HUNTING AND FISHING GROUNDS AND PLEASURE RESORTS. 31 
the former was casting right and left and 
hauling in trout at a bewildering rate. 
Mr. Crusoe had wandered back to his 
camp that day, and my friend had sub- 
sidized him and enjoyed some famous 
sport without the necessity of making ¢ 
single exertion except to land his fish in 
a box at his feet. 
Black Lake isa genuine Alpine lakelet 
of eight hundred to one thousand acres, 
formed by a dam of mountain debris 
across the drainage trough, doubtless 
the terminal moraine of the last resistless 
ice river that forced its way down this 
groove in the solid granite. Its great 
depth and the mountain shadows give it 
a black appearance. ‘The water is clear 
as crystal and cold as newly-melted snow, 
coming as it does so short a distance 
from banks and fields of that substance 
that never disappears. On the west the 
water is fringed by green timber; on the 
south and east the old forest has been 
killed by fire and a new one is taking its 
place; on the north isa verdant meadow. 
A hunter has told me that about the 
falls in Winter, when the mist and frost 
have loaded the trees and every twig and 
leaf with ice crystals, the scene, lighted 
up by the sun, is of marvelous beauty 
and indescribable grandeur. The alti- 
tude is about ten thousand feet or two 
miles above the sea. 
YAMPAH RIVER. 
At the head of Yampah River, about 
thirty miles from the Hot. Sulphur 
Springs, at the head of the river where 
the stream is about seventy-five feet 
wide and two feet deep in the current, 
there are many deep pools, eddies, &c., 
which make it a choice fishing locality 
in the latter part of the season. The 
country near the river is an open park 
about four miles wide and twelve or fifteen 
long; but eastward from the park, from 
.two to three miles, are very rugged moun- 
tains—the west slope of the Gore Range. 
The first elevations are covered with 
scrub oak timber and a dense growth 
of raspberry, sarvis berry, cherry, red 
hawthorn, and other brush, most fruit- 
bearing. The crop is generally immense- 
Here abundant signs of bear can be seen 
—their wallows and shady resting places; 
their feeding grounds and fresh tracks, 
evidences that Bruin makes his home 
here. Also great numbers of deer, which 
seem to occupy the country much as cat- 
Further 
back, the mountains rise higher; the 
slopes and summits are covered with 
pine, spruce, and fir timber; the intervals 
occupied by aspen groves and little open 
parks, each with its rivulet of clear, cold 
water. Here elk are as plentiful as the 
deer on the outer hills, but although im- 
mediately contiguous, they did not seem 
to range or graze over the same ground. 
Pintail grouse collect in the park by 
hundreds — some say by thousands. 
From daylight until after sunrise in the 
morning, their chattering and cooing is 
tle do a populous pasture. 
as striking as that of prairie chickens in 
the grain-fields of the Mississippi Valley. 
There are also some suge hens, and, well 
up on the mountains, a few biue grouse. 
In the township are three salt springs, 
which are great resorts for deer and elk. 
Deeply worn trails lead to them from all 
directions, and the ground in the vicinity 
Much of 
the soil is rich, and productive in nutri- 
Of the 
latter, the yampa, sage, and artichoke 
are the most important, both in the 
economy of the Indian and subsistence of 
bear and other wild animals. 
In the eastern edge of Egeria Park, 
one man belonging to a party of Middle 
is tramped like cattle yards. 
tious grasses and edible roots. 
