80 



Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



. ") 





On the Divide 



canyon the fir crowned heights opened to a vista of valleys be- 

 yond valleys that terminated in a rose-pearl haze through which 

 showed the snow-marked blue heights which marked the Teton 

 range, eighty miles away. 



A little further and the leading pair of pack animals, with 

 Jay Whitman riding ahead on the trail, crossing a hay meadow, 

 suddenly cut sharp against the sky, with beyond them the Mount 

 Holmes chain in Yellowstone Park, on the other side of a valley 

 as yet unseen. This was the divide, the apex of things. Now 

 came the descent into Tepee basin. Down, down, down, on a 

 trail that twisted, turned and doubled through close set timber 

 and bush, with fallen trees at all angles and in numbers uncount- 

 able. At last, from the crest of a succession of rolling hills, which 

 fell abruptly on one side down into the valley. Tepee creek was 

 seen half hidden in a close thicket of scrub willow. On its other 

 side was a slight footing of open ground, above which rose fir 

 clothed heights against the north. 



To the left, at the western end of the valley, rose a splen- 

 didly dominating triangular pile. Old Baldy — a true peak — 

 massively and proudly upstanding, lifting its crest into the sky 

 with an abrupt mastery of the surrounding ranges that pro- 

 claimed it an aristocrat of the hills. On the plateau, on the 

 further side of the stream, in a sheltering angle of the firs, at 

 the base of the mountain that closed the northern side of the 

 valley lay Camp Tepee, which had been built two years ago by 

 William and two of his Chicago friends, i.e. E. B. Ellicott and 

 W. A. Jackson. Long, low, log built, with generously projecting 

 eaves, and the square pile of the newly added chimney at the 

 further end speaking of the welcoming hearth within, every 



