206 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Oct. 2, 1890. 



SLIDE ROCK FROM MANY MOUNTAINS. 



ON A GLACIER IN SUMMER. 



THE lodge was pitched at the foot of the Upper Glacial 

 Lake. To the northeast ran the narrow trough 

 through which Glacier Creek flows to join the main swift 

 current, but on every other side rose mountains, steep, 

 ragged, snow-patched; the homes of the white goat, the 

 bighorn and the white-tailed ptarmigan. 



The little brown conical lodge, standing half hidden 

 among the spruces, would hardly have been noticed by 

 the eye of any stranger who might have penetrated this 

 narrow valley, but eight or ten horses scattered about 

 over the grassy meadow near the lake shore told that quite 

 a numerous company were camped here. If you had 

 counted noses at supper that night you would have found 

 six; the Chief, the Rhymer, Jack, Appekunny, Yo and 

 Tail-feathers coming-in-sigh t-over-the-hill. whose every- 

 day name is Brocky. 



It had been for more than one of the party a day 

 to be marked with a white stone — a day actually marked 

 with white goats. Two of the men on that day had risked 

 their lives on the precipitous ledges of the west side of 

 Cataract Creek, and the outcome of the clambering for 

 each had. been his first white goat. Two "billies" of large 

 size had been killed, and had taken those fearful plunges 

 down over slide rock, snow bank and precipice which, 

 when seen, fairly appal the man who, for his own 

 pleasure and in the excitement of the chase, has put him- 

 self in a position where a little carelessness might result 

 in his falling as his prey does. 



Cataract Creek is a modest stream, and five or six miles 

 long, which flows into Glacier Creek from the south. It 

 heads in snow banks and ice fields which lie in part on 

 Monroe's Peak and Gould Mountain, and also on a high 

 divide which probably separates the waters of Swift 

 Current from those of the Upper St. Mary. Many of the 

 rivulets which gurgle out from beneath these ice fields 

 flow a milky current, which indicates that, though small, 

 they have the motion which is characteristic of true 

 glaciers. The vertical rockfalls above these snow and 

 ice fields, and the deep narrow clefts in the rock, which 

 shelter the winter's accumulation from the rays of the 

 sun, are favorite feeding grounds for the white goat. 

 Here, up a steep long slide, the Rhymer had stalked a 

 great male that, unconscious of his approach, continued 

 to graze on the tender plants until he felt the bullet's fatal 

 sting, and then sturdily making his way up the rocks, ex- 

 posing himself to other shots which finally brought him 

 rolling down the steep incline. 



The Chief to-day saw his first goat. It was browsing 

 on a cliff far above the valley, and to get within shot of it 

 required careful work and hard climbing. At length , 

 having crept along the narrow ledges until he was within 

 range, the Chief shot it, wounding it so severely that it 

 was unable to climb. It had strength enough, however, 

 to walk along a ledge and on behind a point of rocks where 

 it lay down. The hunter followed it, but when he reached 

 a point where he could see it, only the top of its back was vis- 

 ible above rocks. He fired a shot hoping to make it move 

 to a point where he could kill it. At the report it rose to its 

 feet, walked around another point of rocks and again lay 

 down. The Chief then climbed up to within 50ft. of 

 where it lay, but on the opposite side of a narrow and 

 deep water course. The goat lay there looking at him , 

 but neither his shouts nor the stones which he threw at it 

 had the effect of making it get up. It was impossible to 

 approach it where it lay, and the Chief, in the hope that 

 in its death struggle it might fall to a place where it could 

 be got at, shot it through the heart. As the ball struck it, 

 it gave a convulsive spring, fell forward into the ravine, 

 rolled down that to a snow bank, over which it slid until 

 it reached some slide rock, where it again began to roll 

 over and over. As it went on, becoming to the eye each 

 moment smaller and smaller, it moved more slowly, and 

 at the foot of the slide rock it had almost stopped, when 

 it rolled on to a long snow slope down which it slipped , 

 gathering each instant more momentum, and at last shot 

 out over a waterfall and disappeared, not to be seen until 

 some time later, when it was found on a ledge behind the 

 waterfall several hundred feet below. The Chief declared 

 that it made him quite weak to watch the animal's fall 

 and to think that his course, if he should slip, would prob- 

 ably be over the same ground. 



When both the men had got in with their meat they 

 found that one section of the party had gone off in a new 

 direction. 



The year before, when a part of the men had visited 

 this same little valley, Jack ."Appekunny and Yo had with 

 infinite labor scaled the cliff s which barred the way to the 

 huge mass of ice which lies in its basin, far up toward the 

 mountain's summit. They had found it covered with 

 new-fallen snow, and only in a few places near its edge 

 had the fact that the mass was really ice snow covered 

 been evident to the eye. Now it was much earlier in the 

 season; there were no indications that as yet any consid- 

 erable amount of snow had fallen since the preceding 

 spring, and it was thought that if the glacier could be 

 examined now, it might show quite different characters. 

