Nov. 10, 1892.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



401 



MAROONING IN HIGH ALTITUDES. 



BY CHARLES HALLOCK. 

 Chapter I. 



When an Indian is about to die his highest aspiration, 

 it is said, is to reach some ideal hunting ground where 

 game is inexhaustible and intruders come not to vex or 

 disturb. His upturned eyes have a far away look, and 



everlasting peaks white with snow. With the exception 

 of prospectors, trappers and traders, who have tracked 

 over it for half a century or so, few persons have pene- 

 trated its secret places. Nevertheless, there are well- 

 beaten trails all over the flanks of the mountains and 

 across the divides, and down to the lake side and river 

 margin, where the wUd goats and sheep clamber in single 

 file in quest of precarious sustenance, and the herds of 

 caribou cross in their yearly migrations, and the black 



KOOTENAI FALLS. 



like St. Peter in his dream, he seems to see in the firma- 

 ment aloft a great sheet let down by the four corners 

 and filled with all manner of creatures which he is at 

 liberty to kill and eat if he will but rise and bestir him- 

 self. 



But such elysiuras are not exclusively ideal. That 

 they exist in nature, even on the hither side of the great 

 mortal divide, can be proven by other than second sight; 

 and it does not require to die in order to reach them. 

 For, right here, within the unexplored fastnesses of the 

 five great parallel mountain ranges which 

 rib the axis of the continent, the su- 

 preraest realization may be found. 



Within the month I have journeyed 

 over the entire region made accessible 

 by the Pacific extension of the Great 

 Northern Railroad, which was opened to 

 traffic only eight weeks ago. I have 

 seen it all by daylight, and I can only 

 say that the natural wonders which the 

 new route disclosed were like a revela- 

 tion from Olympus, Through gates ajar 

 1 gazed upon the red man's paradise! In 

 the far distant perspective I saw the 

 Temple of the Sun. Lakes bluer than 

 Geneva laved the feet of the mountains. 

 Rivers deeper than the gloomy Saguenay 

 were hidden under their shadows. Cas- 

 cades of crystal poured out of the defiles. 

 Trout disported in every emerald basin. 

 Elk, moose, deer, bear, caribou and cou- 

 gar, I was told, thread each mural laby- 

 rinth. Goats, ibexes and bighorn sheep 

 scale their precipitous sides. The sweep 

 of eagles' wings brushes the snow from 

 the shoulders of the high peaks. 



Of such were cosmic glimpses going 

 westward. Taking the back track slowly 

 and doing the same route over again in 

 detail, 1 have since been able to gather 

 something more than a superficial view. 

 Sometimes I would leave the rail and 

 follow a pack trail for twenty miles 

 astride a cayuse. Anon, I boarded a 

 lake or river steamer and traveled fluvial 

 distances greater than any in New Eng- 

 land or the Middle States. Occasionally 

 I made a dashing trip by canoe down 

 some impetuous tributary. But, before I 

 venture to delineate a region so interest- 

 ing and eminently picturesque, and with- 

 out doubt the most extensive natural 

 game preserve in the world, it may be 

 well in accordance with the editor's sug- 

 gestion, to indicate what localities for 

 hunting and fishing lie along the entire 

 extension of the route from Havre, Mont. 

 ( where the road branches to Great Falls and Helena), to 

 the Columbia River, a distance of some 650 miles, also 

 what hotel and camp accommodations may be available, 

 as well as the names of reliable guides, with some hints 

 regarding present facilities for transportation. When I 

 have enumerated these with some precision in the detail, 

 the interested reader will be better prepared to appreci- 

 ate the stereopticon of landscape which I shall spread 

 before him. I will take him from Acheron to Parnassus. 



Of course the country is all a virgin wilderness where 

 no sound of axe or saw was ever heard until two years 

 ago. Trees which lie prone are the victims of fire and 

 windfall only. Unbroken forests cover the grand old 

 mountain slopes and fill the gloomy caiions as far as eye 

 can reach, and beyond their dark green limits tower the 



bears and deer come out of cover to drink or forage in 

 grassy meadows fringed with willow and red service 

 berries. Very convenient for miners and sportsmen are 

 these far-reaching thoroughfares which the instinct of 

 brutes has demarcated with the intelligence of skilled 

 cartographers. There are no surer or shorter paths to 

 points of vantage. 



