674 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 4, 1911. 
been expended, and it seemed impossible to go a 
foot further, I asked Jack if he thought we could 
get to the pass ahead of the rams. Said he: 
"Mebbe so; s’posin’ we run a li'l faster. Shil- 
lops is run too.” 
Finally arriving at the summit of the pass we 
found no rams in sight and no new tracks, and 
turning then down along the edge of the glacier 
out on to the high saddle along which we had 
expected them to come, we found that they had 
come haif way out, then turned back and gone 
around on to the other side of Jack’s Mountain. 
This saddle along which we now trailed the rams 
tapered up narrower and narrower, until it finally 
became a mere knife edge with a steep, dizzy 
descent on each side. The unusual exertion of 
the high climb had somewhat wrecked my nerves 
and I found my knees trembling under me a 
good deal, so that while Jack slipped cheerfully 
along this hazardous backbone, I found myself 
obliged to get down on hands and knees, and 
finally at the narrowest place to actually be¬ 
stride it. 
Passing out among the lower cliffs on the 
westerly side of the mountain for some distance 
we finally found night falling so fast as to in¬ 
volve us in the danger of being caught upon the 
mountain for the night, which, shirtless as we 
were, would have been a serious matter. We 
were, therefore, obliged to abandon the sheep 
and return to our shirts, camera and other im¬ 
pedimenta far below. It was pitch dark when 
we arrived at the base of the mountain and 
plunged into the forest of stunted pine which 
filled the bottom of the valley, and for two hours 
we dragged our weary limbs through this tangle, 
slipping into hollows full of moss, finally p ung- 
ing into the icy stream and wading across into 
the dead timber which lay 'between the stream 
and camp. Just at 10 o'clock we dragged our¬ 
selves into the circle of the camp-fire, more dead 
than alive, too exhausted to eat or to do any¬ 
thing else but crawl into our blankets. 
Sept. 3.—I awoke at 4 in the morning, and it 
occurred to me that those four rams had prob¬ 
ably staid on that black mountain all night, and 
that if we hustled back up there we might see 
them before they got out of the country. Na¬ 
poleon volunteered to climb to the top of the 
mountain, a really extremely dangerous and diffi¬ 
cult undertaking, while Jack and I went around 
Napoleon’s glacier up into the pass, and Doctor 
skirted the base of the mountain on the other 
side; all, however, without result. Where were 
the rams of yesterday? They seemed to have 
vanished into thin air; we could find no trail 
anywhere off the mountain, and all this work 
upon the part of the four of us discovered no 
trace of them anywhere on the mountain. We 
concluded that they must have come down 
through the cliffs, crossing the stream and pass¬ 
ing through the head of our little valley over 
into the high barren benches west of camp. 
Just as we finished supper, Deputy Game War¬ 
den Joe Russell blew into camp in quick march¬ 
ing order, with only one pack horse, on his 
rounds through the game country to chase out 
poaching Indians from the north, and see that 
hunting parties did not have too many ptarmigan 
feathers around camp. His particular job is to 
put the fear of King George into the hearts of 
the Chilcotin Indians, who by way of a summer 
vacation come down from the north into the 
Lilooet sheep country to shoot ground hogs, and 
get a change from caribou meat to mowitch and 
sheep. The Chilcotins and the Suslaps are long¬ 
time enemies of the Lilooets, and in the old days 
contested the possession of these hunting grounds 
without any help from King George. At present 
their hostilities are confined to the occasional 
running off of a horse, or similar deviltry. 
Sept. 4.—We gave Joe Russell letters and tele¬ 
grams for home, for him to send out upon his 
return to Lilooet about Sept. 15, and started on 
a side trip to the Castle Mountain country with 
Jack and Napoleon, leaving Doctor and Joe Rus¬ 
sell to fatten up in camp. No small mountain 
camp could be more beautiful than the one the 
two boys made on this side trip, near a little 
stream ten miles from Castle Mountain, with a 
SHOEING WHITEY. 
fine park full of grass for the horses and a nice 
little bunch of smail-sized mountains all around. 
