THE WHITE ELK OP ASTOEIA. 



Twelve years ago perhaps the very best elk shoot- 

 ing in America was to be had within thirty miles of 

 the small town of Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia 

 river, Oregon; I don^t suppose that there could be 

 found twenty elk nowadays within fifty miles of it. 

 The country about Astoria is heavily timbered with red, 

 white, and yellow fir, and a little way back from the 

 coast are the coast-range mountains, where I turned up, 

 as far as I can recollect, in the fall of ^60. I went up 

 as far as Walla- Walla, and an uncommon lively place I 

 found it. Free fights and shooting scrapes were quite 

 the order of the day. I was shown several men who had 

 ^^ plugged their round half-dozen,^^ and one individual, 

 with very curly hair and a most detestable squint, I was 

 informed had " gone through ^' no less than three 

 sherifis. The utter disregard of life in these new 

 countries was really a phenomenon. One morning when 

 I was there, a gentleman from Ruby City, I think, got 

 shot and " laid out " by another man. A fellow who 

 was chopping wood some way off, seeing the people 

 running to the saloon where the difficulty occurred, 

 began running thither also, but on hearing what the 

 matter was, said, " Only a man shot ! Thunder ! I 

 thought it was a dawg fight !'' and went back to his 

 work again. Over on the other side of the river, which 

 was crossed by a very small and very noisy steam 