 For this and other reasons Yo was anxious to make the 

 ascent of the mountain; yet to clamber to the glacier and 

 back to camp the same day would leave no time for work 

 on the ice, and it was determined to carry up a little food 

 and some blankets and to camp at the highest point where 

 wood for cooking could be had. 



Yo and Appekunny had started early in the day, carry- 

 ing rifle and camera, and were to be followed somewhat 

 later by Jack and Brocky, who should bring up food and 

 bedding. Instead of proceeding over the rocks to the 

 head of the Upper Glacial Lake and climbing up the 

 precipice there" as they had done on the occasion of their 

 previous visit, Yo and Appekunny began the ascent of 

 the mountain on the north side of the valley, climbing 

 laboriously up the steep slope until they reached the 

 ledges, which, like the steps of some giant stairway, rose 

 one above the other until the last were hidden beneath 

 the slide rock which fell from the gray barren crags that 

 formed the mountain's crest. The way, though steep and 

 arduous, had in it nothing of danger nor of excitement. 

 When the ledges were reached the climbers made their 

 way from one to another through narrow crevices torn 

 out from the rook by the torrents which in spring rush 

 down from the melting snows, Sometimes a long search 



would have to be made at the foot of a vertical precipice 

 before a practicable path could be found to the step next 

 above; at others a crevice would be found cutting through 

 two or three of the ledges in succession. Progress was 

 slow, and they had been gone five hours before they 

 reached the lateral moraine on the north side of the glacier. 

 Here they sat down to look over the ice while they eat 

 their lunch. 



At the time of their previous visit to this spot the 

 glacier had appeared much more extensive than it did 

 now. The bitter cold had checked its melting and many 

 a heavy fall of snow had covered its borders, so that it 

 seemed to be of wider extent than at present. It was now 

 melting rapidly, broken by crevasses and scored with 

 streams of swift-flowing clear water. The torrents which 

 poured forth from beneath the blue ice were white as 

 milk, for they carried with them a fine powder, the ground 

 up rock of which the mountain is composed. Along the 

 lateral morians, on the north side of the ice, were freshly 

 turned up rocks and earth, which showed that the glacier 

 was now moving. This moraine is about 125ft. high and is 

 formed of great smoothed rocks, cemented together by a 

 hard clay. In one place a glacial stream has broken its 

 way through it and flows clown on the outside of the wall. 



Descending from their perch upon the moraine the men 

 moved on to the ice. Its surface showed no new snow, and 

 it was soft and everywhere melting. Down the steep 

 slope of the ice hurried a dozen swift torrents, which had 

 worn for themselves deep channels in which they whirled, 

 and eddied and rushed, until at last they plunged into 

 some deep crevasse and with hollow roarings disappeared 

 from view. The blue icefield was dotted far and near 

 with fragments of rock, great and small, with mud heaps 

 and with great quantities of other debris, which had fal- 

 len down on the ice from the cliffs above. The ice was 

 slippery beneath the feet of the men who now ventured 

 on it, and as its surface was sharply inclined they were 

 obliged to mbve very carefully. The deep crevasses with 

 which it was everywhere seamed were alarming, for they 

 seemed bottomless, and if a man should fall into one of 

 them he would never be seen again. They had with 

 them a coil of light rope taken from one of the pack sad- 

 dles, and with this they tied themselves together, only one 

 man approaching the crevasses at a time, the other stand- 

 ing at some little distance, so as to hold his companion in 

 case the latter should slip. 



The glacier was vocal with the sound of running water. 

 The musical tinkle of the tiny rivulet, the deep bass roar 

 of the dashing torrent, the hiss of rushing water, con- 

 fined as in a flume, fell upon the ear, and up through the 

 holes and crevasses in the ice came strange hollow mur- 

 murs, growlings and roarings, while the whole ice mass 

 seems to shake and quiver from the concussion of the 

 masses of water that are rushing along beneath it. 

 Many of the crevasses were too deep to be measured by 

 the 100ft. fishing line which Yo carried in his pocket; 

 others seemed to be not real crevasses, but mere fissures 

 in the ice 25 or 30ft. deep, and partially filled with clear 

 water, through which the blue ice of the bottom could 

 be plainly seen. Besides the crevasses there were many 

 circular holes or wells of unknown depths, in some of 

 which the black water rose nearly to the surface of the 

 ice, while in others no water could be seen. In one of 

 these a slender spire of blue ice, seemingly not more than 

 lft. in diameter at its lowest visible point, rose perhaps 

 50ft., and tapering to a needle point at its upper extrem- 

 ity, reached almost the surface of the ice. 



