With Goats and Sheep in British 
Columbia.—111. 
The next day dawned bright, clear and cool 
and on the hills above us could be seen a slight 
powdering of snow, indicating that what had 
been rain with us had been snow on the moun¬ 
tains further back. As the sun rose higher 
this snow began to disappear and the ground 
grew dry, and soon after breakfast, having 
picketed the horses so that they could not wan¬ 
der, the Youngster, Baptiste and I set out to 
climb the hills to try to learn something about 
the country. The way was steep and for a 
time little could be seen except the yellow 
rounded hills on either side of the valley and 
the pines above. When we entered the forest, 
however, the ascent became more gradual. The 
woods were open, with little underbush, yet the 
bare ground scarcely showed; for almost every¬ 
where grew the tiny huckleberry bushes so com¬ 
mon in the mountains of the Western country, 
bushes whose fruit is not blue, but is a very 
small and sweet red berry, greatly relished by 
all the birds. 
This is a favorite food of the blue grouse, 
and in regions where this bird is abundant one 
can hardly enter a patch of these huckleberries 
without finding a brood—a mother and a dozen 
young ones—feeding on them. I was not sur¬ 
prised, therefore, to come upon such a family 
group here. The young ones were of good size, 
almost as large it seemed to me as ruffed grouse, 
but they were absolutely gentle and unsuspicious 
and permitted us to walk up close to them with¬ 
out manifesting the slightest alarm. These 
were the first blue grouse the Youngster had 
ever seen, and very likely he never before had 
been so close to a wild game bird. He was 
greatly interested and asked a multitude of 
questions and we took advantage of this in¬ 
terest to sit down on a fallen tree trunk and 
smoke a pipe, while he watched the birds as 
they walked about and fed on the berries, call¬ 
ing constantly to one another. It was interest¬ 
ing to see—when one of the birds became sepa¬ 
rated from its fellows—the uneasiness that it 
displayed when it discovered that it was ap¬ 
parently alone. Baptiste took no special interest 
in the birds, but in answer to my question he 
said that they never saw them in the winter and 
did not know what became of them. 
“Maybe,” he said, “they spend all the time 
in the big trees.” As soon as the weather be¬ 
gins to get warm and the grass starts, the males 
and the females are often seen on the ground. 
Leaving the grouse, for a time we kept on 
our way through the timber, always moving up 
the hill. Here and there under the trees we 
found small patches of rapidly melting snow, 
and in the soft earth or in the beautiful green 
moss, which grew in low places where water 
evidently sometimes stood or ran, we could see 
the fresh tracks of deer, several of which had 
passed through the timber during the morning. 
Before long the woods before us grew lighter 
and it was evident that we were coming to open 
country, and a little later we came out on to 
a treeless prairie which rose gradually to two 
high mountains a few miles ahead of us. Here 
the ground was wet, for the snow had but just 
melted, while on the mountains the white cover¬ 
ing reached down to their bases. Looking at 
the sun I could see that it was past noon, so 
that we could travel for a couple of hours 
longer and still reach camp before dark. We 
set out, therefore, in the direction of the moun¬ 
tains to see what, if anything, we could learn 
about them. 
We were going along at a brisk pace, Bap¬ 
tiste somewhat in the lead, when without warn¬ 
ing he stopped, held up his hand and gradually 
sank to the ground, and then crept back a little 
way. 
“Mowitch,” he whispered, and signed that we 
should get in closer to the edge of the timber, 
which was not far from us, and then he ex¬ 
plained that just beyond a point of the timber 
he had seen a deer. Under his leadership we 
worked up to the point and entering the woods 
looked out from the other side of the point 
and saw before us a beautiful group of mule 
deer absolutely unconscious of our presence. 