In this secluded Arcadia I have loved to dwell, where 

 the trout leaped in the outlet of the lake which flowed 

 past the camp, and magpies, ravens, crows, camp robbers, 



to which the expectant reader has no clue. The Rocky 

 Mountain climber needs a guide book, and I will there- 

 fore at once premise by stating that the orology of the 

 Great Divide comprises, as I have mentioned, no less than 

 five distinct parallel ridges which are popularly desig- 

 nated as the Rocky, Mission, Cabinet, Selkirk and Cas- 

 cade ranges, and these are intercalated by the Flathead, 

 Kootenai, Pend d'Oreille and Okanagon valleys with 

 their profound basins and magnificent fluvial systems in 

 comparison with which the Hudson and 

 all New England rivers dwindle. 



Beginning at Havre, a place of 600 

 population, with excellent accommoda- 

 tion at Mr. Rivers's "Windsor Hotel," 

 when it is not overcrowded, I found a 

 few mallards on the Milk River bottom 

 and a good showing of sharptail grouse 

 and sage hens in the vicinity. Thence 

 westward for the next 130 miles it is 

 sheep, horse and cattle country all the 

 way to Cut Bank station, where it is 

 stated that small mountain trout may be 

 caught in spring, this being the most 

 eastern poiht of its natural habitat. An 

 acquaintance of mine, who stopped over 

 there one night on business last week, 

 amused himself by wiring a half dozen 

 good-sized suckers and pickerel. This 

 creek is crossed by a railroad bridge 

 350ft. high. At Blackfoot, twenty-six 

 miles west of Cut Bank, is the center of 

 a good antelope country, and by writing 

 to Wm. Jackson, J. W. Schultz, Louis E. 

 Pembrun or Joe Kipp, who captured the 

 Forest and Stream grizzly for Central 

 Park in New York, their services can be 

 secured. There are no more intelligent 

 and reliable guides in the whole western 

 country. The famous St. Mary's Lakes 

 can be reached from Blackfoot Station. 

 At Midvale, twenty-two miles further on, 

 is an undulating mountain park, partly 

 open, with ponds, meadows, water courses 

 filled with trout, lots of blue grouse, 

 deer and small game — a wide area with 

 heather, furze, alder, sumac and willow, 

 inclosed by foothills — very charming. 

 Here lives Hugh Monroe, 108 years old, 

 who named the St. Mary's Lakes*, and 

 his oldest son, aged 78. He is known all 

 over the West as a guide and Indian in- 

 terpreter, and has dwelt in this vicinity 

 for sixty years. Three miles north of 

 Midvale, where the Great Northern Rail- 

 way crosses the Mairas Pass through the 

 Rockies, is the trail to Two Medicine Lake, with a high 

 bridge crossing the Two Medicine River — beautiful 

 haunts among the folds of the foothills. Four miles 

 beyond this lake is another lake nestling right at the 

 base of tremendous peaks, from whose shores, by the aid 

 of a glass, bighorn sheep and mountain goats can be 

 seen almost any day feeding on the high clifts. In the 

 swamps and heavy timber around the lake are moose, 

 elk, deer and bear. 

 Summit Station is thirteen miles west of Midvale. It 



THE CAMPER'S PARADISE. 



squirrels and woodpeckers, and birds of unknown poly- 

 glot, whose language a Garnier might envy, filled the 

 adjacent trees with loquacious chatter. Here I have sat 

 at eventide and watched the kindling fire grow brighter 

 while I listened for the sound of rhythmic oars returning 

 home on the still surface of the lake. Sometimes when 

 I am writing in the cabin, a mountain rat, maltese in 

 color, with a tail like a squirrel, steals forth from his 

 covert in a soap box and plays the mischief with loose 

 articles lying around. These mountain rats are more 

 mischievous than monkeys, and twice as cute. I must 

 try to remember to give you my experience with the 

 Mustellus who sublet that soap box ia the camp. He 

 keeps everything in disorder. 

 But I notice that I am wandering over pleasant bypaths 



is 5,200ft. above sea level. Here the brooks and rivulets 

 run west as well as east, the small beginnings of the 

 Marias and Flathead rivers. Here is a wide area thirteen 

 miles in length, almost level, with a swampy meadow 

 interspersed with willows, tamaracks and spruce. 

 Mountains with snow tower high above and around. 

 Fires have swept two-thirds of the area. Here are a 

 section house, tank, round house, coal yard, saloon, 

 a cluster of log houses of which five are occupied, a lone 

 grave inclosed by a picket fence, three dogs, men with 

 fur caps and mittens, temperature 36°, ugh! If a hand 

 car can be procured from the section men a trip can be 



* There Is anotber .St. Mary's Lalse and river in the East 

 Kootenai district. 



