ELK-HUNTING IN THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAIN'S. 



By W. A. Perry (" Sillalicttm"). 



(ON ARCH of the wilderness! Lord of the mount- 

 ain! King of the plain! What hunter, who has 

 sought thee in thy pine-embowered home, whose 

 heart-beat does not quicken and whose eye does 

 not brighten at the mention of thy name! For with it 

 comes the recollection of boundless prairies, grass-robed 

 and flower-decked; of pine-clad, snow-capped mountains; 

 of sweet breezes, gentle melodies, 'grand trophies. I once 

 heard a dying Indian speak his last words, and they 

 were these: "To-morrow, in the Spirit Land, again shall 

 I chase the Wapiti." Many a white hunter, unstained 

 by the vices of society and the snares of civilization, hopes, 

 as did the dying Indian, that, when he shall leave the camps 

 of earth for those beyond the unknown sunset mountains, 

 in the happy hunting-ground, he shall again chase the 

 Wapiti. 



Excepting the Moose, the Wapiti is the largest of all the 

 Deer family, and was formerly found in nearly all parts of 

 the United States, in Mexico, and in British America as far 

 north as the sixtieth parallel of north latitude; but he has 

 vanished before the approach of civilization, and is now 

 found only in the remotest mountain fastnesses west of 

 the Missouri River or in the great forests of British 

 America. The largest herds now remaining, outside of the 

 Yellowstone National Park, are found in the Olympic 

 Mountains of Washington, and among the mountains of 

 Vancouver Island, British Columbia. There are still many 

 remaining in the Cascade and Rocky Ranges, but they do 

 not congregate there in vast herds, as they do in the Coast 

 Ranges. 



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