Aug. 27, 1904.] 
171 
and a cow, had died from scab. Over half the remainder 
had evidently perished from cold or starvation. The 
others, including a bull, three cows and a score of year- 
lings, had been killed by cougars. In the Park the cougar 
is at present their only animal foe. The cougars were 
preying on nothing but elk in the Yellowstone Valley, 
and kept hanging about the neighborhood of the big 
bands. Evidently they usually selected some outlying 
yearling, stalked it as it lay or as it fed, and seized it 
by the head and throat. The bull which they killed was 
in a little open valley by himself, many miles from any 
other elk. The cougar which killed it, judging from its 
tracks, was a very large male. As the elk were evidently 
rather too numerous for the feed, I do not think the 
cougars were doing any damagei 
Coyotes are plentiful, but the elk evidently have no 
dread of them. One day I crawled up to within fifty 
yards of a band of elk lying down. A coyote was walk- 
ing about among them, and beyond an occasional look 
they paid no heed to him. He did not venture to go 
within fifteen or twenty paces of any one of them. In 
fact, except the cougar, I saw but one living thing at- 
tempt to molest the elk. This was a golden eagle. We 
saw several of these great birds. On one occasion we 
had ridden out to the foot of a great sloping mountain 
side, clotted over with bands and strings of elk amount- 
ing in the aggregate probably to a thousand head. Most 
of the bands were above the snow line — some appearing 
away back toward the ridge crests, and looking as small 
as mice. There was one band well below the snow line, 
and toward this we rode. While the elk were not shy 
or wary, in the sense that a hunter would use the 
words, they were by no means as familiar as the deer ; 
and this particular band of elk, some twenty or thirty in 
all, watched us with interest as we approached. When 
we were still half a mile off they suddenly started to* run 
toward us, evidently frightened by something. They ran 
quartering, and when about four hundred yards away we 
saw that an eagle was after them. Soon it swooped, and 
a yearling in the rear, weakly, and probably frightened 
by the swoop, turned a complete somersault, and when it 
recovered its feet, stood still. The great bird followed 
the rest of the band across a little ridge, beyond which 
they disappeared. Then it returned, soaring high in the 
heavens, and after two or three wide circles, swooped 
down at the solitary yearling, its legs hanging down. 
We halted at two hundred yards to see the end. But the 
eagle could not quite make up its mind to attack. Twice 
it hovered within a foot or two of the yearling's head — 
again flew off and again returned. Finally the yearling 
trotted off after the rest of the band, and the eagle re- 
turned to the upper air. Later we found the carcass of 
a yearling, with two eagles, not to mention ravens and 
magpies, feeding on it ; but I could not tell whether they 
had themselves killed the yearling or not. 
Here and there in the region where the elk were 
abundant we came upon horses which for some reason 
had been left out through the winter. They were much 
wilder than the elk. Evidently the Yellowstone Park is 
a natural nursery and breeding ground of the elk, which 
here, as said above, far outnumber all the other game 
put together. In the winter, if they cannot get to open 
water, they eat snow ; but in several places where there 
had been springs which kept open all winter, we could 
see by the tracks they had been regularly used by bands 
of elk. The men working at the new road along the face 
of the cliffs beside the Yellowstone River near Tower 
Falls informed me that in October enormous droves of 
elk coming from the interior of the Park and traveling 
northward to the lower lands had crossed the Yellow- 
stone just above Tower Falls. Judging by their descrip- 
tion the elk had crossed by thousands in an- uninterrupted 
stream, the passage taking many hours. In fact nowa- 
days these Yellowstone elk are, with the exception of the 
Arctic caribou, the only American game which at times 
travel in immense droves like the buffalo of the old days. 