The sloping face of the ice was not easy to walk on , 

 and if it had not been for the occasional stones which 

 now and then gave a secure foothold, it would have been 

 impossible to move about on it at all. Notwithstanding 

 this fact, Yo, who was very anxious to reach the crest of 

 the mountain, started to climb up the west arm, which 

 showed a gradual slope from the Moraine up almost to 

 the high saddle from which the west arm of the glacier 

 starts. It seemed to him that the ice, although it sloped 

 sharply, might be climbed, and that walking over its 

 smooth surface would be less arduous than clambering 

 among the rough rocks which formed the side of the 

 trough down which it ran. He started up the slope, 

 walking carefully, and supporting himself by means of 

 the stock of his rifle, which at every step he dug into the 

 soft ice. Appekunny followed, but in a short time con- 

 cluded that the rocks were '"good enough for him," and 

 made his way to the edge of the ice and sprang to the 

 ground. It was not long before Yo wished that he had 

 done the same thing. The ice grew more and more steep 

 and more and more slippery, and the footing less secure. 

 The fragments of rock lying on the ice became less fre- 

 quent, and it was each moment more difficult to plant 

 his feet in the ice. He tried to make his way to the 

 rocks at the side of the glacier, but a wide chasm yawned 

 between the ice and terra firma — a chasm too wide to 

 be jumped. Below him was the steep ice slope a mile in 

 length and ending in a series of crevasses, above was the 

 steep, smooth face of the glacier. A slip of the foot 

 might result in a fall, and the man if he fell would go 

 sliding down the ice with no hope of stopping before the 

 crevasses were reached, and if engulfed in one of these 

 his case would be hopeless. Yet this particular mode of 

 going out of the world did not seem especially alarming, 

 for it was certain that if he started to slide down this 

 slope he would be dead before he reached the crevasses, 

 since the rock fragments that dotted the ice would have 

 stripped all the flesh from his bones before he had reached 

 the end of the slope, and only his skeleton would fall 

 into the crevasse. 



At all events there was but one thing to do. To go 

 back down the ice was impossible; he must continue to 

 climb. It was a slow, toilsome and very delicate jour- 

 ney, the last half mile of this climb, but at its end Yo 

 found himself within 75yds. of the end of the west arm. 

 Here further progress was barred by a wide crevasse, 

 beyond which the ice sloped so sharply that no living 

 thing could have climbed it. Making his way to the 

 edge of the ice, he at length found a place where a shoul- 

 der of rock projected out from the cliffs to within 3 or 

 4ft. of the ice, and by a careful spring he crossed the gap 

 and kept on his way up toward the saddle. When he at 

 last found the firm rocks beneath his feet he breathed a 

 little easier, and looking back saw Appekunny, who had 

 been watching him for an hour or more, turn away and 

 sit down on a rock as if a load were off his mind too. It 

 took but a few moments to reach the saddle, from which 

 point Yo could see far to the west. At his feet the moun- 

 tain sloped off sharply in a smooth grassy slope, dotted 

 here and there with low-growing pines and junipers; at 



the foot of the slope was a beautiful park country of 

 open grassy meadows with here and there a little lake 

 and clumps of pine timber — a real paradise. He had 

 come from surroundings of snow and ice and cold gray 

 rocks, and now he looked down on a Ecene which held 

 only freshness, verdure and beauty, which was pictur- 

 esque, but not stern ; charming, but not majestic. Par- 

 tner away and half hidden by the haze that hung over 

 the scene could be seen a deep canon running to the 

 southwest and another running to the northwest. Far to 

 the south stood a tremendous mountain, and in a great 

 basin to the west of it lay a mighty mass of ice and snow 

 — no doubt a glacier. Yo believed that in this saddle he 

 stood on the Continental Divide, and that the little lakes 

 and streams at his feet poured their waters into the Pacific 

 Ocean. 



At length, turning his face from this pleasant fcene, he 

 took his way with hasty steps down over the rocks toward 

 the glacier's foot, and before very long joined his com- 

 panion. The sun had set and it was growing dark when 

 they climbed the great moraine near the glacier's foot, 

 and hurried down toward the timber. Among the low 

 gnarled evergreens which here make a fierce struggle 

 against the bitter cold, the unceasing winds and the bar- 

 ren soil, they could see the flicker of the firelight where 

 Jack and Brocky had evidently made camp, and before 

 long they were warming themselves by the grateful 

 blaze. 



