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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmds en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaltra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole — ^ signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds A des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est filmd d partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. i 1 2 3 ! ■ t : ' 2 3 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. BY CLI\ E PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY, F.R.d.S . Late Brifinh Vice-Comul at Kertck, AUTHOK OK ' SPOKT IN THE CKIMEA AND CAUCASUS,' ' HAVAOK 8VANETIA,' KTC. LONDON: RICHARD BENT LEY AND SON, iJttbliahera in (Oritnari) to Wtt ^ajeatfi the (Jittttn. 1888. \s CONTENTS. LETTER I. A :Sfontroal hotel— The journey out— Sea-sickness— The St. Lawrence -Montreal in winter— A queer dentist— Base-ball LETTER IL Plattsburg- Hotel life— Lakes George and Champlain-A thousand ishuids— Fort William Henry hotel-A lake-side walk— The scenery — Fishing— Glen Falls— The races — Shamus O'Brien— Luggage charges — Saratoga — A night walk k; LETTER IIL Lawn-teunis- Ottawa, or ' Lumber-town '—The Parliament Buildings— Ottawa gay, and sleeping— Pioneer life— Scenes from the Pullman- Nipissing— Through Trapper Land— Ojibbeway redskins— The forests— An 'improver !'— Cartier to Heron Bay— Angling-Winnipeg lands-Saskatchewan— Climbing the Rockies— Across the Selkirks— A returnin-r emigrant— Women's rights— ' Through still Avaters '— Vic°- *o"a 28 LETTER IV. Princetown-Sport-Vancouver-AtHope-A Siwash postman — Hope society— Outfit— Estimates— ' Along the track'— Fly-fishing- Hope Mountains-Grouse— Face to face with a grizzly— A sensational predicament— A victory— Local game stories 4G V5 VI CONTENTS. YS m lett;:r v. Pask-tra'n travelling — Incomparable foliage — An adventure- Camping in the dark — A. bad hulf-hour — Tracking truants — Similkameen Ra iiiliing — Packing trade — Mule-trains — 'Washing for gold '~A jioliceman'a career — A pioneer's home — Indiin bear-stories—A capital drive — Nine-mile Creek — Want of cultivation — I'otato patches and graveyards— A cactus joke— Another camp - - LETTER YI. Camp of the winds — Little Tommy — 'Ciching' luggage— A derelict brandy-bottle — Sporting irregularities — Four big- horn— A climb — Cold and snow — A miserable night — A whisky stimulant— A bad Indian — Our servauts' dignities - FAUK 03 83 I LETTER VIL Following deer — Views from camp— A deceptive rifle — Toma's first English— Mount lin rams— Another miss-fire — Taking to a Winchester— ' Pu:niaskot of '^rout — Oil a ba2 LETTER XV. Indian fairy-tales— In cow-market — About Tumisco — His adventures— The story of Kee-Keo-Was— The story of Sour- grub — Sense, from Loo-loo-hoo-loo — Smothering invalids — Funeral feasts— i. child's ' wake '— Waste of goods —The fear of ghosts— Paying debts of the deceased - - - - 1,'>8 1^ Vlll CONTENTS. LETTKU XVI. I'.Mt FarowcU, ShniniiR — Pcrusinij a guide-book— Arousing illuHtrn- tions— From Sanitoga to the Illuo Mountains — On the coach — A change in the programme— Entered for 'hounding' — The necessaries — Posted out— Interesting M'ork— The plan of operutions— How the hounds behave — An Ayrshire re- miniscence— Leo Harris the angler — Daubing his boat with molasses— The Adirondacks— Want of dose-times - - 171 LETTER XVIL Life in Victoria — The Celestials — Fushicns and amusements — Invitations- Descrip' ion of the tow.i — A naval otlicer's ex- perience with a panther — Looking for a house — A boating picnic— Salmon- Hshing — Uame-tinding in the forest — The atmosphere of Victoria - IHl i III LETTER XVIIL On the Canadian Pacific— A conductor's warning-An Iiish omnibus-driver — Rumours of moose — The first time without sun — ' No-raatter-where'— ACanadian Whiteley's— A courtly manager — Plenty of credit — No bad debts — Arrival of Jocko — A cart expedition — Jocko's life — Lumberers— Small farms — Dense woods — A French Canadian trapper — Daikness and the camp — A last look into the forest — Going moose-hunting — A miracle of beauty — Blondin-like exertions — Jocko's perseverance — Disappointment— Seven miles from camp — A tiring day — Alarmed by wolves — * No-matter-whcre ' better than Brighton - - - - - - - - -191 LETTER XIX. Story of two moose-heads — How they were obtained — Plenty of snow — White-tail tracks — On the scent of a bull moose — An ideal scene— Lean meat and hunting — The value of fat — Rewarded at last — One of Nature's first-born — A second day's wanderings — A fusillade — Dead beat — Two bulls brought low — Moose-hunting for legislators — One more day — A major's amusing story --..--- 21 r. CONTENTS. IX LETTER XX. n>'Iourn for a few years, devoured all the time by a ye«vui„g fo^. ^j^^ ancestral graveyard, and xu INTRODUCTION. ! determined at all costs, dead or alive, to return to China. An Englishman not only takes his wife with him when he emigrates, but generally goes to stay. This being so, I felt it my duty to write for both sexes, and as I have very little knowledge of what ladies like, I took my wife with me, and have incorporated her letters to n girl-friend in the same book with letters of mine to a brother limb of the law in England. There may be, I hope, a few letters froii others of our party, who separated from us at one point or another in our journey across America. If the}'- keep their promises and write, I shall give you ^he benefit of their experi- ences, warning you that in all cases, though I am responsible for all literary sins within these covers, the writer of each letter is responsible for the opinions therein expressed. It was at the end of the last London season that our little party got together and booked for Montreal by the Dominion Line. The tennis- lawns of Montgomeryshire had grown brown and dry, and drier and more parched were the bodies and brains of the husbands and brothers in London, to whom certain Montgomeryshire ladies suggested an autumn in Canada. The papers had been full of rumours of the great new line which Russia is threatening to •if i hi' INTRODUCTION. xm m build across Siberia to the Pacific ; of reports of the great new hne which the British have built across their Siberia from Montreal to Vancouver. It is an interesting race, this race of the Teuton and the Slav for the Pacific, and we all wanted to see as much of our share of the course as possible before all this new North-West of ours shall have become trite and conunoni)lace as a London suburb. We knew that the same causes had been at work driving each of these great colonizing nations forward to the same great peaceful ocean; that religious persecution had driven the English to New England, the Russian to the Caucasus and Siberia ; gold had enticed the Russian to the Ourals, gold had attracted the Briton to British Columbia; that the Hudson Bay trappers had followed beaver and marten ever further and further west, while his Cossack rival had followed the fur-bearing beast ever further and further to the east ; we had grown interested in this march of rival nations towards a common goal, led as they are b3' descendants from the same old sea-kino- stock whether through Rurik, or our Willkm the Conqueror ; and, stirred possibly by some tinj- leaven of the old wandering blood, which is every Englishman's inheritance, we gave ready ear to the persuasions of our fiiir friends, and IIT>- XIV INTRODUCTION. were so amply rewarded, that I dare to lioj^e even tliese poor sketches of our wanderings may be interestinjnf to those who have not vet had time to look at England's great North-West for themselves, or to take toll of the big game of Canada before it has all been driven out and rei)laeed by * bleating idiotic sheep ' and lowing herds. I have added to the story of our wanderings a few words (or my wife has for me) about British Columbia as a land to live in, for I hear, on trustworthy authority, that there are more English gentlemen (retired soldiers and others) asking for information about our most wes^^ern towns in America this year than over before, and almost every number of the Field which I take up contains some inquiiy a^ "th regard to British Columbia. Whether Vancouver, the town, or Victoria, the cai)ital of Vinicouver Island, becomes the nucleus of the English population on our Pacific coast, it seems to me that the degree of England's influence on the Pacific depends a great deal upon the class of emiorants we send out there now, and if there is added to the ofreat mass of Ensflish muscle and energy which the mines nuist atti-act in the next few years a projiortion of the more ])olished elements of English society, I venture to think INTRODUCTION. \\ it will bo well for British Columbia, well for the emigrants, and well for England. Others have written carefully of Canada, town P TV-f ^r ■''"■'"*' ''"^' (*« Canadian 1 acihc Railway), ste]) by step ; I only offer you -' couj, dceal of the country as a whole, as you ™ght see ,t if you could spare time yourself to flit through It this autumn. If you like the sketch I give you, take my advice ; go and see the original for yourself. C. P. w. i I h fi fi; A SPORTSMA]!f'S EDEK •o<-o« LETTER I. Typical Hotel, Montreal, -n T ^<^P^' 6, 1887. Dear Lena, At last I have a few minutes in which to rest and write to you. The long dinner with Its many courses of quaintly-named dishes is over and the men of our party have gone off, they say, to smoke ; but I shrewdly suspect their search is rather for those stimulants which the Yankees deny them at dinner, than for the inno- cent cigarette. This should be the cosiest hour of the day but here nothing is cosy ; it is all too big and bare and brassy. How can one settle down in a tea-gown and shppers in a room with only bi- furniture in it (no knick-knacks), bare walls, no tii-e, and not even a fireplace ? The whole hotel A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. is, to my mind, something between a palace and a prison, gorgeous as the one and stift' and chilling as the other. It seems impossible to give the rooms that air of comfort peculiarly dear to a woman's heart ; but in sober truth there is nothing feminine about them. Why, if I ring for a chambermaid, I am answered by a bell- boy. An American hotel may be the ideal hotel of business men, who love places studded with electric knobs and hung with telephones, but it is not suited to the cat-like comfort-loving nature of our sex. You guessed, I suppose, from my recent silence that I had won the day with * ce cher mari ' of mine, and persuaded him to take me with him on his wild-goose chase to America. By the way, I fancy there is a letter wrong there ; the animal we are to pursue spells its name with an * m ' and not with a * g,' and Lena dear, * we ' are to pursue it ; you, perhaps, don't take in all that this means at first, but you will by-and-by. It means that I am to follow this monster of mine through pine-forests and snowy wastes, cook his food and clean his rifle, and, as he says, * make myself generally useful,' instead of fooling the dollars away in the towns. At first, of course, I felt inclined to resist. Even in politics they always have an opposition, and married life I in' LETTER I. ilence ,ri ' of him the the th an we ' in all d-by. er of astes, says, )oling it, of >litics dlife requires more to enliven it than even politics. Eventually we agreed to a peace with honour, of which the terms were, for me, a visit to all the chief towns of Canada, including Victoria, in British Columbia, and a week on Lakes George and Chamj)lain, America's great holiday resorts, and a peep at Saratoga. After that I agreed to sink into the squaw and camp out. You may think I was mad to undertake so mu(ih. At any rate, you will look on me as the pioneer of my sex in this wild life. Xot at all so, little woman. Even I, in my limited knowledge of the great world, have heard of one Englishwoman who has followed the colonel, her husband, over Hima- layan snows and through the deep jungles of the Terai to see specimens of almost all the shyest and fiercest of India's great beasts of forest and mountain fall to his rifle, while another English lady even now camps annually on the peaks of frosty Caucasus. Up to the present, you will observe from the post-mark, we have only got to Montreal, and have hardly learned to walk with comfort on terra firma. It was the very end of August before I could tear my lord and master (?) away from those dim and cobwebbed chambers in which he and his law-books dwell. We started at nifrht. peoph gome 1- I 1 1 1 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. m journey always should do, making sure of a long day for final preparations, and a (juiot comfortable dinner before making the plunge. Even at the outset, the contrasts were striking. One moment you were rattlinij alonijf beneath the thousand lamps of London, through all the stir and noise of its many wheels and million voices, and as it were the next, the panting of the engine was the only sound you heard as you glided through newly-shorn harvest-fields, calm and still, and white with the dew of dawn. Here and there my husband pointed out the vanishing brown wings of a covey of partridges which our train had frightened off the line, and then we pulled up suddenly at Liverpool. This is one of the most uncomfortable stages of the journey ; you arrive at Liverpool too early. If after long seeking you find an hotel, it is in deshabille still. The chambermaids in curl- papers are on the stairs, and the waiter looks as if he had only just been roused from a slee]) beneath the table. If you visit the ship in which you are to sail, you will find her, too, in curl- papers and the chief steward in an execrable temper. Poor fellow ! he has confidently counted on seeing none of the passengers for at least an- other four hours, and his nerves are not yet braced for receivino- them. f i '< ! 