442 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 7, 1901. 
In Idaho. 
The town) of St. Anthony lies on the eastern side of 
the State of Idaho, not far from Jackson's Hole. Jack- 
son's Hole, which catches the overflowing or migratory 
bands of elk from the Yellowstone Park, is well filled 
annually with hunters, divided by the natives into two 
main classes — dudes and Mormon meat hunters. Pos- 
sibly some of the meat hunters may rank themselves un- 
der other religious teachings, but they are all lumped as 
Mormons for the purposes of popular nomenclature. 
In the early part of October I found myself in St. An- 
thony, and, as I was not very desirous of killing elk in 
Jackson's Hole, either as a dude or a Mormon, I en- 
gaged a spring wagon and started to drive west across 
the State. I had with me Lon Dawe, an excellent and 
efficient companion, four horses in harness and an as- 
sorted load of 900 or 1,000 pounds weight, the assort- 
ment including oats, pack saddles, riding saddles and the 
two men. 
There are some interesting features about central Idaho 
which are set forth doubtless in scientific reports, but 
eeem fresh to the layman. The soils of the eastern part 
of the State for the most part overlie deep gravel de- 
posits. The streams, like Birch Creek. Big Lost River 
and Little Lost River, rise perhaps at a little distance 
from the mountains, whose drainage is fed to them main- 
ly by underground percolations and not by surface flows. 
A line of willows in the center of the valley may mark the 
watercourse, which continues on until the plain widens 
out, and then sinks again into the spongy subsoil, to 
reappear perhaps in the distant Snake. 
The sinks of Birch Creek — three days' drive west of 
St. Anthony — hardly make a mark on the broad desert 
of gravel and sage brush, while a few miles further on 
the former location of the sink of the Big Lost and Little 
Lost rivers is indicated by a dusty flat of 100 acres ex- 
tent or more. These two rivers, rising on opposite sides 
of a -long mountain ridge, after flowing around the end of 
the range, almost or quite united in a common point of 
disappearance in earlier times. Since the development of 
irrigation, however, there has been a great change of 
conditions. The porous soil requires much water to raise 
crops, and so many ditches and canals are taken out that 
few streams in the farming regions reach their former 
sinks, and even the great Snake went dry this year at 
Blackfoot. 
Aside from the ranches, which become less numerous as 
you go west, the country is in great part a waste of sage 
brush and gravel, frequented by the domestic sheep and 
seamed by long mountain ridges, which, until you reach 
the tributaries of the Salmon River, are singularly bare, 
showing a few trees now and then in some gullj% but for 
the most part stretching their yellow flanks unshaded 
even by brush. 
We started from St. Anthony in a drizzle, and saw only 
one prairie chicken, properly called a pintail grouse, I 
believe, and one jackrabbit, with a rather long black 
tail. All the jacks I met on the journey had tails like 
this, though my memory called for tails of grayish color 
on the jacks of my early acquaintance. 
Three days more of driving by a southerly bend brought 
us into the valley of the Little Lost River, beyond the 
plain, where the southern horizon hid the range except 
"where misty island peaks or purple domes loomed in 
the distance." 
The rains had made the roads fine, but the country we 
had passed was almost lifeless, and we were glad to get 
through. We were now out of grain, but rather than 
marsh of mud. Cattle were rather numerous, and bands 
of sheep were disgustingly plenty. 
Deer thus far had not been seen. The coimtry through- 
out seemed good for deer or antelope, but in the eastern 
part the cover was very scanty, and elsewhere cattle had 
driven back the deer, while the more recent advent of 
sheep had forced away the antelope, who do not dislike 
cattle, and had done much even to dislodge the cattle 
themselves. Great white-tilted sheep wagons fitted with 
stoves and bunks and all the apparatus of the herders 
rolled over the country like the moving habitations of 
the Scythians of old, while the flocks ate the pasture clean 
and cowboys swore strange oaths. 
The rifles of cowboy and herder and the pressure of 
these waves of domestic invasion have made the game of 
Idaho wonderfully scarce and shy, and the hunter who 
gets trophies in that region is likely to earn them. 
There were still a few antelope around the hills of the 
Pah-sim-e-roye, and we saw eight or ten at various times 
in the distance, but bagged none. 