Though their food was scanty that night, and though 

 their resting place was but a few paces from everlasting 

 ice and snow, they slept well and rose refreshed. After 

 breakfast Appekunny and Brocky started down to camp 

 with the beds, while Jack and Yo crossed the moraine at 

 the foot of the glacier and clambered to the saddle be- 

 tween Monroe's Peak and Gould Mountain. The clouds 

 were flying over the mountain and the wind was blow- 

 ing hard, presaging a storm. In the moraine at the 

 glacier's foot was a line of enormous blocks of white 

 feldspar and of dark syenite, which had been brought 

 down by the ice from above, and at the south side of the 

 glacier is a lateral moraine less in size than the one near 

 the west arm. From the side of Monroe's Peak can be 

 seen the whole valley of Cataract Creek, and from their 

 lofty perch they looked down on the spot where a day or 

 two before they had seen the white goats then so far 

 above them. To have pushed on further over these 

 heights would have been pleasant, but the fast falling 

 rain forced them to hurry toward camp. They did so, 

 but the rain continued, and when that afternoon they 

 reached the lodge they were thoroughly soaked. Yo. 



TRAPPING DAYS. 



VI.— RUN TO EARTH. 



AT the lake where we were now camped, which was 

 called Cha-Nopa Tonka, or Big Two Wood, to dis- 

 tinguish it from Cha-Nopa Cheestun, or Little Two Wood, 

 we remained for nearly a fortnight examining all the 

 ground within a distance of several miles, as we were 

 loth to give up the search for fur, and yet the more thor- 

 oughly we examined the country the more fully were we 

 satisfied that the glory of Cha Nopa had (for the present 

 year, at least) departed. 



In one of my expeditions of exploration on foot I had 

 the good luck to crawl within shot of three white cranes, 

 and, although my only weapon was a carbine, I managed 

 with a lucky shot to clip the tip joint of the wing of a 

 stately bird, and after a most furious chase to capture it. 



I have hunted for many years and this was the only 

 white crane I was ever lucky enough to bag; and among 

 all my hunting acquaintances I do not remember one . 

 ever blessed with similar good luck. 



Here we were visited by several small parties of Sioux, 

 who lived in the vicinity of Ootopaheeda, and were jour- 

 neying to the northward to visit friends living in that 

 direction; and as we made it a point to entertain liberally 

 in return for the privilege of trapping without molesta- 

 tion, our little teepee at times resembled a frontier hotel. 



Every party going north carried presents for their 

 people,' often of dried elk meat, and invariably of blocks 

 of pipe stone from the great and only quarry of this 

 singular rock; and on one occasion I bought a large pipe, 

 made of this material and highly ornamented, for a com- 

 mon milk pan full of flour. We found these poor people 

 very grateful for favors however small, and withal as 

 I prompt and ready to entertain us as to receive favors at 

 our hands. 



| While a party, including three women, were one even- 

 ing visiting us, one of the women observing my own 

 awkward efforts to sew a patch on the sole of a damaged 

 moccasin, with a smile at my awkwardness, drew the 

 moccasin from my hand, and with a few deft stitches 

 secured the obstreperous patch in half the time and far 



I more neatly than was possible to my own clumsy fingers. 

 "Isaac, what is 'Thank you' in the Sioux language?" I 

 asked. "Pe-dom-i-i," he replied, and a pleasant smile 

 circled round the dignified group as I repeated the cour- 

 teous word. 



Finally, after having become entirely satisfied that the 

 trapping ground would not do at all, at the close of a long 

 and very earnest council on the shore of the lonely lake 

 far remote from civilization, when it was fully apparent 

 to us that not only would the present ground prove en- 

 tirely inadequate to keep us employed during the trapping- 

 season, but also that there was no other locality kno wn to 

 us but what was either overrun by swarms of green re- 

 cruits eager to pass muster as trappers, or was included m 

 the cowyards and pigpens of encroaching settlers— in 

 short, that the great lake region was at last played out as 

 a trapping ground; we then and there decided forever to 

 abandon the occupation which had at times been a source 

 of profit and pleasure, and again of loss and disappoint- 

 ment, and the memory of which with its mingled recol- 

 lections of painful struggles with exposure and bitter 

 cold, of vigils and watchings against the crafty savage, 

 and of the many pleasant camps in the wilderness, where 

 friendly faces both white and red reflected the cheerful 

 light of the cosy camp-fire, was withal a souice of pleas- 

 ure rather than of pain. 



The final decision was not reached without a mental 

 struggle, deeper on my own part than on that of my more 

 philosophic brother; and it would not have been reached 

 at all had we known where in all the yet v maining wil- 

 derness of North America another such a trapping coun- 1 

 try could have been found . 



If, in the rehearsal of this long story of the old days on 

 the frontier, T have unduly taxed the patience of the, 