A couple of days after leaving Cottonwood Creek — 
where we had spent several days — we camped at the 
Yellowstone C a hon below Tower Falls. Here we saw 
a second band of mountain sheep, numbering only eight 
— none of them old rams. We were camped on the west 
side of the canon ; the sheep had their abode on the 
opposite side, where they had spent the winter. It has 
recently been customary among some authorities, espe- 
cially the English hunters and naturalists who have writ- 
ten of the Asiatic sheep, to speak as if sheep were 
naturally creatures of the plains rather than mountain 
climbers. I know nothing of old world sheep, but the 
Rocky Mountain bighorn is to the full as characteristic 
a mountain animal, in every sense of the word, as the 
chamois, and, I think, as the ibex. These sheep were 
well known to the road builders, who had spent the 
winter in the locality. They told me they never went 
back on the plains, but throughout the winter had spent 
their days and nights on the top of the cliff and along 
its face. This cliff was an alternation of sheer precipices 
and very steep inclines. When coated with ice it would 
be difficult to imagine an uglier bit of climbing ; but 
throughout the winter, and even in the wildest storms, 
the sheep had habitually gone down it to drink at the 
water below. When we first saw them they were lying 
sunning themselves on the edge of the canon, where the 
rolling grassy country behind it broke off into the sheer 
descent. It was mid-afternoon, and they were under 
some pines. After a while they got up and began to> 
graze, and soon hopped unconcernedly down the side of 
the cliff until they were half way to the bottom. They 
then grazed along the sides, and spent some time licking 
at a place where there was evidently a mineral deposit. 
Before dark they all lay down again on a steeply inclined 
jutting spur midway between the top and bottom of the 
canon. 
Next morning I thought I would like to see them 
close up, so I walked down three or four miles below 
where the canon ended, crossed the stream, and came 
up the other side until I got on what was literally the 
stamping ground of the sheep. Their tracks showed that 
they had spent their time for many weeks, and , probably 
for all the winter, within a very narrow radius. For 
perhaps a mile and a half, or two miles at the very out- 
side, they had wandered to and fro on the summit of 
the canon, making what was almost a well-beaten path; 
always very near and usually on the edge of the cliff, and 
hardly ever going more than a few yards back into the 
grassy plain-and-hill country. Their tracks and dung 
covered the ground. They had also evidently descended 
into the depths of the canon wherever there was the 
slightest break or even lowering in the upper line of 
basalt cliffs. Although mountain sheep often browse in 
winter, I saw but few traces of browsing here ; probably 
on the sheer cliff side they always got some grazing. 
When I spied the band they were lying not far front 
the spot in which they had lain the day before, and in 
the same position on the brink of the canon. They saw 
me and watched me with interest when I was two hun- 
dred yards off, but they let me get up within forty yards 
and sit down on a large stone to look at them, without 
running off. Most of them were lying down, but a couple 
were feeding steadily throughout the time I watched 
them. Suddenly one took alarm and dashed straight 
over the cliff, the others all following at once. I ran after 
them to the edge in time to see the last yearling drop 
off the edge of the basalt cliff and stop short on the sheer 
slope below, while the stones dislodged by his hoofs 
rattled down the canon. .They all looked up at me with 
great interest, and then strolled off to the edge of a 
jutting spur and lay down almost directly underneath me 
and some fifty yards off. That evening on my return to 
camp we watched the band make its way right down to 
the river bed, going over places' where it did not seem 
possible a four-footed creature could pass. They halted 
to graze here and there, and down the worst places they 
went very fast with great bounds. It was a marvelous 
exhibition of climbing. 
[to be concluded.] 
Captain Pike. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I was greatly interested in Mr. Grinnell's account of 
Captain Pike's first expedition, and hope he will give us, 
as he no doubt will, the expedition made by him when he 
discovered the mountain that now bears his name — Pike's 
Peak. 
I had read all I could find about the Captain, but 
could not find out as much about him as I could about 
Lewis and Clark, but Mr. Grinnell has given us a con- 
densed account of their explorations, leaving out all that 
is not absolutely necessary to the proper understanding of 
them. 
In the summer of 1880 I paid a visit to the post from 
which Captain Pike started on the expedition that took 
him finally to Pike's Peak, and this post has been the 
starting point of many other expeditions also. 
There cannot be much of the older part of the post 
left now ; there probably is none of it, as when I was 
there the river had begun to make serious inroads 
through the bottom on which the old post stood. It is 
Fort Bellefontaine. The original post was built on the 
river bottom, but after we had taken possession of the 
country, a new one was built just above the old one on 
the bluff, and still stands there. It is on the Chicago, 
Burlington & Quincy Railroad, only an hour's ride out 
from St. Louis. The road has a station on the grounds, 
and there are many places that the tourist from the East 
to the World's Fair will visit that have not half the in- 
terest that this place has. 