'I i LETTER I. In spite of tlie unfuvoumblo conditions in which T generally see it, I like Liverpool. It is an amphibious town, and one of uncertain nationality. Its lanij^uairc and manners seem to me to savour almost as strongly of America as its atmosphere does of tarred roj)es and salt water, and there is a freshness and vigour about it which seems to uic more full of hoj)c and energy than the atmo- sj)here of any ordinary English town. But enough of Liverpool. Come on board and be introduced to our fellow-passengers, ' hoi^' > . ' Canadians for the most part, who have bet ' Uy celebrating Her Most Gracious Majcv/ s jubilee in England. Mr. O'Brien, the irreverent Hibernian of our party, calls them ' Jubilee Yanks.' Don't be disapi)ointed, dear ; I really am not going to be even a little bit spiteful about our pretty cousins, for I am fiiin to confess that they won my heart almost as entirely as they did my husband's. But not just at first, Lena, for charity (let alone love) is a somewhat difficult virtue to cul- tivate on board ship towards the young women whose jaunty red hats, blue eyes, and saucy moods have enslaved and carried off the men, whose whole time should be devoted to the arrangement of yoiir wraps and the carriage of ijour beef-tea. They have not yet forgotten. A SPOIiTSMAN'S EDEN. tlioHo fair * Ciumcks,' many of the wilos of their li^reat-j^Tandinuiniuas, nor lost any of tliat pretty art of coquetry wliich those worthy daines im- ported from hi belle France in the seventeenth century. * Irish mavourneens with French man- ners/ one of the men called them ; but though he nmy have been a judge of mavourneens, his knowledge of French, at least Canadian French, api)eared to us at Quebec somewhat limited. My dear, Madame F., the old French governess at the school where you and I were taught, could not herself make those cabmen of Montreal un- derstand either French or English. To return to the ladies ; don't imagine that you will win your way to their hearts by reminding them of any French blood which may be in their veins. On the contraiy, if you intend to carry their affections by storm, mistake them for Avan- derers, like yourself, from the old country. You will soon find that they are more English than the English, and that they * want in the worst way * to persuade you that Canada has no accent and no odd little idioms in her English, and they will * go lio])ping mad ' if you dare to disagree with them. If you read your Queen conscientiously, you will find two queries often repeated with regard to sea- voyages. In various keys the wail is I LETTER T. you repoatofl, })ut the burden is always the same : * How shall I avoid sea-sickness, and what must T wear at dinner?' The second question won't hother you much at first, Lena ; believe me, you won't risk an entry into the bii^ salon, where the stewaixls wobble unsteadily, and the soup descends in a torrent on your shoulders for the first four days. After that, if you come down to dinner you will find nothinof more needed than a morninir- frock with pretty lace fichus and ribbons. As for sea-sickness, you cannot a\ j;d it. None of the remedies api)ear to me to be of any good ; 1 Lit whatever you do, avoid sodium. I don't know that sodium is anyone's patent, so I attack it boldlv, with no fear of an action for libel before my eyes. It is an innocent-looking little white i)owder, which in our case was brought on board by a singularly benevolent-looking little lady, who had been taking it steadily for weeks beforehand. The coffin which the ship's car- penter built for that little lady was fortunately not wanted, but she deserved it. My husband and I chose the St. Lawrence route to Canada, chiefly because it is advertised as the shortest route in open water. So I suji- pose it is, but the St. Lawrence is no duck-pond, and quite capable of bei >o^ rough at times. As to the scenery, I \ as a little disappointed, A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. i»ii but you will say that I have seen too much, and am blaseo. At Kimouski, the first lA'dce at which we touched after leaving Moville, we put a few passengers ashore, losing them and ourselves in a dense fog. Out of the fog, we steamed slowly up a fair broad water-way between two low, gray walls of rock, hard and bare, looking more like the teeth of a trap than the banks of a river. Behind these ice-worn rocks lie low, level lands, stretching back unbroken to the horizon, and so flat that the trees appear to rise from the river-bed. Scores of white cottaores strasc^'le in a disorderly way along the banks, not in separate hamlets, but in one long irregular line. There appear to be no big houses, and no factories. Such as they are now, the white houses have been for generations, and will be for generations to come. The people who inhabit them care not for great things, but ai'c content to remain men of low estate. There was something in the still, broad water- way, level lands, and green stretches of wild- fowl haunted rush and sedges, which, as we drew near Montreal, reminded me of Holland, and a big, broad-sailed boat (the sail absurdly too big for the boat), bearing down upon us through the evening haze, strengthened the impression. LETTER I. tcr- i m fe^ •ew *i .1^ I a big ^ igh Montreal, they say, is an island, but I did not notice this as we drew in to harbour. A mass of spires and lofty buildings seemed to rise from the water, while behind them lay the low hill which bears the proud title of Mount Royal. It is a pretty town from the water ; most towns so seen are ; but when you land at the wharf it is just as if you had travelled only from one dock at Liverpool to another. The same smell of tar and ro})cs ; the same nautical shouting and confusion ; the same blending of Yankee and Britisher, only here there is a third element, more noisy than either — the Fi'ench. You notice, dear, I have gone by the grim old citadel of Quebec without a word. I did so on purpose. One of our many invitations from Canadian friends on board is one to stay at Quebec on our way liome and see the town and town life in winter. This we mean to do, so that you will hear all about Quebec in due season. Of course all Canada should be seen in winter — at least the towns, and especially Montreal, when its glorious ice-palace gleams outside with frosty diamonds, and inside glows with human life and colour ; when sleigh-bells make nuisic in the air, and you feel you are in the very home of dear old Father Christmas, in the land of free frolic and winter revelry. n M 10 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. I! 'HP Summer in Montreal, they say, is too hot for anything but salamanders ; but now, in early autumn, the temperature is perfect, the weather exquisite. Mount Royal is thickly wooded, and just now its woods are bright with colours which would put to shame an English flower-garden. We wandered up it to-day, discoveiing a large colony of beautiful little bungalows and cottages, nestlinof amonof the woods from base to summit. The woodwork and roofs of these cottages are painted in the most gorgeous colours ; but colour- ing which would be offensive elsewhere is here lost sight of in summer and autumn in the bril- liance of the surrounding foliage, and in \vmter stands out a pleasing relief from, and contrast to, the white monotony of the snow. Most of the cottages are empty, and we met scarcely a soul in the pai'k. The Montrealers are away in the big hotels of Saratoga, in the cockney fied sporting-grounds of the Adirondacks, or more wisely in the seclusion of Nepigon and her sister lakes. From the top of the Mount you get a fine view of the rich flat country round the town, if you are not too hot to enjoy it. And, indeed, it was hot. At home we connect Canada in our minds with blizzards and frost-bite, and here LETTER I. II and fine n, if d, it our here were we in September, on the highest point in Montreal, gasping for heat. Even the chip- munks were too hot to chatter, and the water- barrel, with its little tin pannikin, put out on the grass by some benevolent citizen, looked (and was) as dry as a husband's homily on tidiness. There must be some very wealthy people here amongst the 250,000 who make up the popula- tion, for the houses are, some of them, quite magnificent stone structures, with smart grass- plots and ornamental trees round them. As the owners and their servants are away or asleep this hot afternoon, the trees and grass-plots are alive with robins. * Robins,' Lena ! I'll trouble you ! birds, my dear, about as big as domestic fowls, with big red waistcoats and heavy gait, about as much like our smart little birds as a Scotch cook is like a French maid. After ' doing ' the Mount, we walked down Xotre Dame Street and alonsf the lines of the tramcars, to the country outside Montreal. But what ai e the shops like ? I hear ycju ask. Well, dear, there are only two kinds here which would interest you, and if you had such a husband as mine you would not be able to see much of them. What a hurry men always are in when a bonnet-shop is anywhere near ! I have seen my better-half almost steeplechasing over the fT 12 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. perambulators in High Street, Kensington, in his desire to avoid John Barker's pretty windows. The confectioners and the furriers are the shops par excellence in Canada ; and as about half of the shops in the main streets belong to one or other of these classes, we have little to complain of Red foxtail boas, and a silvery moonlit sort of fur, which they call grizzly bear, are amongst the prettiest exhibits in the furriers' windows ; and a box of what the natives call * mallows,' sent to you by this post, will convey some idea of the confectioner's skill to your palate. The men chaff us in a superior kind of way about our taste for sweets, but they forget the beam in their own mouths. I mean the cigar. Don't you think it is simply that to suck some- thing is a necessity of the race ? Both sexes start level on thumbs ; in later life consoling themselves with sucfar or tobacco, accordinsx to sex. The result in both cases is the same — tooth- ache ; and this brings me naturally to a physical trait in our Canadian cousins which is as notice- able as any — I mean their ' golden ' smiles. * A beaux dents fennne n'etait jamais laide,' you know ; but when all nature's pearls are set in gold, how can a woman's smile be anything but bewitching ? Really some of the girls you meot carry quite a small foitune in their mouths. ■f 3 LETTER I. 13 Tempted by them, I visited a ' dental doctor,' and for the first time passed an hour in one of those terrible chairs peculiar to dentists' surgeries, without suftering any pain worth complaining of ' Shall I stop it with gold or composition, miss V inquires the tormentor. ' Which do you recom- niend, doctor?' 