ELK-HUNTING IN THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS. 



65 



" By this time the sun was nearly down, and I started 

 for camp. I had just crossed back to the other side of the 

 river again, and had sat down to rest near an Elk-trail, in 

 an alder-thicket, when I thought I heard a light foot- fall. 

 I could see about twenty feet back on the trail, and there 

 sat a hungry-looking Timber Wolf. He had struck my 

 trail, smelt the fresh meat, and followed me. I quietly 

 unslung my pack, leveled my rifle, and shot him in the 

 neck. As I took his scalp I gave a good old Comanche 

 yell; for if there is anything I like to scalp, it is a Timber 

 Wolf and a Cougar. 

 The next day I killed 

 six Timber Wolves 

 around the remains 

 of that Elk, I have 

 often killed two or 

 three Elk in one day, 

 and could have killed 

 more, yet I never 

 was on an Elk-hunt 

 that I enjoyed as I 

 did that one. 



" At four o'clock 

 in the afternoon of 

 the tenth day, I was 

 back to the mining- 

 camp, and found that 

 my partner had killed two Bears and caught ten Beavers 

 while I was gone." 



And now to relate another piece of my own experience 

 in Wapiti-hunting. In the fall of 1887 1 went, with a party 

 of friends, on a hunting expedition to a large lake that 

 nestles among the pine-clad foot-hills beneath the shadows 

 of snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Mountains, Washing- 

 ton. The Makah Indians, whose village, Osette, stands at 

 the mouth of the canon up which the only trail to the lake 

 leads, guard this beautiful sheet of water with supersti- 



5 



Elk Calf. 