Most of the does and young animals were lying 
down, some of them with heads erect chewing 
the cud, others with their heads turned about 
and lying on their flanks, while others still, 
rested their heads on the ground in front of 
them, apparently asleep. Three or four young 
bucks were wandering about, occasionally taking 
a nip of grass or weed, but acting as if they, 
too, were soon going to lie down and take a 
siesta. There was no specially good head 
among the animals and as we already had half 
a deer in the camp, I suggested to the Young¬ 
ster that it was hardly worth while to shoot at 
these, and that he had better postpone securing 
his mule deer trophy until a later date, when 
some big head might be found. Rather reluc¬ 
tantly, as I thought, he assented to this and 
after we had spent a few moments watching 
the deer, we withdrew without disturbing them, 
and going back through the point of timber set 
out again over the hills. Looking back, after 
we had gone far enough to have come in sight 
of the deer, we could see those that were stand¬ 
ing up watching Us with ears thrown forward 
and an appearance of some curiosity, but before 
we had passed out of sight they had ceased to 
look and we left them still unfrightened. 
Two hours of brisk walking brought us to 
the very base of the nearer of the two moun¬ 
tains and there, somewhat to our surprise, we 
found the remains of a camp that had evidently 
been occupied during the summer. A shelter 
had been built of spruces, which were yet green, 
as were also the branches that the people had 
pulled for their beds. This showed clearly 
enough that the occupants of the camp were 
white men, and before very long we found 
other evidence of this in the shape of discarded 
bits of clothing, which would have been worn 
only by some hunting party which had come 
from some civilized community. 
As the sun drew toward the west, it became 
time for us to start back on our long walk to 
camp if we wished to get there before dark. 
This was a matter of some importance, for it 
was not certain that in the dark we would be 
able to find camp. It is an easy matter, when 
a hundred ridges all looking much alike run 
down from a hillside, to strike the wrong one 
and to wander about indefinitely before finding 
out just where you are. Baptiste suggested 
that in returning we could make a little cut¬ 
off and pursue a straighter route than the one 
followed in the morning. His advice seemed 
good and although the country was unknown 
to him we trusted much to his aboriginal bump 
of locality, and our confidence was not mis¬ 
placed. He led us back by a very direct route 
to the place where we had come out of the 
timber, and in the timber it was not difficult to 
follow our own trail directly back to camp. The 
sun had set, however, before we got out of 
the timber, but as soon as we reached the steep 
grassy hill at its edge we could see our animals 
feeding on the hillside. 
It was clear that if we were going to hunt 
these mountains we could not do it by walking 
every day from camp. What we should have 
to do would be to pack an animal with our beds 
and a little food and go up to the foot of the 
mountains and camp there for one, two or three 
days, or as long as might seem advisable. It 
was possible, of course, that by looking about 
we might be able to find a place where the hill 
was less steep and where we could ride our 
horses up to the higher ground, in which case 
the whole train might be taken. Otherwise it 
would be necessary to leave Baptiste with a 
part of the train and for the Youngster and 
myself to go up and make the hunt alone. I 
much preferred, however, to have Baptiste and 
all the animals under my own eye. Not that 
I did not have confidence in the Indian, but that 
he would be useful to us in camp, while if we 
left him down below we should have to do our 
own work, including cooking and the gather¬ 
ing of wood, neither of which is a great task, 
but sometimes an unwelcome one, when one 
reaches camp at the end of a long hard day, 
tired, hungry and wet. 
Early next morning, therefore, the Youngster 
and I, with Baptiste, were in the saddle, search¬ 
ing for a practicable trail up the hill. This we 
found, more easily than I had hoped, in a game 
trail which clambered up the side of the ridge 
on which we were camped, and by a reason¬ 
ably easy ascent reached the more level tim¬ 
bered slope above us. The trail seemed to be 
used by many animals. In it I saw old bear 
tracks and a multitude of those of the deer and 
not a few sheep tracks; in fact, so well worn 
was the trail that I told Baptiste that I believed 
that somewhere down on the lower ground 
there must be a salt lick visited by the deer 
and the sheep of the upper country. I was not 
surprised to hear him say that he believed that 
this was true and that in many places in the 
bluffs along the river were spots where the 
