930 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. io, 1910. 
every vantage point to carefully spy out the 
country with our glasses; so that our progress 
was slow. 
Up the valley we went, toward its head, where 
it was closed by a rock wall which formed a 
sort of bridge between two high peaks. The 
valley narrowed and its sides became walls of 
unscalable rock, towering a couple of thousand 
feet above us. Suddenly we heard rocks fall¬ 
ing, that sound for which the mountain hunter 
learns to continually listen, and with his glasses 
Bill saw seven ewes and lambs rapidly disappear¬ 
ing up the rough mountain side far out of range. 
While looking for this band I saw another of 
ten or twelve rams. I could only see one at .a 
time as they passed in front of a large rock i,oco 
yards away and high above us. After they had 
thus passed in review, they disappeared behind 
the rocks, although the continuous falling of 
stones showed that they were still climbing. Un¬ 
fortunately they were to leeward, had both seen 
and scented us and we knew it would be use¬ 
less to try to follow them. Worse yet, this was 
the band of sheep we were expecting to find in 
the canon beyond the bridge wall, as we learned 
when we reached the top and saw their tracks 
on the glacier beyond. The climb up the bridge 
wall was very difficult, the angle of the slope 
being fully 60 degrees, and the footing consist¬ 
ing of rocks of all sizes, each loose and ready to 
roll. It was evidently the moraine of an old 
glacier, and presented 800 or 1,000 feet of the 
worst climbing on the whole trip. 
The tennis shoes I was wearing proved much 
better for such work than my heavy hobnailed 
boots, being light and gripping smooth rocks 
much more securely. Hobnails I found all right 
for everything except smooth rock, but on the 
latter they have a habit of shooting out from 
under one like roller skates. Bill wore two pairs 
of buckskin moccasins, which are undoubtedly 
the best dry weather footwear for the moun¬ 
tains, but though I have found moccasins very 
comfortable in the forest, the sharp stones of 
the mountains make them torture for the literal 
tenderfoot. Tennis shoes have many of their 
advantages, and yet have soles stiff enough to 
prevent hurt. I had moccasins and shoepacks in 
my outfit, not knowing just what would be best, 
but I soon found that the latter were so slip¬ 
pery on grassy slopes as to be impossible, and 
that I should have brought two or three pairs 
of tennis shoes, as their great disadvantage is 
that a very few days of such work cuts them 
all to pieces. The shoepacks, however, were 
handy and comfortable about camp, especially in 
wet weather, and should certainly be included in 
one’s outfit. 
At the top of the bridge wall, which was 
merely a knife edge, we found ourselves over¬ 
looking a great glacier which sloped smoothly 
down at an angle of about 30 degrees for half 
a mile. At its foot it ran out on a series of 
benches, walled in by high cliffs, and green with 
grass; ideal places for sheep. However, a care¬ 
ful survey through our glasses confirmed the 
evidence of tracks on the glacier that the sheep 
we had seen had moved up from this place, leav¬ 
ing none behind. The glacier was covered with 
soft snow, and being apparently free from fis¬ 
sures, offered a temptingly easy way to descend, 
of which we took advantage, sliding to the bot¬ 
tom with ease in grateful comparison to the diffi¬ 
culties of the ascent. 
On all the benches we found fresh sheep signs, 
including many beds, showing that it was a 
favorite spot for them, and that but for an un¬ 
fortunate accident of some sort which had driven 
them up and over the bridge wall, we would 
have had a chance at them. However, under the 
circumstances, there was no use hunting this 
mountain again for some time. 
Our next move was into a high notch or valley 
eight miles further north to a spot beside a tur¬ 
bulent glacial creek just above timber line at an 
altitude of about 7,500 feet. On our way we 
crossed a pass at about 9,000 feet with a bad 
descent and no trail, but our horses managed it 
all right, and no horses had ever been there be¬ 
fore. This, however, became a common thing, 
as nearly all our later wanderings were in places 
never trod by the foot of horses and rarely by 
that of a white man. 