We set out for our first hunt by riding up the west fork 
of the creek till we got about ten miles from camp, and 
then starting to climb the mountain. The canon was 
HE.AX) OF PAH-Siaf-E-ROYE. 
clothed with small fir timber, and, at first, the slope was 
easv, but finally we reached the slide rock and began to 
rise in earnest. Patches of grass, banks of snow, plentiful 
sheep sign, and then more rocks led us on up, against the 
cold wind, till at last our heads were above the rim of a 
little open rocky basin, and down in the bottom of the 
basin were four sheep, stretching up their necks to learn 
who was intruding. There were no good heads among the 
sheep, but we were thus far meatless, and were entitled 
by the laws of Idaho to poor heads if we could get them. 
Loh did some fine shooting at a running sheep, which he 
finally captured, and I, after a preliminary miss, got a 
small one for my share. These victims were dressed and 
hung up, and, as it was now too late to bring up the 
horses, we hastened homeward, and got late to camp 
after twenty- five miles of travel, enlivened by incident. _ 
The next' day Lon went with a friendly cowboy to bring 
the game down, and I hunted another J^ranch of the 
stream. This fork lay nearer, and on this day I climbed 
over the snowbanks of the crest and went a little way 
among the forbidding precipices around the head of the 
Big Lost River. 'There was no fresh sheep sign, how- 
ever, and at last I got to ray horse and prepared to seek 
a new route back to camp. Now,, this horse was a tall 
animal of gentle habits, recommended as a hunting horse. 
So far I had found him of meditative disposition, prone 
leader too hard and too often after that, I am sure he -was 
quite unjust. 
The next day I went for the hams, and found them 
after an extended search. I was looking for the ribs on 
the ground, as the more easily to be seen, when at last I 
found the hams banging right before me, and no ribs any- 
where in sight. The hard gravel showed no tell-tale foot- 
prints to explain this, but I had seen the old tracks of a 
small bear in the snow before, and I fancy that he was the 
robber. If so, this was the best bear sign of the trip, I 
had on this day seen two grouse and a coyote, and Lon 
had seen a lynx, but no other game nor fresh sign thereof. 
There still remained a province of sheep land untried 
up another fork of the stream, and we determined to in- 
spect it. 
The g:reat bare cliffs showed the geologic history of the 
region like ^n open book, if one only knew how to read 
it. Thick ledges of limestone, slate, quartzite and perhaps 
other rocks stretched long even lines_ for a certain dis- 
tance, and then twisted and folded into most intricate 
contortions. 
We went up through the snow for a mile or more, and 
finally got on to the crest of the ridge, so as to view the 
adjoining valley, but we saw no game, and no fresh tracks, 
only where the snoAv had been blown off the slide rock 
there were hundreds of little depressions siich as the sheep 
stamp out for beds, seeming always to prefer a resting 
place lined with jagged stones utterly cold and bleak. 
I remember once noting a similar trait in the seals of 
the Gitlf of California, for the herds there "hauled" at all 
times on the rough boulders of the shore, and never once 
went to the sandy, grassy, protected cove that lay just 
adjoining. 
While we were on this ridge I took a snap of Lon stand- 
ing on the landscape and inspecting the chasm over the 
edge.' which was filled at the time with nothing but a 
strong wind. 
Our return trip was diversified by the. rather rare* sight 
of a badger out in daytime. His color was not of the 
proverbial gray, but brown, nearly as dark as a lady's 
muff, and he looked very like such a muff undulating 
up hill at a great rate. 
One more observation I made, which sounds like a 
paradox. When a chipmimk sits up he stands up. That 
is to say, an erect chipmunk does not touch the ground 
with tail or stern, but is supported by the metatarsal bones 
with the hock on the ground, so that, as the hock repre- 
sents the human heel, he may be said to stand. 
By this time we were getting restless, and I decided to 
leave the Pah-sim-e-roye neighborhood and strike for 
Stanley Basin by way of the Salmon River. 
It was a long drive, and the first day only found us on 
the Thousand Springs Creek, which feeds the Big Lost 
River. We camped in a pasture lot and soon received a 
visit from a young woman. Our acquaintance ripened 
fast. Within five minutes I knew that her name was 
Laura Lucille North, that she was "going six and a 
, half" (this doubtless referred to her years), that her 
poppa had two guns and her momma was a "crank" and 
had "licked" her. This was encouraging news. I now 
felt that I had entered the realm of lawful order, and 
therefore assumed the dominant position due to superior 
weight and age. 