'Oh, please yourself; it's your funeral, not mine,' was the queer retort. From the main street we wandered out by the tram-lines into the suburbs, passing on our way through a poor quarter, where almost all the inhabitants were Frencli. It seems to me that two-thii-ds of the population of Montreal is French, and quite three-fourths of the wealth Englisli. Along the river's bank, for quite four nnlcs outside the town, a long line of villas takes up every available building site, the gardens running down to the river's brim. Hospitals and lunatic asylums abound, and (much more interesting) there is a irreat dairy- farm doing a cai)ital business, ' run,' hke most of the nnlk business of Montreal, by Englishmen. But I must cut my rambles in pen and hik short, Lena, f.r liere are the men anxious to arranlain, ^■■' and "4- the tter- -■■'* ouse ^&L sail ■v^ isles ^A^fljn dark ever M wore ■/■if: e as N^ew York, just as the Thames' hanks in sunnner are the dwelHng-place of the nomadic Londoner. I said that there are a thousand islands, but on each of them is a camp. On most of them it is a permanent camp. At the head of the lake it is an Indian wigwam which has grown into the Fort William Henry Hotel, a palatial bar- racks over a hundred yards in length. Over all the lake the same phenomenon is taking place in difterent stages of completion. Here the en- campment is only a little white tent, which gleams prettily amongst the island greenery. On the next island the tent has given place to a temporary shanty of wood, more comfortable, perhajis, but less picturesque ; and so the forms of men's shells grow and vary from tent to castle, from chalet to pagoda, but everywhere the pagoda, with red roof and coloured walls, pre- dominates ; white boats, red-rimmed, dart out from, or lie idle in, the bays of every islet ; every island creek is bridged by white Chinese bridges. At one landing-stage a chorus of picnicking damsels in white tam-o'-shanters come down and spell the name of their camp as a part song for the edification of our passengers ; at the next point a gay i)arty lounges in front of a new hotel, whose trim lawns and red gravelled walks look out of harmony with the silver lake which Feni- w 20 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. nioro Cooper sang so sweetly, and on which you listen rather for the war-whoop of the Mohican than the everlasting ' toot ' of the steam launch. You know, Lena, that I am a thorough rustic, that I hold that the coaching meet is almost the only really pretty sight in Ltmdon, and that I am condemned to dwell witli a husband whose tastes are purely barbaric, so you will take my descriptions with the necessary grain of salt. To do the * lakes ' justice they are very, very beautiful, very bright with colour ; the local guide-book srys * the tree-tops blush with bunting ; shores put on a flannelly hue, and shadowy points blossom out in duck and dimity.' And the guide-book is right ; but what I should like to see just once is the lakes at rest, with only the colour of their autumn woods to brighten them ; only the blue smoke of a wigwam fire to suggest man's presence, and only tlie cry of the fish- hawk, or Ihe splash of the rising trout, to break the stillness. Wo were tired when we got to the hotel, and glad to rest in its vast piazza, supported by a grove of Corinthian columns, until it was time to dine, and felt hope spring again within us as we noticed the number of tennis costumes about the grounds. But we were doomed to disappoint- ment. The American youth wears * blazers,' it ■^. :% i 4 and we the lint- /it if LETTER II. 21 f 4 :f is true, and there are tennis-courts, but we never saw anyone i)laying upon them, or indeed doing anything else more energetic than the smoking of ciirarettes and drinking of cocktails. The Americans work so hard, I suppose, that they have no energy left to play. Rock, rock, rock ! went the scores of chairs all day, slowly and sleepily — like the roll of the Pacific, said one of the men ; but the boats lay idle. No one rode the saddle-horses, and those who went for a drive only went to be driven. At one of the last lake-stations we astonished our American friends by announcing our inten- tion of landing and walking the rest of the way round the shore to the great hotel. It was a nine-mile walk, and a walk well worth taking, though the road w^as six inches deep in sand, making every mile worth two for training 2)ur- poses, so my husband said. Golden rods and single sunflowers, with a host of other blossoms, of which I do not know the names, mingled with the great ferns by the roadside. Houses, with well-kept lawns and ornamental flower-gardens, alternated with bits of forest or aj^ple-orchards, whose rosy fruit hung temptingly by the wny- side. On the lake side of the road every patch of land was either built on or showed some siern of being reclaimed, if it was but a land-agent's m ui;| I ; I m t ;• A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. placard of *a valuable building lot, with a lake view.' The hotel was chiefly peopled by ladies ; the male element appeared to have migrated, and the women seemed so wearied that they had taken (some of them) to cultivating the dramatic talents of the negro waiters, a troujDe of whom had recently delighted the guests with recitations and scenes from Shakespeare. These negroes display, I believe, considerable talent, and a great desire to pu^ii tuemselves in life, some even (here again I speak from hearsay) having been educated at Harvard University. A nigger Othello might pass muster, but Lena ! imasfine Hamlet done in black ! About the second day our men had tried the fishing, discovered that the trout in the streams were neither as numerous nor as large as the gay little fellows in our Welsh brooks, that a jDickerel is only a diminutive 'Jack,' and in spite of a bucket of cockroaches, to be impaled alive, had failed to obtain a specimen of the famous black bass. So my husband threatened Rocky Moun- tains ; and even Mr. L., always amiable and contented, hinted at a visit to the Adirondacks. Ireland came gallantly to the rescue. Lena, if you ever travel, make a note of this. Forget your Baedeker if you like ; your purse if your husband is with you ; your music if you really I a i LETTER II. 23 Ihj don't want to sing ; but don't forget to take an Irishman * along.' They may be a very disreput- able lot politically — I believe they are (I'd give them Home Rule if I had one for a husband) — but as travelling companions they have no equal. Oar Irishman had discovered, whilst teaching his compatriot, the ba^-tender, how to make a Man- hattan cocktail, that there were races about to take place at Glen Falls tliat afternoon. In ten minutes he had organized a party to attend them, and I am bound to admit that he took at any rate all the prettiest bonnets about the hotel with him. That was a merry afternoon. Glen Falls is a town of exceedingly pretty houses, peeping out from very wooded streets, and most of its ten thousand inhabitants were at the races that day. The races themselves astonished me. In every one of them there were * tvhccls.' No riding, ;vll driving ; and such driving ! Two large, light wheels ran close against the horse's quarters, and over a little board, supported by the wheels, lay the horse's swish tail, on which sat the jockey. At first I thought I was watch- inoc drivintf -races between tailed men ; later on I discovered to whom the tails belonged. All that afternoon the fun was fast and furious, Ireland versus America being a very pretty match in the matter of wit. Poor Mr. O'Brien ! 1 really IMP 24 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. m thought his enterprising little companion had completely silenccJ even him at lunch ; for in a pause we all heard this terrible sentence : * Misther O'Brien,' mimicking his brogue to the life, * maybe if your mouth wasn't so full I'd be better able to hear what you are whispering in my ear.' Poor O'Brien was very hungry, and very talkative, but, nothing daunted, he replied : * Sure, lady, it's onl}'' my heart that's in my mouth when I'm talking to you.' What followed, history does not record, but surely Mr. Shamus's whisperings deserved a hearing after that. However, even race meetings would not induce our restless ones to remain at Lake George, where they said you had to pay two shillings for the privilege of bathing in the lake, and the same sum for every article brought up for you from the boat to the hotel. When we landed and walked on to the hotel in the lirst instance, one of our party left a hand-bag behind him, which he declares was unfortunatel}' open. The contents came out, and were carried up separately at two shillings apiece, by the steamboat peoi)le, who have a right to deliver your things (and charge for so doing) if you are not present to instruct the hotel porters to take charge of them for you. The hotel proprietor was very good about this charge, and did what he could, but of course he LETTER II. was helpless and blameless in the matter. For the future we determined nothing should part us from our luggage, and when, a day or two later, we arrived at Saratoga, it was very amusing to see the men clinging like bulldogs to their heavy bags and our bonnet-boxes, and resisting all the importunities of the hotel porters, who were \n;.ious to relieve them of their loads, and would h lave charofed a cent for so doinar. I dare say you will be disappointed, but I am not going to tell you much about Saratoga. I don't like it, and I am tired of fault-finding. I am sure I shall find lots to admire in America, and I like its kindly, genial people immensely ; but I do not like its big hotels, with their pub- licity, noise, and discomfort, and the hotels have been getting bigger and more unpleasant all the way from - ,V;ebec, until they come to a climax in Sara'A''4'''!. Of con v„> v^aratoga is what Bath was, and what some pc \q say Bath is going to be again, that is, a piuuo to drink waters in, to gamble, flirt, and spend money in, and tlierefore the gayest, wickedest, most amusing place on earth. I don't know whether America is old enough to have li .? gout ; at any rate, she has no lack of curati\ ; -r ••^"^j^k. There is hardly anything, Lena, which you can find in the chemists' shops at 1 t^t'll m ' i 1 m ■i \\f ■ RH i ill r 11 5 ! ; j 1' ' t '; 1; ». ■ '' . * 1 . V 1 1 ill U i ! !;; 26 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. ^n home, which you cannot take ' naturally ' in one or other of the waters of Saratoga. Take my advice, dear — a little champagne of a good brand is better, and does you more good than any of them. But, after all, the best of Saratoga was a certain evening walk we took when we arrived. The road (I don't ki. 'ts name) led out of town, was very, very broad, and all along each side of it ran a line of pretty detached bungalows (that is what I should call them, at least), low houses, with fanciful roofs and irregular outlines, with large porches, smothered with flowers, and standing, as often as not, in unfenced gardens reaching down to the trottoirs. All the windows were ablaze with light ; pretty pictures of squire and dame, of girls singing at pianos, of all the phases of home life, glanced past as you walked along — too public for your eyes to avoid them, too private for your good taste to allow you to dwell upon them. The night was sc beautiful, the light so bright, the tree-frogs even so musical in the trees, that the only thing like it which 1 remember is the opening scene in Mrs. Praed's novel, * Moloch.' I am sorry I ever saw Saratoga by daylight, for, 'n my case, daylight brought disenchantment. And now, Ijena, good-bye. Our party has just broken up. Even Mr. Shamus's LETTER IT. ^7 eloquence could not keep us together any longer. It was a sad scene when, in our private roonChe produced from somewhere in his Gladstone-ba'g a bottle of ' rale old Irish whisky/ and with this and his native blarney tried to keep the men together for another day. But it was no good. Mr. L. ivill go to the Adirondacks to shoot a stag, which my husband says he will never see except in guide-book pictures ; and my husband is off to the Rockies or the Cascades, or some- where, where people don't wear collars, where people don't need dollars, and, above all, where there are no hotels. Thine, etc. i-''i I' ;!