Camping and Hunting in the Shoshone 



and its bold sides. It used, too, to be a 

 favorite resort of meat-hunters, when the 

 first rush to the mines carried hundreds on 

 to the head-waters of Clarke's Fork ; and 

 yet, for all this, no one ever believed that 

 a pack-horse could be led up the moun- 

 tain at its head and over into the park. 

 Prospectors and hunters were fain to go 

 back to Sunlight, and thence by Lodge 

 Pole Creek round to Cooke Mines, and 

 down by Soda Butte to the Yellowstone, a 

 circuit of not less than seventy-five miles. 

 Two years ago we went up that valley 

 after a band of elk, and, having killed 

 some, set traps for bear and hunted sheep 

 there for a week or more. One day Frank 

 Chatfield, my hunter, and I discovered 

 what seemed an easy pass up to the divide; 

 and, taking all the outfit along, soon after 

 we easily made the ascent, without one 

 mishap in a day's march. I mention this 

 as an instance of the unexpected ; for, 

 standing ten miles farther down the valley, 

 its head seemed one grand mass of precip- 

 itous rocks and snow-fields. We after- 

 ward came down from a camp, three miles 

 on the other side of the divide, to Sun- 

 light, making one of the longest mountain 

 marches I can remember having made in 

 one day. It must have been thirty miles, 



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