The only real fault that Laura Lucille found as she 
mvmched our provisions was that we had no butter. 
From Thousand Springs Creek we drove over a divide 
to an extensive plain called Antelope Valley. The name 
is probably more of a memory than a fiction, but there 
are no antelope there now, nor, in fact, anything 
else. 
Pursuing our route, we reached the east fork of the 
Salmon in the afternoon, and driving down that and up 
the main stream came to the village of Clayton quite late. 
LON ON THE LANDSCAPE, 
leave our road to look for it, we made a long march and 
found a worthy German, who sold us abundant oats and 
told us about Sherman's march, which he shared. He had 
found out, too, that the "salt grass" land, hitherto sup- 
posed to be useless, was better than the "sage" land. You 
only needed to keep plowing it continually for a couple 
of years, harrowing carefully and picking out all the 
roots of the salt grass with your hands! Truly his 
German thoroughness deserved success. 
The next day after this we saw some packs of sage 
chickens quite wild, and very, very far off glimmered the 
flanks of a few antelope, just discernible through the field 
glasses. I got out and walked after the antelope, while 
Lon made camp, but they had already passed a mile be- 
yond the point where the land hid them when I reached 
that place, and I had to take comfort in the healthiness 
of my exercise. 
A long march next day brought us across the divide, at 
the head of Little Lost River, and down the slope of the 
watershed of the Salmon. 
We turned south to the headwaters of a creek called 
the Pah-sim-e-roye on the maps. The name is said to 
mean "Two Waters." It is pronounced as if you had 
begun to say p'simmon and ended with "rye." We made 
a poor camp 3t a spring of good water rising from a 
THE OUTFIT AT THOUSAND SPRINGS. 
to pause and ponder before each step, especially in going 
down hill, but I was soon to see a great light on this 
subject. 
We had hardly gone a mile through the timber when 
I saw a deer, got off and shot it, anti then tied the horse 
while I dressed the game. It was not a large deer, but 
it weighed more than I could lift, limp weight, so I put 
a rope around the forequarters and began to pull them up 
to the saddle horn. 
Jiist here the hunting horse began to show uneasiness, 
.so I blindfolded the animal, which did not help matters at 
all. I then tied up a foreleg, leaving the blinders on, and 
skinned out the forequarters of the deer, leaving a load 
that I could lift on the saddle. Meanwhile, the old horse 
awakened to temporary activity. He was tied to a tree, 
blindfolded and three-legged, but he pulled back so 
earnestly, against very forcit)le remonstrance, that he 
broke his tie rope and in some way smashed. his bridle, 
coming up standing, still blindfolded arid on three Tegs. 
After that I hung up the hams, tied the loins and liver 
in the hide, strapped that behind the saddle, got on my- 
self and get back by unsparing exertions just before Lon 
brought the sheep in. I was displeased with my horse to 
a high degree, but I never told him so, and if he 
imagined that, when I was driving, I flicked the off- 
The Salmon is a clear, brawling river, perhaps 60 yards 
wide, and 3 or 4 feet deep at low stage of water at Clay- 
ton. It flows here through a fine rocky gorge, and once 
deserved its name. Even last year there was a small 
summer run of fish at Clayton.^ but this season none have 
been observed there, though I was told that a few had 
been noticed in a pool in a brook in Stanley Basin above. 
It may be concluded, however, with substantial truth, that 
the salmon of the river have gone to join the antelope of 
the valley in the land of myth. 
Beyond Clayton we stopped for several days at a Bar 
once famous for its placer diggings. We were told that 
the entire hill, which constitutes the Bar, stood on tim- 
bers put in the bed rock workings made in early days 
when miners were actively burrowing here. A few old- 
timers still wash the dirt here for scanty returns, and live 
partly upon , ancient memories. Some twenty years ago 
precious metals were mined in considerable quantities 
with much enthusiasm in .central- Idaho. Now even the 
landmarks of that day are vanishing. The town of 
Crystal, though it figures on the map, has not a building 
left; you can just see a few foundations. The towns of 
Vienna, Sawtooth and Galena have buildings to be sure, 
with roofs, crushed by the snows of winter and gaping 
holes for windows, but there is not a human inhabitant 