Sept. 5.—Off at daybreak for all day on horse¬ 
back across the tops of high mountain benches, 
barren and windy. In crossing one of the 
benches we saw away off a blackish object ap¬ 
parently digging in the earth, which at first 
glance appeared to be a grizzly bear, but upon 
careful study with the g'asses seemed to be an 
Indian, and upon closer examination proved to 
be a little old dried-up Chilcotin klutchman, with 
her small Indian horse out on a groundhog hunt. 
She had a couple of marmots slung on the sadd’e 
and was digging out one which had been trapped. 
She was inconceivably filthy from head to foot, 
and apparently deaf, for she could make noth¬ 
ing of Jack's conversation, but grunted her dis¬ 
satisfaction and made faces when I took her 
photograph. Jack says: “Some pig ain’ so bad, 
but smell ’m Chilcotin camp. Ugh!” 
Late in the afternoon, when Jack and I had 
left the horses with Napoleon and climbed 
around over the back of a bare mountain to 
look for sheep, we came down suddenly upon a 
three-year-old mule deer which had gone up into 
this high place to escape the flies. My lack of 
experience with the magazine rifle action and 
double set triggers resulted in my making a mess 
of the shooting, but we did finally get him down 
and were all mighty glad of the prospect of some 
fresh meat. The horns were in the velvet, the 
coat red and shedding. 
Sept. 6.—From daylight to dark, easterly to¬ 
ward Castle Mountain and back. Saw a three- 
year-old ram, too small to shoot, and we could 
not shoot him anyway, for he saw us first. Jack’s 
horse, Johnny, got mired down to the belly in 
a little glacial moraine, and we had a time get¬ 
ting him out. We took his saddle off, and by 
tying our picket ropes to his under legs managed 
to turn him clear over so that his feet pointed 
down the slant of the moraine. Then by fasten¬ 
ing the other two horses on to his neck with the 
picket ropes, Jack pulled him along in front, 
while Napoleon encouraged him from behind, 
and he finally escaped, plastered with mud from 
his ears down. 
At every ridge we come to, the horses are left 
below, and we all three poke our noses over the 
ridge and search the country ahead with the 
glasses for signs of sheep. Napoleon has a pair 
of old steamboat glasses of about the vintage 
of 1849, of which he is very proud, and which 
magnify about as much as a glass tumbler. When 
he gets them screwed up to his little brown face 
he looks like a man trying to drink out of two 
quart bottles at once. 
Late in the afternoon we met an old Suslap 
buck riding along with a newly killed mowitch 
behind his saddle, and from an extended con¬ 
versation with him, in which he spoke parts of 
five or six languages, including some Chinese, 
Jack managed to learn that he was a member 
of the family to which the old woodchuck trap¬ 
ping grandmother belonged. It is curious to find 
Chinese words, and occasionally Chinese slant 
eyes, among these Northern Indians, just as one 
does so frequently among the Mexican peons in 
the Sierra Madre of Sonora and Chihuahua. 
The Chinese have been washing gold on the 
creeks of British Columbia ever since 1848. 
Sept. 7.—There is no royal road to sheep. We 
have topped Castle Mountain and every other 
high thing around this part of the world, have 
seen thousands of tracks and numerous drop¬ 
pings, particularly on the very top of Castle 
Mountain, where behind one of its wind-swept 
chimneys the sheep dung is over a foot deep. 
This must have been, and perhaps still is, a favor¬ 
ite watch tower for the old rams. But not a ram 
can we find, and to-morrow we will go to Jack's 
Valley again. 
Sept. 8.—Back from Castle Mountain, taking 
up the venison cached at our camp in the little 
park, and through Osborn’s Pass to our main 
camp at noon time. Saw three stags as we came 
through the pass, but Jack vetoed shooting. 
Doctor has a deer hung up and a lot of venison 
smoking. The weather, which has been more or 
less rainy for two days, is clearing up. 
Sept. 9.—Jack and I left camp early on horse¬ 
back, crossing the valley and climbing to the sum¬ 
mit of Osborn’s Pass. Here we turned the 
horses over to Napoleon, who went on down 
