CHAPTER I 



THE ELK OF THE PACIFIC COAST 



THE elk was once found on the great prairies 

 of the Mississippi watershed. But so was the 

 deer. For there were belts of timber lakes sur- 

 rounded with a heavy growth of reeds, and swales 

 full of slough grass with plenty of rough cover 

 about the bluffs and river-bottoms that intersected 

 it in all places. But who would expect the elk to 

 be at home where the land was too bare for the 

 deer, and only the antelope roamed the many 

 leagues that seemed fit but for wild cattle and 

 horses. Yet it seems certain that the bands of 

 elk that once roamed the great San Joaquin Val- 

 ley in California surpassed all that has been told 

 in song or story about the elk of the Rocky Moun- 

 tain parks or plateaus. Leagues away from any- 

 thing approaching cover, they lived upon plains 

 as open as any on which the buffalo ever flour- 

 ished. For before the discovery of gold there 

 was no demand for them except at long intervals, 

 when a travelling native found it a little easier to 

 lasso one for camp than one of the cattle that on 



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