^ 1; .'! I1 I i i t'lrm 28 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. LETTER III. Victoria, British Columbia. Dear Lena, It is almost impossible to believe that I am not dreaming. Sitting by the open window, the drowsy summer air comes in off the sea and fans my forehead ; from the lawn outside I can hear, * Well played,' * Love thirty,' * Deuce,' and other scraps of tennis jargon from lips of Eng- lish men and women. I.i fancy I can see the gray stone walls of your old English rectory and its wreaths of blue clematis ; but if I open my eyes, they look, it is true, across green tennis- lawns and past English players, but the skies are bluer than those skies of Gloucestershire ever were ; instead of the Cotswold hills are the snow caps of the Olympian mountains, the houses round me are of timber instead of stone, and just beyond are pine-forests, in which the trees are so vast that a sinofle one of them contains almost as much timber as stands in an English wood. It. ;'■ I it ! til: LETTER III. 29 The room I am in is full of English trifles, the things which seem to grow round a woman : delicate ornaments, frames and photograph - albums, full of honest English faces ; but if I ring the bell, a pig-tailed Chinaman in a pro- fusion of beautifully white linen will respond (at his leisure) to my summons, to remind me that I am on the very Western brink of the world, with 6,000 miles between you and me. You know how we wandered about until we got to Ottawa, for I wrote you all the news of my travels up to that date. Let me pick up the thread of my wanderings at that fair city which has already had three names at least, none of which seem, to my mind, to fit it. Neither Bytown, nor Hole in the Woods, nor Ottawa, should it be called if I could have my way, but just simply Lumber-town, because it is the capital of Canada, and lumber has made Canada ; because it lies in the heart of a lumber district ; because lumbering (next to legislating) is its principal business ; its waters are red with dust from the lumber-mills ; its streets are full of the lumber- men ; its air is full of the scent of lumber fresh sawn, and standing on the terrace of its really beautiful Parliament Buildings, you look across a broad river, the high-road of millions of logs from the central lakes, on to acres and acres, nay. m m ft I I 'i,i' ir' U.,i i 1; 1 il If. r , 30 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. m I-'' -it m hill m ':■ ■' .r if •m miles on miles of timber-yards, piled high with planks and boarding ready for export. It is wonderful, standing beside the falls, to see the logs come shooting down the slides prejDared for them. Up stream you get a glimpse of heavy waters gliding on to the brink of that caldron into which they eventually rush, waters gliding down from distant woods, whose fringes of birch and majile you can just see : down stream the spires and buttresses of Parliament Buildings, from their overhanging cliff, are mirrored in the waters. On one side the bridge on which you stand are the falls, on the other the saw-mills. At the foot of each mill is a pool, into which one after another the logs come swinnning down, after their many weeks' journey through wood and waste. Standing there waiting for them are two or three men with big gaffs in their hands. Selecting a log, they strike their gaffs into it, drag it to the foot of a little ladder, attach a hook to it, a wheel grates and goes round, and the dead tree slides up the ladder, passes through the jaws of certain great steel instruments, and in three minutes is ready cut and trimmed humdrum everyday 12 -inch boarding. A cent a foot for the pine that has grown a hundred years in God's free air and sunlight ; listened to the throbbing of the \y jezes in its branches, to the roar of the falls LETTER III. 31 below, or the live thunder among the mountain peaks. I felt sorry as I looked, and almost angry that the pine's majestic beauty should be sacri- ficed and turned to such humble uses. Ottawa, I believe, is gay enough in its season ; it looks bright even in the dead time during which we visited it ; but, of course, when the House is not sitting, Ottawa sleeps. The little town (for she has only 40,000 inhabitants as yet) has a very English tone about her, and is right loyal to the sovereign who gave her her pre- eminence among Canadian cities. Even the flowers round Parliament Buildings were so trained in this year of Jubilee as to spell with their blossoms a loyal greeting to our Queen. On leaving Ottawa we settled down steadily to a week's railway travelling, more or less. ' Xo more stoppages ' between this and Vancouver Avas our watch- word. My husband was tired of hotel life and pining for barbarism. All men, Lena, revert quite naturally to barbarism, and I honestly believe, were it not for our benign influence and the necessity of providing payment for milliners' bills, etc., a great many of them would even sacrifice their clubs for the supreme pleasure of working with their hands in the open air rather than indoors with their heads. And really, seen from a comfortable Pullman car, this war of man II'' Ji i ^ : i.. f ■ I It., ^1 111 1^ ' II 32 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. :if with Xuture in her very wildest moods looks wonderfully noble and attractive. I would my- self much rather be a slave and have someone to look after my comforts and be responsible for iny daily bread ; but for anyone who loves absolute freedom and is stron c. • • 1 50 1* 241b. spice roll bacon, 18 c. ■ • • 4 32 M 2 tins 31b. lard, 50 c. ■ • • 1 CO ** 251b. granulated sugar, 10 c. , , 2 50 it 2 21b. tins coffee, 75 c. • • • 1 50 » 2 lb. tea, 50 c. , , 1 00 l> 1 can pepper, 25 c. ; 2 sacks salt, 20 c. 45 » 3 packets matches, 25 c. . . 25 » 1 bottle Worcester sauce, 10 c. 40 » 101b. onions, 7h c. . , , » 101b. beans, 5 c. , , 50 » 61b. dried apples, 18 c. . , , 1 08 » 2 packets tobacco, 50 c. . • 50 i> 1 axe, .?1 50 c. • 1 50 » ] bottle sweet oil, 25 c. . , , 25 )) 4 flour sacks, 40 c. ; 2 yards berlass, 50 c 90 » 2 grain sacks, 30 c. . a 30 » 1 pair gloves, 61 . • . 1 00 821 33 It was September 2 5tli when I rode out of Hope on my buckskin pony, tlie maples and other shrubs sflowino- Hke red embers with autumnal colour from among ruinous gray boulders or the cool shadow of the pines. The cedars were alternately red and green, their needles dying slowly ere they fell, while here and there a mammoth pine reared its two hundred feet of heisrht towards heaven, endinof more often than not in a dead-white branchless spire. Along the track there was absolute silence, If'!' LETTER IV. 53 of lunk, saucily except for the chatter jjfardinof us from the end of a hollow Ioq:, or the call of a crested grouse, flirting its tail in air as it strutted unconcernedly out of our way. Once only we met a man, type of the men who have peopled these wildernesses, a tall, fair-bearded giant, in dark blue flannel shirt and canvas trousers, striding along, rifle in hand. As cap- tain of a lumberers' camp he had saved a little money, and was now returning from a walk of nearly two hundred miles, taken alone without blankets, through mountain and forest, for the purpose of finding a bit of country fit for a ranche for himself and two other Scotchmen, his brothers. Sometimes, of course, he came across Indians or a pack-train ; as often as not he met neither ; and then, putting on the coat he had carried all day, he lit a fire and slejjt wherever he felt in- clined to rest, sleeping as happily by the roadside as the Londoner in his hotel. Our halting-place the first night was at the * fourteen-mile ' house, a rough log cabin, kept by a white man of solitary tastes and sanguine temperament. Sanguine he must have been, for he only charged us two shil- lings per head ; except packers he hardly had a dozen guests per annum, and he exj^ected to make his hotel pay ! Down below the cabin was a swamp ; low land untimbered, with a few sal-lal ii •I • ■ ii 54 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. I ']i, I 'I I .1 I ,i II bushes about it, and through it dawdled the slowest of streams — a stream, however, whose waters were clear and pure in spite of the milky blue colour which spoke of their glacial origin. This stream, they told me, contained trout, though they had not been rising lately. The first cast in one of the pale blue pools showed me that there were fish there worth havin"- and willin"- to be had. As the flies went out over the first pale blue pool, its surface was troubled, and as the}' lit, two great trout came half-way out of the water for them, felt thf^ steel in their lip, and, before I had recovered from my surprise, had smashed my trace, and carried off two ver}' old lake-trout flies to the bottom. I lost two more old Norweo^ian flies which had lonsf lain rotting in my book before I took the hint that good fish, however simple and confiding, I'equire good tackle, and in accordance with that sound theory, selected a reliable new fly from the scratch lot w4iich I had put up before starting, and settled seriously to my work. The wild ,sahno fontiiiah's of the cascades may smash the gut and make light of flies bought years ago in some shop at Bergen or Trondhjem, but an alder of Ogden's make is another matter. I admit I am an en- thusiast, and pig-headed about that fly, but I have reason to be. When the green drake is on, LETTER IV. 55 on our own chalk-streams, and the fish are ahnost too dainty to take the natural fly, let the light wings of a big Fairford alder go by, and 3'ou have him. In the still evening, when the l)ig fish feed in the calm broad waters, sink and draw your alder gently towards you, and just as it nears your feet, a mighty rush will set your heart throbbing and your I'eel screaming. So it was here. In a moment I was into a big fellow, and, ye gods ! how he fought ! how savagely he headed for an unpi'omising looking stake, whose broken end rose from the other side of the pool ! But the gut held, and at last I piloted him safely throuo'h the sunken loQfs and boughs which fringed the edge of the pool, and knocked him on the head, first of two dozen, whose rosy sides glistened that evening on the pebbles behind me. At last one fellow, whoso quiet rises had long drawn my attention, broke the top of my rod, tied me round the stake which had imperilled eveiy fish I had hooked, and broke the only alder but one in my possession. So I carried my spoils up to the hut, and shared their bright yellow flesh with certain young Englishmen who had just arrived from the country whither I was wending my way. With them was an old trapper named Chance, who had learnt the countr}' as a gold-miner and prospector, and had just piloted m I ' I IP i , ! y ' '1' • I i i 1 56 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. them out from the mountains, amongst which they appeared to have had no sport, and to have been lost. But they were philosophers, * could not expect anything better the first time,' ad- mitted that they had shot badly, and altogether took their bad luck in a way which augured well for their success should they ever try again. The one thing that stuck in their throats was that in the last ten miles they had been walking with Chance ahead of their train, without their rifles, wdien, of course, they met a black bear sunning herself on the trail. When she saw them she moved off very leisurely to the woods, while they w^ent back for their shooting-irons, old Chance going on slowly. On their way to rejoin him they met Chance, very anxious indeed to see them again, having run up against a * bald-faced ' grizzly directly after they left him. Being anxious to go by, he shouted and threw a ' rock ' at the bear, who came down on all fours, and trotted quietly towards the trajDper, rather in a spirit of careless inquiry than of anger. As Chance put it, * When I saw him climb down, you bet I climbed up and 'put for camp,' where he arrived scared and out of breath. I don't know whether the Englishmen with Chance quite believed his story, but I frankly confess I did not ; and when he advised me to climb a tree if I ' Ik LETTER IV. 57 met a ' bald-faced 'un,' I was sorely afraid I should never have a chance of follo\A 'ns>: his advice. However, I started next morning some time before my men on the young buckskin mare which old