CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 67 



floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on 

 guard." 



The President had counted much on seeing the 

 bears that in summer board at the Fountain Hotel, 

 but they were not yet out of their dens. We saw the 

 track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. 

 At all the formations where the geysers are, the ground 

 was bare over a large area. I even saw a wild flower — • 

 an early buttercup, not an inch high — in bloom. 

 This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the Rockies. 

 It is the only fragrant buttercup I know. 



As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward 

 the Fountain Hotel, the President suddenly jumped 

 out, and, with his soft hat as a shield to his hand, 

 captured a mouse that was running along over the 

 ground near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on 

 the chance that it might be a new species. While we 

 all went fishing in the afternoon, the President skinned 

 his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to Washing- 

 ton. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist 

 would have done it. This was the only game the 

 President killed in the Park. In relating the incident 

 to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the thought 

 occurred to me. Suppose he changes that u to an o, 

 and makes the President capture a moose, what a 

 predicament I shall be in! Is it anything more than 

 ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse into a 

 moose ? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis 

 happened to that little mouse. It turned out not to be 

 a new species, as it should have been, but a species 

 new to the Park. 



I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steam- 

 ing pools in the Madison River, that seemed to my 



