316 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



began to eat breakfast with me. Keeping per- 

 fectly still I soon had their confidence, and they 

 came so near I found no difficulty, while admir- 

 ing their graceful manners and gestures, in 

 determining what plants they were eating, thus 

 gaining a far finer knowledge and sympathy 

 than comes by killing and hunting. 



Indian summer gold with scarce a whisper of 

 winter in it was painting the glad wilderness in 

 richer and yet richer colors as we scrambled 

 across the South canon into the basin of the 

 Tule. Here the Big Tree forests are still more 

 extensive, and furnished abundance of work in 

 tracing boundaries and gloriously crowned ridges 

 up and down, back and forth, exploring, study- 

 ing, admiring, while the great measureless days 

 passed on and away uncounted. But in the 

 calm of the camp-fire the end of the season 

 seemed near. Brownie too often brought snow- 

 storms to mind. He became doubly jaded, 

 though I never rode him, and always left him in 

 camp to feed and rest while I explored. The in- 

 vincible bread business also troubled me again ; 

 the last mealy crumbs were consumed, and grass 

 was becoming scarce even in the roughest rock- 

 piles, naturally inaccessible to sheep. One after- 

 noon, as I gazed over the rolling bossy Sequoia 

 billows stretching interminably southward, seek- 

 ing a way and counting how far I might go 

 without food, a rifle shot rang out sharp and 