S. said was a good one, but not bridle-wise (i.e., broke), in the hope that per- chance, if I kept out of earshot of the bells of the pack-train, I might at least meet skymaquist (the black bear), even if his cousin kheelounha (the grizzh") should not honour me with an interview. The trail through the Hope Mountains leads through heavily-timbered gorges, at the bottom of which run mountain-streanis, while above you rise the peaks towards which climb dense forests of cedar and pine. At first I trotted alonsr a s^ood level road through a low wood of young timber, through which the morning sun shone cheerily. From time to time my horse and I even indulged in a canter from pure good spirits, and to get away from the bells. Here and there we passed old camping-grounds, where packers or cattle-men had made a night of it. Grouse flustered up among the trees by the roadside ; the stream below glittered as it ran, the snow on one high peak gleamed like silver in the sky, and the sun glowed through the maple- leaves as if they were red wine. "I si ni 1 • 58 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. Anon wo entered a gulch, leading ever lower and lower down the canon. The trees closed over us, the sun ^v'as shut out, and with it light and colour. The change was very marked. The silence seemed oppressive, there was no stir of animal life, and both my spirits and the horse's became distinctly chastened. Men are like children, and horses like both : their courage rises in the sunliiTfht and ebbs in the dark. The road at last took a turn under a steep moraine, on whose gra}' side the frosts and damps of midnight seemed to hancf from ' everlastinof to everlastinor-,' while round it fire and ice slide had worked grim chaos among the old pine-trees. We were dis- tinctly depressed here, my horse and I, when suddenly the only ray of sunlight which had ever invaded this * dark profound ' struck on a brown mass in the path in front of us, not ten paces from Buckskin's nose. Silently it rose upright, making (as far as I could hear) no sou d at all. Buckskin simply sat down, her forelegs stuck straight out and her ears pricked, frozen with fright. Like a stage demon the grizzly had risen from the path in front of us without warning of any sort, and, for a moment, I considered the question of flight, and the improbability of any- one in my little world at home being any the wiser if I bolted. However, it was easier to get LETTER IV. 59 off and shoot, so I disiiiounted, ])ut my arm through the bridle, and prepared to take a solemn pot-shot at the old rascal who was stopping the Queen's highway, standing U]i, right on end, in the orthodox fashion of the story- books. This, I confess, astonished me, for having shot a good many bears ' of sorts,' and having never seen one do this before, I had until that moment thought grizzly's uprightness a good deal overrated. But mv deliberate movements were too nmch for * old E])hraim,' who promptly came down from his post of observation, and before I had time to fire, gave one quick lurch, and was gone into the bush, as quickly and as silently as if he had been only a British bunny cautTfht sittinsf in the sunliii'ht on a woodland ride at homo ; and all that was left of him was a little colunm of yellow dust curling up into the ray of sunlisrht in which he had been dozinsf. Not being young enough to attempt to follow the bear into the thicket (having once, long ago, nearly lost my life b}^ such folly), there A\'as nothino' to be done Imt to ofet back into the saddle, whence I could see over the little jungle, wait for my pack-train, and watch for a chance of a shot in case the bear should try to break awa}'. By-and-by, after what seemed an age, I heard the bells of my laggard train, and saw 6o A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. them file out one by one from the timber on the way to where I stood. A low whistle sent their lieads up, and a few hurried words explained the state of affairs to old S., who was to keep the train at his end of the thicket, and, if possible, turn the bear in my direction. The first shout roused the bear, who strolled out on to the moraine opposite to me with the greatest non- chalance, and was, I think, going to sit down to have a better look at us, when a bullet from my express caught him in the ribs and roll d him over. I was on the horns of a reo-ular dilemma when the bear broke covert. If I dismounted I could not see to shoot over the bushes, whereas, if I fired from the saddle, S. warned me that the young mare was not ' bridle-wise,' not used to having shots fired, and would buck me down the canon to eternity. Reflecting that, at any rate, if bucked into eternity I should at least be safe from the bear, I dropped the bridle on the mare's neck, and turning round in the saddle, took a good steady shot at him. The moment he felt the lead he dropped, and then came round with a snarl which sounded like mischief. But the gallant little mare stood firm as a rock, enabling me to put another bullet in, which frustrated any amiable intentions our friend may have had, and compelled him to lie down. The men gave a cheer at the result of tlio two shots, and we watched a little anxiously while the bear stretched his strong fore-arms in his last throes. As he did so, a hollow growl or groan sounded in the thicket behind us, eliciting from my old guide a horrified exclamation of * My God ! there's the old one,' whilst for one moment I feared there would be a general stampede from what was really only the last eftbrt in ventriloquism of a dying bear. But the men stood, and next moment we were lauQ^hing over the odd illusion, while cautiously forcing our way through the brake and up the moraine to our quarry. There was a good deal of stoning done, to make * quite, quite sure ' that he was dead ; and then we skinned him, and set up his naked carcass as a warning to his tribe, .and an advertisement to other travellers of our success. As we tugged away at his skin, old S. gave a little lecture on natural history as known in the Hope Mountains, point- ing out, amongst other things, that when dis- turbed by me the bear had been taking a breakfast of white- willow l)erries, as an aperient before turning in for the winter, now close at hand. According to S., the bears are in the habit of ocoinsr through a regular course of medi- cine, endino' with large doses of dead rotten wood, taken to stop and counteract the effect fij i I J 6a A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. of the willow-beiTios, just before hybernation actually begins. I tell tliese stories because I think local traditions of the Iiabits of game are always worth listening to, even if you cannot believe in all of them. Good-bye ; the packs are fixed, S.'s pipe is lighted, and the train is moving off along the trail, while Buckskin is tugging at her tethcT and looking unutterable things at me, because I do not invite her to join the march. Thine, etc., C. P. w. c Cl V LETTER V. ^'3 LETTER V. Alison's Kanclic. Dear Pat, Travelling with a pack-train is very monotonous work, especially when your time is limited, and a land full of great game, and there- fore great possibilities of happiness, is before you. It seems so ridiculous that the pack-animals should not be able to do more than three miles an hour ; so exasperating to see your men sitting half asleep in their saddles ; to see some obstinate brute of a pony calmly stopping the train in a narrow place to nibble leisurely at the sparse herbage, conscious of your inability to get at him. But there are worse things than these. It is afternoon, and you have ridden on very slowly, determined to be quiet and endure the inevitable, and enjoy the scenery. The year has as many ways of dying as men have. Here the year's death is a red one. Caught by the first chill of winter in the full foliage of summer, the leaves, ''I 'i\ 64 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. instead of .sliri veiling and dropping one by ojk' in a sobbing November wind, l)iu'st into a crimson glory, more beautiful in death than th'^y were in spring-ti.u J. There are no colours on the artist's pal(;tte in wliich to ])aint the autunni foliage on the Ho])e Mountains ; no words in the Anglo- Saxon language in which to descrii)e them. The crimson of ])ort wine against the light ; the glow of sunlit windows bj, Albert Diirer ; the red glow of embers in a frosty night — all these pale beside the burning Octoljor bushes on the mountain-side, lit by a late September sun, and vividly contrasted with the sonxbrc? pircs and gray ruins with which they are surrounded. Of all these bushes the bright(^st is the crimson sumach, but ma])le and dog-wood and a score of others display the purest, most transparent tiiits of ever}' hue, from goiden green to royal ]iurpi(.\ Summer dies here with a smile, under cl(.;ar skies which seem to bring heaven very near, and then a wild wind sweeps off the leaves at a coup, the snow falls thick and heavy, covering all with its beriutiful white WTcaths, and the vear is dead, bv a beautiful ' sudden death,' dead before io has got old and feeble, sere and yellow, and the onlookers are s]>ared the dull yellow fogs, and the agony of tears through wiiich an English summer lingers to its grave. Dreaming of these things, and pray- ' LETTER V. ing, perhaps unconsciousl}', that you may die the death of tiie Canadian summer, while the blood is still hot in your veins, witli no long sick-bed pre.^ le, you htive unconsciously got far ahead of your train, tliough your pace has been the natural Avalk of your pony. The bolls are out of earshoL, and you rein up and wait on a little bare jiatch by the river's bank. A quarter cf an hour ])asses by and 3'ou are tired of noting the old. cam})ing-ground on which a generation of packers has made its dampers, drawn the water for its tea, and contentedly eaten its beans and bacon; tired of scrutinizing the bear-tracks in the river-bed, arid frustrating your pony's attempts to roll, when suddenlv a storm of oaths and a furious clattering of hoofs bursts on your astonished ear, and the lean figure of old S., in his shirt-sleeves, not smoking, dashes through the pines in ^^ursuit of that etc., etc.'d Buckskin, who appears to be proceeding entirely on his forefeet like a2)erform- ing dog. Between us, S. and myself stop the Ijuckskin. S. has him by the head. I clear out. How the old man holds on I crn't con- ceive. Long habit has sometiiing to do with it. No one but a packer could live with that cayouse five minutes. I can find no corner safe fi'om his lieels. The brute appears in danger of parting at his girths, so madly does he lash out. At 5 n ^ 66 A SPORTSMAN'S EDFN. last old S. is off his legs, and here comes Buck- skin, his nose on the ground, and his heels like twin comets flashing furiously all over the place. How we ever stopped the brute I forget, but when we did he had utterly worn himself out as well as S. and myself, while his load was scattered in quiet corners, down steep banks, and in thick bushes along the trail for a mile and a half from the point at which he stood shaking all over, the sweat running off him, and his two ca])tors too dead beat to swear. Whilst we wearily hunted for the wreckage of what had once been a neat pack, the sun began to sink behind the ridge, and when old S. had ffiven the last vicious tug to the diamond hitch which bound the pack again to the saddle, seven miles lay between us and our camp, and barely an hour of daylight remained. And all this because the smell of the fresh bear-skin had been a little too much for the pony's nerves. Nor was the weary ride in the dusk the end of our trouble. Though we camped in the dark we liad fliiled to make our point, and the place at which we set up our tent was a bare patch amid the pines, a long way abo\'e the level of the river, amongst the great boulders of which the hapless beasts had to be turned out to look for their supper. At all times a bad camp, it was -^! '1 LETTER V. 67 now (late in the season) worse than ever. Not a blade of any green thing, not a root of any hard scrubby weed offered even a bite sufficient to tempt a goat or a jackass, and it was with much misgiving that we set up logs and Ijrush to bar as far as possible the escape of our pack animals from the cheerless quarters to which we were oblio-cd to consio^n