 

 sight. 



A little after noon Wroe and Pratt returned with eight duck, 

 (one a mallard drake in large flesh and splendid feather), three 

 jacksnipe, and a three and one-half pound cut- throat trout, a 

 magnificent fish, taken on a spoon. The beauty was hooked in 

 both upper and lower jaws. He was played by Arthur for seven 

 or eight minutes before he had his first sight of him. In the next 



