12 CAMP FIRE REMINISCENCES 
me a source of great pleasure. I had known of 
the existence of each, but the tout ensemble was 
a delightful surprise. Standing spellbound by 
the beauty and interest of the scene, my medita- 
tion was disturbed by a member of the party who, 
coming up, remarked, ‘‘Is not this place Hades ?’’ 
and then he began an irrelevant story about some- 
thing which the governor of North Carolina ‘had 
said to the governor of South Carolina. Our 
point of view was simply different. 
A few years ago, the West was teeming with 
game, but as there were no laws for its protection 
the industrious hide-hunter, and the settler, with 
his barbed wire, changed all that. Of late, how- 
ever, stringent laws have been enacted and are be- 
ing very well enforced. The withdrawal of great 
tracts from settlement and their conservation as 
forest reserves has given the big game a new lease 
of life, by providing sanctuaries, so that poster- 
ity may enjoy indefinitely the splendid fauna of the 
country. The lover of nature and the sportsman 
owe much to him whose influence has ever been to 
protect what has been left. 
These little sketches have been compiled from 
notes made of the trips they describe, and al- 
though one who knew the Laramie plains or Jack- 
son’s Hole twenty years ago may find them tame 
records, yet they give some idea of what the pres- 
ent day conditions are in western United States. 
Life on the sagebrush plains, or in the woods, is 
much the same to-day as it used to be and the ad- 
vance of settlement makes little difference to the 
