Catnf>ing and Hunting in the Shoshonc 



fifty miles by one hundred over that cen- 

 tral plateau where rise the Yellowstone 

 and Snake Rivers ? Till within a few 

 years the region was almost unknown. 

 In 1868 I met a hunter who claimed to 

 have seen a great Iake 5 more than twenty- 

 five miles long, and almost as broad, in 

 the heart of the mountains, on whose 

 margin great fountains of boiling water 

 spouted, and where no Indian dared to go. 

 Of course he yarned considerably about 

 canons where lay the bones of herds of 

 petrified bison, and gaping cracks whence 

 steam and boiling mud rushed forth. Al- 

 lowing, as you must allow out West, for 

 the play of a hunter's imagination, there 

 was a considerable substratum of truth in 

 what he said ; but none of us, and, so far 

 as we could learn, no one that ever met 

 him, believed a word of it. Of course 

 the existence of the extraordinary region 

 of the Upper Yellowstone was known to 

 a few, but there was very little accurate 

 or certain knowledge of it. Indeed, the 

 policy that the Government still pursues 

 in regard to this great Alpine region seems 

 curiously stupid. At various points, com- 

 manding natural western highways, are 

 stationed small military posts ; but the offi- 

 cers and men condemned to live in them, 



62 



