American Big Game in its Haunts 



and the eagle returned to the upper air. Later we 

 found the carcass of a yearling, with two eagles, 

 not to mention ravens and magpies, feeding on it; 

 but I could not tell whether they had themselves 

 killed the yearling or not. 



Here and there in the region where the elk were 

 abundant we came upon horses which for some 

 reason had been left out through the winter. They 

 were much wilder than the elk. Evidently the Yel- 

 lowstone Park is a natural nursery and breeding 

 ground of the elk, which here, as said above, far 

 outnumber all the other game put together. In 

 the winter, if they cannot get to open water, they 

 eat snow; but in several places where there had 

 been springs which kept open all winter, we could 

 see by the tracks they had been regularly used by 

 bands of elk. The men working at the new road 

 along the face of the cliffs beside the Yellowstone 

 River near Tower Falls informed me that in Octo- 

 ber enormous droves of elk coming from the in- 

 terior of the Park and traveling northward to the 

 lower lands had crossed the Yellowstone just above 

 Tower Falls. Judging by their description the elk 

 had crossed by thousands in an uninterrupted 

 stream, the passage taking many hours. In fact 

 nowadays these Yellowstone elk are, with the ex- 

 ception of the Arctic caribou, the only American 



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