The Creating of Game Refuges 



for the future use of him who has acquired it. No 

 report can transfer to the mind of another an im- 

 pression thus derived. 



I had been but a short time engaged in this 

 campaign of education before it seemed wise to 

 abandon the limitations imposed by traveling in 

 wagons; these held one to the valleys and to the 

 dusty ways of men. After that emancipation I 

 lived in the haunts of the deer, traveling with a 

 pack train, and cruising in about the same altitude 

 affected by that most thoroughbred of all the coni- 

 fers, the sugar pine. Trust the genius of that tree, 

 the pine, of all those that grow on any of the 

 mountains of North America, of finest power, 

 beauty, individuality, and distinction, to select the 

 most attractive altitude for its home, the daintiest 

 air, the air fullest of strong vitality and deter- 

 mination, whether man or deer is to participate in 

 the virtues of the favored zone. Many a time I 

 went far beyond the region of the sugar pine, and 

 not infrequently cruised beneath its lower limits. 



What that tree loves is a zone of about four 

 thousand feet in width extending from three to 

 seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. 

 The upper reaches of this belt are where the deer 

 range during the open season of the summer when 

 they must be afforded protection. These were 



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