To the north rose a high peak with ridges radi¬ 
ating from it, between two of which our camp 
lay, and our next hunt was over and around this 
mountain. Bill had promised a hard day, and 
his promise did not fail of fulfillment. We as¬ 
cended the little valley, and after a stiff climb 
of 1,500 feet rise, found ourselves on a knife 
edge with a magnificent glacier stretching from 
our feet as far as we could see, filling the whole 
vailey, till in the far distance a rock wall arose 
and the valley turned to the left. On our way 
up we had seen one lonesome ewe watching us 
from the sky line, and were full of hopes of 
finding rams. We stopped on the summit of the 
divide to watch a fioclc of ptarmigan, beautiful 
in the brown and whits of their fall plumage, 
and then made our way cautiously „down the 
glacier. We slid and walked down for some¬ 
thing over a mile, sounding our way with our 
sticks and jumping some small crevasses, but at 
length these became so numerous and so wide 
that we took to the rocks at the side where the 
glacier butted up against the almost sheer wall 
of the valley. A nasty bit of rock work, over 
rocks slippery with ice, finally brought us to bet¬ 
ter footing, and we reached the moraine beyond 
the turn. This mass of rocks filled the valley 
where we stood, and gradually narrowing, sloped 
down several miles till it finally was hidden by 
the growth of brush. On the south side of the 
valley' the talus rose 500 feet at an angle of 
about 60 degrees and the sheer cliffs towered a 
thousand feet or more above. On the north a 
narrow bench rose above the creek and extended 
to a high grassy ridge. In the distance and many 
hundreds of feet below where we stood sparse 
wind-bent clumps of hardy balsam showed the 
timber line, and far beyond that the valley seemed 
suddenly to drop away and the snow-clad tops 
of many mountains showed white against the 
blue sky. 
As we stood admiring the magnificent view, 
the one thing lacking to make it perfect ap¬ 
peared. Far below 11s, by the side of the little 
glacial stream, a big mule-deer stag wandered 
into view, feeding leisurely on the grassy spots. 
Watching him through our glasses we finally saw 
him lie down behind a rock, and immediately be¬ 
gan our stalk. Taking advantage of the ample 
cover offered by the big rocks and avoiding the 
least noise, which was much more difficult, we 
gradualE reduced the distance until finally we 
saw his horns projecting above a rock 200 yards 
away. We had reached the last available cover, 
and did not dare attempt a nearer approach, so 
I made ready and Bill threw down a big stone, 
the noise of which brought the stag to his feet. 
As he rose facing us I pulled the trigger, and 
my .33 soft point bullet ranged down through 
his back, breaking his spine. As he staggered 
round broadside I shot him through the heart. 
We hurried down and found, as Bill had said 
from the first, that he was an unusually fine 
specimen, with fourteen points and twenty-six 
inch spread. Bill declared it was the best head 
taken in the Lillooet district in ten years, and 
Bonaparte later broke through his Indian sto¬ 
lidity to ejaculate over and over again “Skookum 
mowitch, skookum mowitch,” meaning “big 
deer.” The horns were still in the velvet, but 
hard and fully grown. As it was my first mule 
deer, I was much interested in examining him. 
He had the long mule ears and black tipped tail 
so characteristic of his species and weighed, as 
nearly as we could estimate, 350 pounds. 
After skinning him and removing the head and 
entrails, we cached the meat under some big 
rocks, with the icy stream trickling beneath the 
stones on which it was laid, a natural refrigera¬ 
tor, and carried the head and skin down to the 
first tree where we hung them up, purposing to 
move our camp into this valley the following 
day. We took one tenderloin with us, tied on 
Bill's back by the fringe strings of his buckskin 
shirt. Then we started for camp. 
It would be hard to paint the details of that 
return in colors vivid enough to give an idea of 
the work cut out for us the next five hours. Up 
the precipitous cliff, forming the south wall of 
the valley, we struggled, utilizing little stretches 
of goat trails when we could, across this ridge, 
down into canons and up the other sides, and 
finally, when we were nearing camp, a climb of 
a thousand feet of bad rock work to get above 
a cliff whose face we could not cross. The foot¬ 
ing all the way was bad; broken stone, shale, 
lava, gravel, all in turn and none at a less angle 
than 45 degrees. While climbing up one par¬ 
ticularly bad place we saw a young ram near the 
sky line about a mile above us, but the wind in 
his favor. Further on we saw a band of six 
ewes. 
A Whale Bombardment. 
San Diego, Cal., Dec. 1. — Editor Forest and 
.Stream: It is a new feature in the experience 
of the men of the Navy to figure as sportsmen, 
but this was their experience a few days ago 
while the cruiser fleet was anchored off the mouth 
of the Tia Juana River, Mexico. 
A shoal of whales appeared early in the morn¬ 
ing, and from San Diego their phosphorescent 
spoutings looked like a display of electric foun¬ 
tains as they glistened in the darkness. Quick as 
a flash the marksmen turned their Hotchkiss 
4-4’s, mounted within the eight-inch rifles, upon 
the sportive visitors, anad pelted them with bul¬ 
lets until the sea was in a seething turmoil. Con¬ 
trary to expectations, the whales stayed with the 
leaden hail, appearing to relish the tickling sen¬ 
sation of the tiny pellets. 
The Hotchkiss bullets would tear a man right 
open, but to the whales there seemed to be noth¬ 
ing but a delicious scratching effect. Every time 
a gun crew “rang a bullseye,” cheers sounded 
forth from the ships, and the gunner, forbidden 
to notch the Navy guns, would cut a notch in a 
target stick which was quickly adapted to the 
emergency. J. E. Garbutt. 