them. Then ensued a bad half-hour in which three men expended much 2)atience and many lucifers in hopeless search ^n" a dry tree to chop down, a kettle to get waiu: m, or a level ])lace to pitch the tent on. It is poor fun camping after dark on an old much-used site, where all the dry wood has been used, and we found it so. No one seemed sorry when the chatterincf of the robber-birds made us open our eyes to the pale pinks and blues of an early morning sky, and the necessity of hunt- ing * them horses.' After an hour's absence the old man came back without them, croaking dismallv . * They had gone back to Hoi)e, and we would have to follow them, or on to the bunch-grass of the Ashinola, and then they were as good as lost to us,' he guessed ; but then we did not (jxcss : we knew by this time that our old fiiend was no Mark Tapley, so we left him to chop wood while Charlie and I tracked the truants. And a i-are 5—2 ll^^JL-Z 68 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. chase Avc had, along that bare river-bed, through woodfalls and thick scrub, ahvays thinking we heard the bell just ahead of us, only to find tliat it was nothinof more than the tinklino- of a broi)k amongst the stones which had misled us. The sun was a good half-way up the heavens before Charlie's quick eyes descried the wanderers, standing stock - still amongst gray logs and boulders, lookiisg sullenly in our direction, worn- out, poor beasts! in a night-long search for supper. It was no casv work ofettino- the horses out of the maze of fallen timber in which they had involved themselves : but if vou cfive him time an unloaded cavouse will scramble over anvthinof, and once on the level track I drove them home at a run which left the young half-l)reed panting half a mile behind. That day we wound slowly up and up by endless zigzags to the highest point of the ridge, and had tlie infinite pleasure of seeing the hills begin to fall away, until we could almost fancy Ave looked down upon a level sea of prairie and the broad, sparkling waters of the Similkameen. But that was still a lono- dav's journey off, a day during which the trail wound through wide park-like lands, clotlied with excel- lent grass, and thickly studded wit!) handsome groups of bull-pine, while huge log fences sug- ixested here and there that wild thoui^h the I!:|-.i LETTER V. 6q country looked, wandering members of the great Anprlo-Saxon family had nevertheless, even here, marked out what they were pleased to call their propei'ty with bounds and limits. Now and again we came upon great cori'als of high-piled logs, and once ui)on a log-hut, of the roughest and most ])rimiti /e fashion, but labelled, none the less, Similkameen Hotel. True, no one was in, and the door was locked ; but three paii's of antlers, amongst the pressed meat-tins and other rubbish round the hut, showed by their freshness that someone had been there very i-ecently. A more perfect country for deer to winter in I never saw, with amjjle food in the sun-dried grasses, and shelter in the deep hollows, and amongst the clumps of great trees. And its looks do not belie it, for the man who lives at the closed hotel, of which I just spoke, met mo afterwards, and told me that lust winter he sliot ninety-four deer liimself, though he did not reckon himself nmeh of a shot (and he was right there), and did not trouble after them much. ' What did you do witli them ?' I asked. ' Well, J. ent yome little, and fed my hogs on the rest !' From the 6rest //f the ridge to the Ashinola tlie horses were in clover, and soon became something better tlian mere anatomical studies. On the yunmiit we found go(jd feed, deep, rich grasses, ^' li ■ ii 70 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. and a strong heathery growth, through which dark burns crcj)t slowly. Here, hot and weary, I threw myself down, gave my mare, Dolly Buckskin, her head, and watched the jolly little beast revel in the sweet grasses. Poor dumb pack-horses ! how we cursed them in the morning! but who would not wander if sent supperless to bed? Like the horses, we were beginning to tire of the rations of the road, beans and bacon and damper, and to speculate on what good things we should find at Alison's store on the Similkameen. As we jogged sleepily along about mid-day a distant roaring far up the glens caught my ear from time to time and jiuzzled me. Gradually the sounds got clearer, and I recognised the lowing of cattle. Shuttleworth, too, heard it, and came galloping to the front. * That's E.'s cattle coming, scpiire ; we shall have to clear off the track and keep quiet.' Nearer and nearer came the beasts, while we sat still and silent in a clump of trees well off the track. Everything on this trail must give way to th«. cattle. By- and-l)y a bearded man in his shirt-sleeves came along on a good-looking nag, closely followed by two or three beasts, while little groups of three and fijur forced their way, lowing and playing tlirouo-lrtlie bush by the Hirji' of the trail The man kept speaking from time lo time to the ~^' LETTER V. 71 beasts as if encourau'inu' and reassurinc: them bv the sound of his voice. By-and-ln- he sighted our party, and recognising S., asked him to give some messao-e for him at Alison's. The unfortu- nate S. seized the opportunity to ask if one of the drovers could take our bearskin back to Ho2)e, and was promptly overwhelmed by a flow of strong language, rich and varied in quality, for his folly, as if the beasts knew his infernal voice ! Did he want to scare tlie whole band back to the Ashinola ? So difficult is it to ofct these beasts to * drive ' quietly through this timbered country that everyone has to treat them with as nmch consideration as if they were royal personages, instead of good-looking beasts with a tii'ood deal of Herefoixl and shorthorn . . . . ^ , blood in them, being driven by their owner (a man worth several thousands a 3"ear) to Hope for shipment to market. Ten to twelve miles a day is all the cattle will do ; the distance they come is about 100 miles, and a drive of this kind has to be made from the ranchc in (juestion once a fortniii'ht all throuofh summer. So that ram 'hin"- is not all beer and skittles. The cattle and the [)ack-trains in the early fall use the trail so ]nuch that vou rarelv see o'ame en route, even if your bell is not o-oino- but at other times deer are plentiful enough. :«i h^ 72 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. Packing is one of the principal trades in these remote districts, and many men, whites as well as redskins, live by it in tlie sunnner months, carrying provisions for the winter and stock-in- trade to the different ranches and stores up country. On our road we met pack-trains of all sorts, mules and greasers, a redskin chief and his cayouses, and even a train of Chinese Johnnies in sky-blue combinations and pig-tails. It is a lazy life, suited to the redskin and the Mexi- can, who begin the day with an hour's work hard enough to be pleasant in the cool of the morning, lashing on the multitudinous packages. As each beast is fixed, and his head-rope neatly coiled and fastened, he gets a gentle kick in the barrel as a hint to clear out, and moves off for a quiet browse until the rest are ready. By-and- by the last is * fixed,' and then for an hour the pack-train moves lazily along, the men shouting from time to time and smoking incessantly. At the end of an hour the horses' barrels have grown a trifle smaller, and in spite of all the hauling at the ropes in the morning, some of the packs have shifted a bit. So a halt is called, and the back- sliders among the packs readjusted, the train starts again, and probably gets through its day's journey of ten miles without further interruption. At four the train stops, the j^^icks are taken off. LETTER V. 1 .1 the horses turned loose to look after themselves, the men begni baking and frying their bacon, and at dark the camp is asleep. For this work packers get nothing when going out ' light,' and, at present rates, three cents a pound and 'grub themselves ' when loaded. The distances covered vary from 100 to 150 niiles^ and they will pack anything, from flour to furniture. Mule-trains belontjino; to Mexican (greasers do about ten or twelve miles a day, while Indians and their i)onies do nearly double. A horse's load is from 200 to 300 lbs., and as a rule two men and a cook with twenty horses compose the ' outfit.' Late in the afternoon we came upon another class of workers, sitting beside the trail where it ran close to the river's edge, through a deei) sandv soil. A grouji, these, of quiet, inoffensive-looking little fellows in blue, witli rather ragged-looking pig- tails, eating their wretched daily ration of rice under a lean-to shelter of bark. All about them were little holes and pits in the sand, as if they had meditated buriowing away fi'oni the rough white men who revile and molest them. On being civilly addressed in pigecm English l>y my guide, they huddled together like sheep, and though they smiled ujion us benignh^ refused io enter into conversation. Perhaps they could not understand S.'s pigeon English. I confess I I' 1 74 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. could not. * Washini*' for gold, that's their little game, and they thought you wanted to collect the tax ; that's why they would not talk,' said S. ; adding, ' if we had been after the tax, we would soon have got them to tij) up, though.' * How so, S. ?' * Why, squire, we should have just taken the biggest Johnny and tied him up by his pig-tail to a bough of the handiest tree, and the gold would have come out before his hair did.' Hard this, I thought, on the ingenuous Johnny ; but S. had been a local policeman, and knew John Chinaman well, and told me that some of the most cruel murders he had ever heard of had been conmiitted by Celestials. What had S. not been — this gray old man, wdth good manners and universal knowledge, who quoted * Horace ' correctly, quoted, too, from the Greek Testament, wrote distinctly passable verses for local news- papers, was well up in military history, and cooked niy bacon and beans as well as he talked Thompson River Indian, or Similkameen ? I used to sit over the camp fire and wonder at the old man's memory, as he talked of what he had learnt at * the shop ' in the days before he got his commission as a * gunnei',' before, too, he lost all he was worth, and more, on the racecourse, and came out here to marry a Thompson Eiver Indian woman, rear a dusky brood, drive a pack- LETTER V. 75 train, or run throitoh tlio lonuf months of winter on snow-shoes throUL^ii thi; wildest districts iis Government postman. I suppose some of my readers will throw up their hands and pity tliis man, who might have done what the world calls well in the old country ; and the only parson I met who knew him spoke slightingly of the old man because he lived with and kept to the squaw Avhose children were his children. Those who feel sorry for him may spare their pity, and the parson remember that a marriage may be an honestly performed contract, though not sanc- tioned in his httle church ; for old S. is as jolly as a sandboy, would not go back to civilization if he could, and as he has just had a little money left him, will probably end his days in all the comfort he cares for, in a snug ranche up country. Sober as a man need be, kindly and honest, old S. is a o'ontleman all over, and thouufh some- times a trifle slow and very dcsi)ondent, so that he and I quarrelled hotly at times, a kinder fellow never handled an axe or smoked a quarter of a pound of tobacco daily. As you near the Similkameen River the miles vary in a way per];^ 'X.;ng to the last degree. One mile ridden dreamii at a foot's pace is got over in thirteen minLiics : the next, over equally good ground, ridden also at a walk, takes half an I. i % ' '\h r IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ■•?o %' 1.0 I.I 1.25 12.0 ■ 40 1.8 JA 111.6 6" VI <^ 'c^-# % .'