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THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.
WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK

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THE HOME OF THE WHIRLWIND (p. 78)

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1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY ENOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published November ztjri

to
J. UP.

2051C23

(preface

LTHOUGH I have been alone by a camp-fire
in every State and Territory in the Union,
with the exception of Rhode Island, the matter
in this book is drawn almost entirely from my
experiences in the Rocky Mountain region.

Some of the chapters have already appeared
in magazines, and I am indebted to The Curtis
Publishing Company, Doubleday, Page and
Company, "Suburban Life," and " Recreation"
for allowing me to reprint the papers which
they have published. "Country Life in Ame-
rica" published "Racing an Avalanche,"
"Alone with a Landslide," and "A Rainy
Day at the Stream's Source," -the two last
under the titles of "Alone with a Crumbling
Mountain" and "At the Stream's Source." The
"Saturday Evening Post" published "Little
Conservationists," " Mountain-Top Weather,"
"The Forest Fire," " Insects in the Forest,"
"Doctor Woodpecker," and "The Fate of a

vii

Tree Seed." "Suburban Life " published " Rob
of the Rockies " and " Little Boy Grizzly " ; and
" Recreation " " Harvest Time with Beavers."

E. A. M.

Con&nfe

Racing an Avalanche I

Little Conservationists 17

Harvest Time with Beavers 49

Mountain-Top Weather 69

Rob of the Rockies 91

Sierra Blanca . 107

The Wealth of the Woods 121

The Forest Fire . . . . . .137

Insects in the Forest 171

Dr. Woodpecker, Tree-Surgeon . . . 191

Little Boy Grizzly ^ 205

Alone with a Landslide . . . .221

The Maker of Scenery and Soil .... 245
A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source . . 265

The Fate of a Tree Seed 289

In a Mountain Blizzard 307

A Midget in Fur 321

The Estes Park Region 335

Index 351

The Home of the Whirlwind (page 78) Frontispiece
Near the top of Long's Peak.

A Snow- Slide Region ...... 6

Near Telluride, Colorado.

Mt. Meeker . . . ; . . . . 20

A Beaver House in Winter . . . . . 38
Lily Lake, Estes Park.

A Beaver Canal ...... 56

Length, 334. feet; average width, 26 inches; average
depth, /j inches.

Aspens cut by Beaver . . "... .64
On slope of Mt. Meeker.

Wind-blown Trees at Timber- Line ... 76
Long's Peak.

Sierra Blanca in Winter . . . . .no

Spanish Moss . . . . . . .124

Lake Charles, Louisiana.

A Forest Fire on the Grand River . . .140
Near Grand Lake, Colorado.

A Yellow Pine, Forty-Seven Years after it had

been killed by Fire . . . . . 1 54
Estes Park.

xi

A Tree killed by Mistletoe and Beetles . . 1 84
Estes Park.

Woodpecker Holes in a Pine injured by Lightning 198
Estes Park.

Johnny and Jenny . . . . . 2IO

Near the Top of Mt. Coxcomb . . . .228

Court-House Rock ...... 242

The Hallett Glacier . . . . . .250

A Crevasse 260

Hallett Glacier.

Among the Clouds 272

Continental Divide, near Long's Peak.

Full Streams 286

Near Telluride, Colorado.

On Grand River, Middle Park, in Winter . .310

Snoiv and Shadow . . . . . .318

Long's Peak.

The Home of the Fremont Squirrel , . .326
On the Little Cimarron River.

Long s Peak and Estes Park . . . . 338

an

an

HAD gone into the San Juan Mountains
during the first week in March to learn
something of the laws which govern snow
slides, to get a fuller idea of their power and
destructiveness, and also with the hope of see-
ing them in wild, magnificent action. Every-
where, except on wind-swept points, the winter's
snows lay deep. Conditions for slide movement
were so favorable it seemed probable that, dur-
ing the next few days at least, one would "run"
or chute down every gulch that led from the
summit. I climbed on skees well to the top of
the range. By waiting on spurs and ridges I
saw several thrilling exhibitions.

It was an exciting experience, but at the
close of one great day the clear weather that
had prevailed came to an end. From the table-
like summit I watched hundreds of splendid
clouds slowly advance, take their places, mass,
and form fluffy seas in valley and canons just

3

of

below my level. They submerged the low places
in the plateau, and torn, silver-gray masses of
mists surrounded crags and headlands. The
sunset promised to be wonderful, but suddenly
the mists came surging past my feet and threat-
ened to shut out the view. Hurriedly climbing
a promontory, I watched from it a many-colored
sunset change and fade over mist-wreathed
spires, and swelling, peak-torn seas. But the
cloud-masses were rising, and suddenly points
and peaks began to settle out of sight; then a
dash of frosty mists, and my promontory sank
into the sea. The light vanished from the
heights, and I was caught in dense, frosty
clouds and winter snows without a star.

I had left my skees at the foot of the promon-
tory, and had climbed up by fingers and toes
over the rocks without great difficulty. But on
starting to return I could see only a few inches
into the frosty, sheep's-wool clouds, and quickly
found that trying to get down would be a peril-
ous pastime. The side of the promontory stood
over the steep walls of the plateau, and, not car-
ing to be tumbled overboard by a slip, I con-

4

an

eluded that sunrise from this point would prob-
ably be worth while.

