I74 Life in the Open 



valley. It might be a phantasm, the outline of a tall 

 yucca ; but out it comes, and resolves itself into a bit of 

 the desert landscape, two, three, four pronghorns, the 

 last of the Californians to hold their own in Antelope 

 Valley, the rarest of California animals, with the great 

 condor and grizzly, not to be hunted with rifle, but to 

 be looked at and bidden godspeed and long life if you 

 please. I conceive various kinds of hunting : there is 

 hunting with the eye, watching the beauties of game, 

 and its ways ; and that it has its advantages is shown by 

 the fact that you may repeat it indefinitely, and the 

 more you hunt in this way, the better grows the sport, 

 the more plentiful the game ; and I bespeak for the little 

 California antelope the hunter of this class, that his life 

 may be long in the land that once knew him so well. 



Not many years ago the pronghorn was among the 

 commonest animals in the open country. Large herds 

 lived in the vicinity of Elizabeth Lake, and the great 

 valley that extends from the Mojave desert west, or 

 north-west, was named for them. In those days they 

 could also be found in the Mojave and along the mount- 

 ains of California everywhere. They appeared to rise 

 from the bed of the pallid silent sea of sand. But, like 

 the buffalo, the antelope has been crowded to the wall 

 in California, and a few small herds only haunt the great 

 desert of to-day. 



In his antelope range map of 1902, Merriam recog- 

 nises a few in the extreme north-west of California, and 

 another herd near the Mexican line where Imperial and 