^\^^' % :> '^ ./ ^ ^"'^ ^;b m Hiotographic Sciences Corporation ,\ ^ .M ^^ :\ \ LV O^ ^^ < -^^ <^^^ 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 n '/., \ o 76 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. if 4 hour. The fact is that the surveyor has not got as far as this aiong the trail, and the mile-marks have been the result of tixtremely casual guess- work anion sj the natives. But at last a broad blue river between bold mud-bluffs smiles up at you as you ride through the bull-pines of the last ui)land, and in another half-hour the river is forded, and we are at Alison's, a large single house, built by the pioneers who dwell in it, fenced about with rough snake-fences, and sur- rounded by three or four little log -cabins, in which Chinamen or Indians dwell. Alison's is a good sample of a i)ioneer's home, the centre of a large but thinly peojiled district. Upon the bluff opposite you car. just see a few yards of snake-fencing. If you rode up to it, and then followed it round, you wt)uld find I don't know how many miles of it enclosing thousands of acres of grazing -land, the pioneer's principal wealth. By-and-by that may be as valuable as land at home ; at present it is only good to graze the bands of cayouses which belong to the station. The house itself is mostly devoted to the purposes of a store, in which the boys or their mother will serve you or the Indians with sugar, blankets, or anything else you want. Outside, at the moment at which our train comes up, three of the boys (one about eighteen. LETTER V. 77 and the otliers little fellows ten years younger, T should think) are busy roofing a log-hut witli shingles, and doing their work smartly and well. When they have made the hut weather-proof, it is to be used as a school-house, and someone (I did not clearly gather who) was pledged to send them a schoolmaster now and again to teach the station children to read and write. That bit of a boy, who looks hardly old enough for trousers, will, when our horses are unloaded, catch and saddle a pony for himself out of t)ie band in the corral, and then drive our beasts off to the meadow for the night, and bring them in again next morninij. What with takini*- care of the store, fencing fresh lands, breaking horses, build- ing, etc., there is always plenty to do in the summer for all of them ; and in the winter there are deer to be shot, and the young ones at least while away the long evenings with story-telling, the mother collecting the wild fairy legends of the Indians, and dressincf them in familiar lanijuaije for her children. The Indians themselves are excellent story-tellers ; one old fellow whom I met at Alison's telling m(> a l)ear-story with such vivid pantomime, that though ' kheelounha ' (grizzly) was the only word of his language which I knew, I had no difficulty in ft)llowing him. Bear-stories were rather the fashit>n in nil HI I I > \ I 'i\ , r :\\ \ 78 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. tho Siniilkaineon district when I was there hist year, two Indians hav'.ng heen killed in the neighbourhood by grizzlies within the month. There was near Alison's one noted bear-hunter, whom I was very anxious to obtain as a guide, but unfortunately he was away. This man had lost two brothers, killed by bears, and pursued a regular vendetta against the whole family of grizzly in consequence. It is not every Indian hunter who hunts bears, and those who do make a business of it, and they only, have any idea where to look for bruin, who is about as difficult to find, except by chance, as any beast of the chase I know. After all, old S.'s bear-story was the best I heard ; I don't vouch for its truth. Let the rcsponsibilit}' rest on the old man's shoulders. He and (let us say) Seth Davis were packing together in spring through the Hope mountains. It was very early morning, and the horses had strayed. Seth and the old man were out looking for them. The horses they had lost were eleven in number, and by-and-by Seth made them out in the gray dawn, feeding on the slope of a hill half a mile away. To get to this the two men had to cross a canon and scramble up a very steep bank innnediately overlooking the place where the horses were feeding. Very much out of breath and out of temper, the two LETTER V. HCrambled up the bank, and Seth looked over. Only for a moment, thoui^h ; then with n serious white face he turned and whispered to the old man: *S., we don't want them horses!' * Dcm't want 'em ! Why, aren't they ours V ' Xo,' said Seth, * I guess they aren't our horses ; they're ])ars, blarst 'em ! grizzly bars ; let's git !' And the two old packers ' got ' in a peculiarly ra})id and stealthy manner as far as j)ossible from the family party of eleven grizzlies, which Seth had mistaken for the i)ack animals. At Alison's the first real difficulty met me ; all the Indians were either away ' packing,' or at a potlatch {i.e., tribal ' drunk '), and no guides seemed likely to be forthcoming, unless it might be a certain Tintinamous Whisht, a gentleman of whom old S. had a very poor opinion. How- ever, I was not to be daunted ; if the worst came to the worst, I thought I could do without an Indian, and the sight of a splendid mule-deer's head, killed last * snow ' by Edie Alison, en- couraged mc to proceed. The head referred to spanned 2 feet 4;[ inches, inside measurement, and numbered twenty-six good points. On the day on which I reached Alison's we made a capital drive of '17 miles, and though hoarse and tired from the part I had taken in the day's proceedings, I was well satisfied when M : i H m 80 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. Wii uusaddled at tlio * Nine !MiIu Creek ' — where ail Irishman and his half-breed wife dispense hosj)itaHty to the pack animals, at the somewhat exorbitant charge of 50 cents apiece for a graze, or 1 dollar apiece for a feed. However, it was no good grumbling, so we jiaid the money, or rather gave a cheque for it upon Wardle's, and then got the woman to cook us some suj)per. I think I never came across a more miserable little home ; the scenery stern, the place remote, our ha 1 stock of ren.edies had long since ail ^1 before the dread disease of which she lay dyin. While the stars were still in the sky, old S saddled h,s horse and rode away; and 'at about nine he came ndn.g back, with a ,,uaint little figu.-o on a flea-bitten gray by hi.' side. In another nnnute the first gleam of returning sun- ■Sht entered the can.,, along with n.v trusty gunner and his captive, the typieaf India.f whoso nan>e was ' Tonnuy '-Toni, his friends and relations call him-and if he is not a chief, he C— 2 t 11 ' I i li ; * I 84 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. is the brother-in-law of one ; l)ut as you conteni- plato tliu little follow in his blue canvas shirt, penny straw hat, and gray Yankee trousers frayed into a fringe round the ankles of his moccasins — as you look at his In'own dog-like eyes and merry Mongolian little face, you forget the chieftain, and instinctively christen him * Tommy.' Tommy was to me a revelation. Anything less like Fenimore Cooper's dignified savage; I have never seen. From his drj', withered and hairless features he might have been any age ; from the eager animation of his manner he might have been sixteen or a Frenchman. The Ashinola tongue lends itself naturally to acting. When Tommy began to talk, his voice was somewhere far away down in the blue-shirt region ; by-and-by it ascended, and his utterance grew rapid, his words short and close-clipped until he came to a very big superlative, and then his eyes grew wide, and he lingered whole seconds over the word, like an Australian doing a ' cooey.' Unfortunately for me, his noble relative, * Ashinola John,' had told him that the Englishman was in straits, and that he could charge accordingly. As I liked the look of the fellow, I yielded in part to his extor- tions, and in an hour's time we had cached our superfluous baggage, and wci*e on the way to the sheep-grounds. Where we cached our goods LETTER VI. 8S : : was by the main hi«;h\vay of tlio tlistiict, and ' cached ' by no moans ex[)ressos what wo did with them, for there was no attempt at eoncoal- nient, the things merely being put up in trees to 1)0 more or less out of the way of vermin. And yet the untutored redskin and low-class Mexican * greaser ' will leave them untouched, though he needs them more than the tramp who would certainly remove them if loft by an English roadside. The hijLrhest trial of honesty I ever saw out West was on my way back from the Ashinola. A bar (of timber) crossed the main trail near an em})ty corral. Anyone coming along the trail must stop and dismount to remove the bar, and, doing so, come face to face with a small glass bottle, labelled * best French brandy,' and apparently full of tiiat excellent cordial. It had obviously been put there for someone ex- pected shortly on the trail, and as the ther- mometer was very low and the sleet very bitter, I confess I had to look very earnestly in another direction to avoid the temptation oftered by that neat little Hask of briijfht amber fluid. Whilst Tonnny made his final preparations, I got old S. to sujDply me with a dozen or so of the most useful words in my hunter's dialect, which I proceeded to study. In cruising about the world after big game, you acquire the most il i;. ft ■■ y. ! I! I , ^\^ 86 A SromSMAN'S EDEN. I i woiitlorfuUy ])oly" from one to the other, is to my mind suggestive of more risk '!!l i LETTER VIII. 103 to the hunters than to the ram. The caniij altogether is sad to-night. My young Scotch friend W. met a small band of the big black wolves which have been molesting our° horses lately, and unfortunately found them, as some men find the rabbits at home, quite a foot too short for shooting. So he is sad over misused opportunities, while I sadly think of the morrow. The laugh is on the other side our camp fire to- night Yours gloomily, C. P. W. 11 ' li 1 ::i! ) 1 1 \i}\ fl :• t ,i* 1^ ■1, Mi V' 104 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. LETTER IX. Bighorn Camp. Dear Pat, We had not been very successful until the arrival of Mr. C.'s party ; in that C. was perfectly well informed. The Scotchmen had, I think, got one small sheep and a hind for meat, whilst I had secured two stags, two small rams, and a very fine old ewe, with horns almost as big as a young ram's. But we had been learning our ground, and were very bitter at being robbed of our reward. There was not a rasfofed cliff whose face W. and myself had not climbod, scrambling over moraines, up dizzy little sheep-paths, on inclines which tried the wind and wore out moccasins and indiarubber soles at the rate of three pairs a week, and all only to discover that the chief asylum of the sheep was in the crags at the top, from which, when disturbed, they descended and scattered the lower canons and through the through timber. For the last four dayTu^^^l^^d^i^^y been workino: the sheep back to the heights, and now others were going to reap the reward of our toil. However, it could not be helped, so at about 7 a.m. we mustered in force. The com- mand of the expedition was offered to me but was declined on the score that I did not know anythmg of sheep-driving. So C. sent out his men, and he and I rode off together. ' Now, my dear fellow, I doti't care for a shot • 1 ve shot scores of sheep ; if we see any, you take' the first crack at them,' said my companion ; and my heart went out to him for his self-denial I had left Polly, my buckskin mare, in camp, as she was a bit stale from over-work, and had taken out mstead a big, rather well-bred lookino- screw, bought by old S. at the Alison ranch tor 20 dollars. The screw moved under me with a fine free stride, which is wofully wantino- in the native cayouse, and I really thought if there was any galloping to be done that day, my horse ^ya, the horse to do it. Cuptain S. mxl the rest of the guns took the right-hand side of the crags • C. and myself went down wind to the left At the very outset Captain S., wh<. was a little in advance of his party, came face to flice with a splendid mule-deer buck, which, from the reports of those who saw him, I take to have been bicro-er < lili . H! ! ' ! i i. S !; I \i< li IS i ! ■I" r J; II 1 06 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. than my big buck or any killed during the expedition. The foolish beast stood broadside on at fifty jiaces, and with a rare self-denial, worthy of a good sportsman, Captain S. let him go without firing at him, rather than risk dis- turbinof the nobler sfame we were in search of. Now, looking back, I can only regret that the buck's head was not added to my friend's trophies, for immediately afterwards C. and I sio^hted