By the way, the cement that was used in the World's 
Fair buildings at St. Louis was made out of rock quar- 
ried right here. About the time that the French first 
settled at St. Louis, Captain Rois, with a small party of 
men, came up here and built the first post, the one down 
on the river bank. He named it Fort Prince Charles, but 
it was only a small cluster of log houses to shelter his 
men. Their site is now in the bed of the Missouri River. 
After the country had been turned over to us in 1805, 
General Wilkinson used this place as a trading post in 
carrying out the treaty that had been made between 
General Harrison and the Sac and Fox Indians at St. 
Louis the year before, and it was about this time that the 
new post was built- up on the bluff, and a garrison of 
about 500 men were, always kept there. This was a large 
number of men for a frontier post at that tim'ej but they 
seem to have been needed; the records of the post give a 
succession of Indian attacks on the settlers. Captain — 
afterwards- Major— Pike had a command here from its 
first occupation, and it was from here that he departed 
on his different expeditions. 
One of his daughters — a child seven years old — lies 
buried here in the small cemetery. I do not remember 
the date of her death, but think it was 1806. She died 
when the Captain was away on one of his expeditions. 
A number of officers and the members of their families 
are buried here. The most pretentious monument is the 
one erected to Captain or Major Bissell, of the First In- 
fantry, who died here in 1807. Fort Bellefontaine was 
finally abandoned as a military post about 1826. In 
1826 St. Louis county gave the Government the land on 
which Jefferson Barracks is now built, and the post of 
Bellefontaine was moved there. The land on which Belle- 
fontaine stood was finally sold, and is now cut up into 
farms, most of which are in possession of the descend- 
ants of the original French settlers. 
Jefferson Barracks is another post that will repay a 
visit. It adjoins the city on the south, and can be reached 
over the Iron Mountain Railroad, and the street cars run 
near. It is a-fme place. First comes the National Ceme- 
tery, a large one, then the barracks that are used as a 
depot for cavalry recruits, and next the powder depot. 
The reservation extends nearly two miles along the river, 
' and a mile or more back from it, and is covered with its 
original growth of forest trees. 
This powder depot is a. curious affair. A number of 
small magazines are built down in ravines apart from 
each other on account of their liability to go off. There 
is not much danger of any of them going off, though, 
unless they are struck by lightning. The men who have 
charge of them won't set any of them off — their officers 
watch them too closely. No one can go into a magazine 
wearing any kind of shoes except felt slippers. 
When I paid them a visit, as I often did (I was here a 
year engaged in drilling recruits), I had to leave my 
shoes outside and go in' in my stocking feet. 
St. Louis has changed some since I first saw it in 1855." 
The ground where the big Union Depot now stands in 
the middle of the city was then a frog pond out in the 
country; and Arsenal Island, in the middle of the river 
at the lower end of town, has moved at least a mile 
down stream since then. I boarded a Pittsburg steam- 
boat one day to ride up to town, and when passing the 
island said to the captain, "This island has moved down 
stream a mile or more some time. Do you know it?" 
"Yes," he said, "we all know it. Flow do you know, it?" 
I told him that I had done some , stea'mboatih'g here 
when a boy, and would often "relieve the wheel" for 'the 
pilot when the captain was riot around to throw me out 
of the pilot-house. It was then that I had taken the 
island bearings and still remembered them. 
_ Then he told me how the island had been moved. The 
river would wear off the upper end of it, then deposit 
the soil and trees just below in the still water, and keep 
this up until the whole of the island had been moved 
down stream. Cabia Blanco. 
Camping Out. 
Haverhill, Mass.— Having been a reader of Forest 
and Stream for twenty-five years, and for the last twenty 
in the situation of the man "chained to business," 
whose picture appears now and then in this paper, I 
have thought that perhaps the story of my brief out- 
ings might interest some reader in like circumstances 
— those who have a short summer vacation and a not- 
over-full pocket-bock. 
I am a few years on the shady side of sixty, and my 
first qamping-out was in the Civil War. I was raised 
on a farm in New Hampshire, about seven miles from 
the coast, and went to the marshes and flats more or 
less every summer to get a few clams or lobsters and 
help get the salt hay, and so I came to have a great 
liking for the salt creeks and tide water. My wife did 
not care for the beach, much less for boating or camp- 
ing, so I had to paddle my own canoe when I had an 
outing. In 1876 I took my first trip down the Merri- 
mack with a friend in his dory, and have missed only 
two years since. 
