IN THE WAPITI COUNTRY 117 



one pack. Smith and I started out on our last 

 chance of finding another wapiti. 



It was for a wonder a lovely morning, and I 

 felt bitterly the hard luck which had pursued 

 us all the way, and which now compelled us to 

 turn back just as we had reached a game 

 country. We went up a fine valley running 

 from the east of the lake — the most open 

 forest we had yet come to. It was timbered 

 with magnificent spruce-trees, some of which 

 I should say were at least 180 feet in height. 

 There was but little undergrowth, it was the 

 first ideal hunting ground we had struck. We 

 worked all the morning without finding any- 

 thing but two-day-old tracks. After lunch 

 we suddenly came on quite fresh tracks of a 

 good bull, possibly the one Lansdown had seen 

 the day before. 



Taking up the tracks, we followed steadily 

 on and must have come close enough to disturb 

 him, though we neither heard nor saw anything. 

 We came, however, on the spot where he had 

 been lying down and had jumped up and 

 gone off at a gallop. 



We tracked that bull till dusk and never 

 came up with him. Fortunately he took us 

 down the valley to the lake where we were 

 camped, and we got home at nightfall. 



