158 Deer and Antelope of North America 



hot coffee, munched a piece of hardtack, and 

 thrust four or five other pieces and a cold elk 

 tongue into my hunting-shirt, and then, as it had 

 grown light enough to travel, started after the 

 wapiti. I supposed that in a few minutes I 

 should either have overtaken him or abandoned 

 the pursuit, and I took the food with me simply 

 because in the wilderness it never pays to be 

 unprepared for emergencies. The wisdom of such 

 a course was shown in this instance by the fact 

 that I did not see camp again until long after 

 dark. 



I at first tried to cut off the wapiti by trotting 

 through the woods toward the pass for which I 

 supposed he was headed. The morning was cold, 

 and, as always happens at the outset when one 

 starts to take violent exercise under such circum- 

 stances, the running caused me to break into a 

 violent perspiration; so that the first time I 

 stopped to listen for the wapiti a regular fog 

 rose over my glasses and then froze on them. 

 I could not see a thing, and after wiping them 

 found I had to keep gently moving in order to 

 prevent them from clouding over again. It is on 

 such cold mornings, or else in very rainy weather, 

 that the man who has not been gifted with good 

 eyes is most sensible of his limitations. I once 

 lost a caribou which I had been following at 

 speed over the snow because when I came into 