At that time I owned a flat-bottomed skiff with 
centerboard and small sprit sail, and the next year 
found us each in his own boat and three more in the 
party, with a hired A tent, bound for Ipswich Bluffs, 
near the south end of Plum Island and about twenty- 
eight miles from Flaverhill. Since that time until last 
year my vacation camp has been at Plum Island, 
usually at the Bluffs, but sometimes by the mouth of 
the Merrimack and nearer home, as the island is about 
ten miles long from the Merrimack to Ipswich River. 
For fifteen years or more I extended my sailing trip 
to Essex, some five miles beyond the Bluffs, to visit 
my sister, usually spending the night there and coming 
back to the Bluffs the next day. 
After two or three years I bought a 7x7, A tent, and 
that served for several years, when I had a chance to 
buy a 9x9 wall tent and sold the other. The skiff, 
which might have cost a matter of $3, beside my 
labor, served me well for several years, sailing well and 
rowing easily. About eighteen years ago, Forest and 
Stream published the lines of a "Forest and Stream" 
cruiser, and about that time "Canoe and Boat Building" 
was running in the paper, so I read up a little on boat 
building and started in to build a new boat. 
I . was then working in an office, as I have been since, 
and could only work on the boat evenings in comfort- 
able weather, as the stable loft where I set it up did not 
allow a fire. In due time I had a boat 14ft. long, 4^/2 ft. 
wide, rein, deep midships and i6in. at the bow, decked 
over except a cockpit, 2]/ 2 by 5ft., with a low coariring. 
The centerboard was hung in the usual manner, and 
came up through the deck. A pole mast and balance lug 
sail of 100 square feet with two reefing battens, high 
rowlocks with sockets screwed to blocks on the deck, 
and three 8ft. oars completed the sailing and rowing 
outfit. The spare oar came in handy more than once. 
The boat is still in commission and apparently as tight 
and seaworthy as when new. For sailing and cruising 
only, a deeper boat with more sheer might be better, but 
I-94w-well satisfied with it as it is. The boat would hardly 
be rated a beauty, but we remember the old adage, 
"Handsome is as handsome does," and call it "good 
enough for the Joneses," as Kingfisher used to say. 
"When the boat was new, I was sailing through Squam 
River down in Gloucester, and a cottager on the shore 
wanted to know what kind of a boat I called it. I told 
him the Nonesuch. He laughed and said, "I guess that 
is about right." So I named her the Nonesuch. 
In the days of the open skiff and the A tent, sleeping 
on salt hay on the ground was the usual practice, but 
sometimes we failed to get hay, and a rubber, blanket 
had to do duty. With the larger boat and wall tent, and 
the owner getting older, though still feeling pretty 
young, we added some luxuries for the camp, the chief 
one being a cot bed. To carry provisions, spare clothing, 
cooking utensils, etc., I had two boxes about 2 feet long, 
as large as would slide under the deck to forward end of 
centerboard, and two others of the same length, but 
larger, to : push under against them and project into the 
cockpit to take the rowing seat. A square box going 
partly under the stern deck made the skipper's seat, and 
with tent, blankets, and overcoats folded and piled .on 
them, we had two very comfortable seats, each wide 
enough for two. When making a temporary camp we 
could set up the cot bed on the long boxes, two under 
each end, and one rainy night when I camped alone on 
the salt marsh, I found it about the proper thing, and as 
quiet a "night before the Fourth" as I ever experienced. 
In the permanent camp we set a wide board edgewise 
under each end of the bed, keeping them upright with tent 
pins driven on each side, and could then slide all the 
boxes under the bed out of the way. The cot was made 
by tacking a stout piece of canvas about 42m. wide on 
3 by 3 spruce pieces with slots or mortises cut in the 
ends to take %m. spreaders, 6in. wide, with shoulders to 
keep the sides in place. A slat lengthwise under the can- 
vas, the ends resting on the spreaders, kept the canvas 
from sagging in the middle, and a tick filled with salt 
hay made a good bed for two. Knocking out the 
spreaders, the bed and extra slat could be rolled up and 
carried under the side deck. The stove was a sheet-iron 
affair made to fit one of the boxes, bottom up, or top 
down, as it had no bottom, and the box could then , be 
filled with cooking utensils, funnel, etc. Cooking utensils 
were picked up at home, and a detachable handle on the 
frying-pan and coffee-kettle made them nest together 
