68 THE CONDOR Vol. XXII 
ly, ‘‘They used to be lots of ‘em, but you don’t see many like you uster.”’ 
Splendid great birds! May the gods of the hunted preserve their remnant! 
Protected though they now are by law, they afford altogether too good a tar- 
eet for those who buy seventy dollars worth of ammunition in one night! 
Although the hunters find fox and coyote and even timber wolves here 
now, it is difficult to realize that in these low-timbered gentle looking hills 
moose and grizzly bear used to roam at will; but such is the testimony of the 
old hunters. One of them told me that a half breed actually killed three grizz- 
lies here in one day, and that a farmer going up to the mountains for a load of 
wood found one asleep and killed it with an axe. 
On leaving the mountains for Island Lake, as we came out of the timber 
on the crest of the hills we had an expanding view down over the wide prairie, 
so wide that curiously enough its horizon suggested the blue distant line of 
hills that we had seen when first looking up from the prairie to the mountains. 
While Island Lake now harbors only game birds, a white-bearded Scotchman 
at whose house we spent a week, told me that thirty years ago, antelope used 
to run along the shores of the lake. ‘‘There were lots of antelope,’ he said, 
‘out all over the prairie where nobody was living.’’ Ruminating over the 
memory, the patriarchal Scot exclaimed, ‘‘in the air-ly days this was rightly 
called the sportsman’s paradise. Oh, you could have no idea of the amount of 
game there was here unless you saw it! I’ve seen Geese so thick on that forty 
west of here that they hadn’t room to hight. There was awful lots of Crane in 
them days, too,’’ he added. They were indeed so abundant as to be very de- 
structive. The finest barley the old man ever saw, when threshed yielded only 
twenty-five bushels, for, as he said, ‘‘it had all been danced out by the Crane.’’ 
Summing it all up, he concluded reminiscently, ‘‘The Crane and Geese used to 
come in by the hundreds—till the lake went dry—that put them away.’’ 
About twenty years ago, the old Scot told me, he could row a boat from 
the north end of Island Lake to the south end of Grass Lake, a distance of 
about nine miles. At that time the long wooded ridge which gave the lake its 
name and on which we found a Crow roost, made two islands, each a quarter of 
a mile long; but now the ridge is connected with the mainland on the north, 
and the water is so shallow that in many places mat-like patches of pale green 
erass add a beautiful note of contrasting color to the rich ultra-marine water. 
Straw stacks rising from the middle of the lake suggested seal rocks; the Ducks 
climbing up on them to sit. Their dotted lines up the side of a stack looked 
surprisingly uniform until I saw the Ducks file up from the water and stop, 
each in his own tracks. Some of course perambulated about, but the effect of 
lines was notable. 
Hundreds of Ducks were seattered over the lake, feeding hidden in its 
marshy borders or resting in flocks of single species on the open water. From 
the green cover of a strip of marsh in front of us one day, we were astonished 
to have a great flock of Mallards suddenly rise, and with white outer tail feath- 
ers showing, fly off to more distant shelter. They, like most of the Ducks seen, 
were still in the brown eclipse plumage, but some near the middle of September 
were already beginning to ‘‘ 
from an unprotected lake, showed some green feathers coming in on his head. 
One of the largest flocks seen on the open water suggested a carpet of Pintails, 
so solidly were they massed. They sat facing us, looking like a bed of mush- 
rooms, brown on top, lighter below. Being used to seeing people coming for 
V 
color up’’. Among others, a Mallard brought in- 