a band of small ewes on the bare slopes to the left of the * crater.' To my surprise C. at once began to ride hard. To my remark that there were no good heads amongst them, I got no answer ; and as C.'s object was evident, I joined in the chase, determined that if the law of the day was to be * Shoot at everything, and devil take the hindmost,' I would do my best not to occupy that invidious position. Alas ! as the horses faced the incline, I felt my screw's powers fade away, until the swinging stride slackened to a walk, and a hideous roaring informed me that my poor beast was broken-winded. So C. got in first ; the foolish ewers, getting thoroughly confused and standing in a bunch, huddled to- gether as stujiidly as if they had been domestic Shropshire downs, whilst * the native ' dismounted and * pumped lead into them ' at about 100 yards' range. When I came up he had secured three, 1^ ■ iH LETTER IX. 107 and was having them fjralloched. I should have felt happier if the Indian had killed them before he and his master began gralloching. As no amount of philosoj)hy could make a man on a broken-winded horse genial under such circum- stances as these, I fear poor C. found my con- gratulations somewhat wanting in warmth, and, to my delight, betook himself to the top ground, he and his Indian riding away in full view along the ridge. However, the rifles now were ringing out in all directions, and as I had kept Toma with me, I felt there was still a chance of getting a shot at some beast which my friends might miss. The top ground at the crater is a succes- sion of little circular hollows, filled up in places with large round ponds ; here and there are stunted forests, or rather spinnies, of pines, con- torted and dwarfed by cold and the barrenness of the soil in which they grow. Here once Toma and I had watched a wolverine, apparently hunting in the snow ; and though the sly beast, the trapper's worst enemy, is rarely seen in broad daylight, we let him go. Hei-e, too, we stalked and spared the biggest mule-deer buck I ever saw, principally because, in S2)ite of his size, he carried no antlers. But now the rattle of rifles was echoinix amonofst these mountain sanctuaries, and we down below 11! 'I H ih .11 i: -f-t ?«■!' io8 ^ SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. amongst the cliffs watched the gullies eagerly for anything which might attempt to descend and seek shelter in the forest of pines beyond. Now and again we saw some one ride along the sky- line at the toji, and once I tried two long shots at a couple of rams working their way down wind along the cliff-face. This turned them, and sent them over the top, where I believe they passed Captain S. at a fairly long range, and at a good pace. But S. had taken up a position where he was out of sight, and kejjt cool and quiet, biding his time, so that when the leading ram passed him he turned him over with perhaps the best shot fired that day. At last my turn came. There was a rattle of stones in one of the main gullies leading from the crater, and five old rams came galloping down for the forest. They were making so much noise themselves that it mattered little that my Indian and I bumped and slipped about, now on our feet, now on our backs, in our frantic endeavours to get to a point from which they must pass within range of us. At last they saw us, threw up their noble heads, planted their fore-feet with an impatient stamp, and stood at gaze. It was only for a moment, and my hand ttled on the stones as I rested my rifle for the !''0t; but every bullet has its course fore-ordained, so in spite of my shaking aim, the leading ram fell 'Jl *' -ft ! ! ■ 'li. \ LETTER IX. 109 over with a crash as I fired, and another fell m his tracks as they dashed away in headlong flight. It was a weary while before Toma and I overhauled even my first ram, and he took three more shots to finish him and bring him to bay ; but I was as thoroughly beaten by the chase over the cliffs as if I had run a three-mile race ; my knees began to fail me, and the perspiration (lean though I was) blinded me. As for the other ram, though the blood-track was plain enough at first, I was too tired to follow, but gave Toma the rifle, and lying down on a point from which I felt too weak to descend in safety, left him to find and finish the beast for me. However, I think Toma was very nearly blown ; at any rate, my second ram was never found, and I had to be content with the first, whose measurements were 14 inches round the butt and 284 inches in length round the outside curve of the horns. Both horns were a little broken at the points. Though only a seven-year-old ram, and though a good head, it was neither unusually laro-e^nor symmetrical. The total bag that dav was three sheep and three rams, the latter killed, one b^- Captain S., one by my Scotch friend Mr. w\ and one by myself That night there was much rejoicing in camp ; trifling disagreements were forgotten; it was li" .J \ i ' 1 I !H. m 1:; j li 11: ; k n II ' 1 ! IIO A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. conceded that C.'s plan had at any rate the merit of success, and, however angry one might feel with him when he crossed you on the hill- side, it was impossible t(j resist his cheery good- fellowship when the day was over. Still, my next letter will not be from Bighorn Camp. Yours truly, C. P. W. n m LETTER X. 1 1 1 le it il- :l- y LETTER X. Dear Pat, The Dead Forest. Practically this letter was written in the dead-wood forest at the top of the downs, wliere all the httle rills which water the camps and vun down to swell the volume of the Similkameen have their origin in a bleak, swampy moss. Eire has, at some time, swept through the forest, and left the dead trees standing grim and gray, flakes of dark moss draping them in very funereal tasliion, so that one involuntarily feels chilled and wishes that A^ature would be considerate and bury her dead, replacing the gaunt trunks with younger trees and greener. In this forest I lav note-book in hand, stretched along a smooth fallen trunk about which the sunlight played writmg my record of the week, while Toma tried in vam to track a dying buck which we had seen tall twice before he entered the timber. As I lay there unmoving, two great ravens came from 1 11 ' ■ II ■ft ■ -li .» ■■' is ii {M ! 1 H 112 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. some peak above, and lii^hting on dead trees hard by, discussed in harsli, angry notes what manner of tiling I might be. * Dead ! is he dead V they kept questioning ; but though tliey came saihng down very near, they could not quite make U}) their minds. Brutes ! I should like to have resolved their doubts with a bullet. Still lvinut him. I have just measured the ears on the head of a buck shot by me, and I find that from the root to the tip they measure ten inches. This is almost as long- as the animal's face, from a point between the horns to the tip of his muzzle. ^ The big,ircst buck which T havx^ had the good fortune to secure has a span <.f nearlv twcrfeet from antler to antler, ten large well-developed points, and a heavy beam five and a half inches m circumference. This is, of course, not an ex- ceptionally good head ; but I think it is above the average of the mule-deer on the Similkameen We had known this stag for a week before we got hini, his favourite haunt being just below our camp, amongst some fallen timber, in Avhicli it was almost an impossibility to approach him un- heard. Three or four times, when creeping over the logs, we saw a pair of great ears listenhig on another bank, then half a dozen hinds would trot quickly through the timber, followed by this 8 W. > ( ■:h 3 I I I '4 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. lordly beast, ho heavy with j,^oocl feedini^ that wo wondered to see him clear the «,a'eat logs in his way. Once, when stalkinj^ a Imnd of bighorn rams, he rose quietly from his lair in front of us, and we could see his fat sides shake as he trotted away. But he did not disturb the rams, so we let him go. At last his time came. Meat was wanted in camp, and we were going to shoot a distant hill-top. When the even chop, chop of the old man's axe awoke me, the country was wrapped in a gray, smoky mist which hung about all day, and the trees were silvered with frost. S. was working hard, but comi)laining bitterly, according to his wont, as he explained to the boy that the stars had left the sky, and tlie boss would soon want his breakfast. Then thei'e was a short mental stru2f2rle with the desire to remain curled up in one's blankets, whilst the growing fire warmed and lit the inside of the tent — a struggle soon over, and followed by an heroic wash almost deserving of the dignity uf a ' aib.' The bottle of sweet-oil for the rifles whivh stood by my bedside had frozen hard in the night, and a pack of wolves, whose bowlings we had heard, had stampeded our horses. By the tracks they must have driven the poor beasts almost through the camp-fire, whither they had come for succour ; but the night was too dark for the Indian to see LETTER X. "5 t'itlier wolves or horses when tlie noise woke him, and tlie fire had ahnost died out. Since the wolves, there had been another visitor in camp, a lynx, whose tracks came almost up to the tents. We arranged a trap for him, and then went out to look for our horses. Having found tliem none the worse {\)V their scare, Toma and I satldled our ' hunters ' and rode off over i\u\ downs, on which the snow lav in considerable patches. There was nothing I feared so much in my Similkameen experiences as these early morn- ing rides with the frost on the grass, and many a mile I tramped rather than ride over the break-neck sloj)es, covered with long sli[)pery her- basfc, on which even the Indian's grav could never keej) its footing. We used to ])rogrcss in a suc- cession of slides and slitherings, and it requii-ed experience to enable j^ou to trust to your ca- youse's recovering his footing when you felt that he had three legs in the air and the other was slipping. On foot and in moccasins, I could not keep my feet without a stick, and yet, after a week's practice, Dolly and I would join Toma and the crrav in a break-neck canter mcrelv to warm our blood. On this particular morning, on the next blufi' to our own, we sighted the big buck and six hinds leisurelv feedinsf back to cover. The cover 8 — 2 li u \M ■■tl IT ii6 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. was half a mile away, and the deer, having seen us, moved off towards it at a smart trot. Toma made siu'iis to me to follow him, and next moment we were over the ridge out of sight of our quarry, and galloping ' ventre a terre ' over a horribly slippery slope, in the endeavour to cut the buck off before he could reach the wood. As we came over the ridge we saw we were just too late, his stern disappearing amongst the timber as we came in sight. The snow was falling, and as we hardly anticipated work so near camp, I still wore a macintosh ; my feet were, as usual, in moccasins. Without a word, Toma rode full gallop into the timber, threw himself from his horse and dashed downhill over logs whose sharp and ragged limbs caught and tore my flying macintosh, and over stakes and flints which almost made me howl as I trod upon them. But in spite of all we held on at best pace for half a mile, and then we caught sight of the buck, rather blown with his recent exertions, lazily lurching over the fallen timber, while the hinds were far on ahead. It was a fluky shot I fired, for I was at least as blown as the buck, though in better condition ; but it brought him up ail standing for a moment, and gave me a chance of rolling him head over heels with the second barrel before he had re- covered from his surprise. I never saw a fatter W LETTER X. 117 beast in my life, and my little redskin was en- thusiastic over the piles of white fat which he collected from the entrails and hack of mv first mule-deer. To the Indians this fot for winter use IS the most valuable part of the iranie. When we brought his head into camj), (,ld S. recognised hmi as the buck which he had met, face to face * at fifty yards, sir, close to camp, just whenever 1 didn t happen to have anything but the axe handy.' Since shooting the big buck, I have killed others, and might hare killed many, a day never passing without, at least,