It was not bitter cold, and I was comfortably
dressed ; however, it was necessary to do much
dancing and arm-swinging to keep warm. Snow
began to fall just after the clouds closed in, and
it fell rapidly without a pause until near morn-
ing. Early in the evening I began a mental
review of a number of subjects, mingling with
these, from time to time, vigorous practice of
gymnastics or calisthenics to help pass the
night and to aid in keeping warm. The first
subject I thought through was Arctic explora-
tion; then I recalled all that my mind had re-
tained of countless stories of mountain-climbing
experiences; the contents of Tyndall's "Hours
of Exercise in the Alps" was most clearly re-
called. I was enjoying the poetry of Burns,
when broken clouds and a glowing eastern sky
claimed all attention until it was light enough
to get off the promontory.

Planning to go down the west side, I crossed
the table-like top, found, after many trials,
a break in the enormous snow-cornice, and

5

of

started down the steep slope. It was a danger-
ous descent, for the rock was steep and smooth
as a wall, and was overladen with snow which
might slip at any moment. I descended slowly
and with great caution, so as not to start the
snow, as well as to guard against slipping and
losing control of myself. It was like descending
a mile of steep, snow-covered barn roof, —
nothing to lay hold of and omnipresent oppor-
tunity for slipping. A short distance below the
summit the clouds again were around me and I
could see only a short distance. I went sideways,
with my long skees, which I had now regained,
at right angles to the slope ; slowly, a few inches
at a time, I eased myself down, planting one
skee firmly before I moved the other.

At last I reached a point where the wall was
sufficiently tilted to be called a slope, though it
was still too steep for safe coasting. The clouds
lifted and were floating away, while the sun
made the mountains of snow still whiter. I
paused to look back and up, to where the wall
ended in the blue sky, and could not under-
stand how I had come safely down, even with

6

A SNOW-SLIDE REGION
Near Telluride, Colorado

(Pacing an Qfoafancfle

the long tacks I had made, which showed clearly
up to the snow-corniced, mist-shrouded crags
at the summit. I had come down the side of a
precipitous amphitheatre which rose a thousand
feet or more above me. A short distance down
the mountain, the slopes of this amphitheatre
concentrated in a narrow gulch that extended
two miles or more. Altogether it was like being
in an enormous frying-pan lying face up. I was
in the pan just above the place where the gulch
handle joined.

It was a bad place to get out of, and thousands
of tons of snow clinging to the steeps and sag-
ging from corniced crests ready to slip, plunge
down, and sweep the very spot on which I
stood, showed most impressively that it was a
perilous place to be in.

As I stood gazing upward and wondering how
the snow ever could have held while I came
down over it, there suddenly appeared on the
upper steeps an upburst as from an explosion.
Along several hundred feet of cornice, sprays
and clouds of snow dashed and filled the air.
An upward breeze curled and swept the top of

7

of

this cloud over the crest in an inverted cas-
cade.

All this showed for a few seconds until the
snowy spray began to separate and vanish in
the air. The snow-cloud settled downward and
began to roll forward. Then monsters of massed
snow appeared beneath the front of the cloud
and plunged down the slopes. Wildly, grandly
they dragged the entire snow-cloud in their
wake. At the same instant the remainder of
the snow-cornice was suddenly enveloped in
another explosive snow-cloud effect.

A general slide had started. I whirled to
escape, pointed my skees down the slope, — and
went. In less than half a minute a tremendous
snow avalanche, one hundred or perhaps two
hundred feet deep and five or six hundred feet
long, thundered over the spot where I had stood.

There was no chance to dodge, no time to
climb out of the way. The only hope of escape
lay in outrunning the magnificent monster. It
came crashing and thundering after me as swift
as a gale and more all-sweeping and destructive
than an earthquake tidal wave.

8

an

I made a desperate start. Friction almost
ceases to be a factor with skees on a snowy
steep, and in less than a hundred yards I was
going like the wind. For the first quarter of a
mile, to the upper end of the gulch, was smooth
coasting, and down this I shot, with the ava-
lanche, comet-tailed with snow-dust, in close
pursuit. A race for life was on. {

The gulch down which I must go began with a
rocky gorge and continued downward, an enor-
mous U-shaped depression between high moun-
tain-ridges. Here and there it expanded and
then contracted, and it was broken with granite
crags and ribs. It was piled and bristled with
ten thousand fire-killed trees. To coast through
all these snow-clad obstructions at breakneck
speed would be taking the maximum number of
life-and-death chances in the minimum amount
of time. The worst of it all was that I had never
been through the place. And bad enough, too,
was the fact that a ridge thrust in from the
left and completely hid the beginning of the
gulch.

As I shot across the lower point of the ridge,
9

of 10*

about to plunge blindly into the gorge, I thought
of the possibility of becoming entangled in the
hedge-like thickets of dwarfed, gnarled timber-
line trees. I also realized that I might dash
against a cliff or plunge into a deep canon. Of
course I might strike an open way, but certain
it was that I could not stop, nor see the begin-
ning of the gorge, nor tell what I should strike
when I shot over the ridge.

It was a second of most intense concern as I
cleared the ridge blindly to go into what lay
below and beyond. It was like leaping into the
dark, and with the leap turning on the all-
revealing light. As I cleared the ridge, there was
just time to pull myself together for a forty-
odd-foot leap across one arm of the horseshoe-
shaped end of the gorge. In all my wild moun-
tainside coasts on skees, never have I sped as
swiftly as when I made this mad flight. As I
shot through the air, I had a glimpse down into
the pointed, snow-laden tops of a few tall fir
trees that were firmly rooted among the rocks
in the bottom of the gorge. Luckily I cleared
the gorge and landed in a good place; but so

10

(Jlacing an

narrowly did I miss the corner of a cliff that my
shadow collided with it.

There was no time to bid farewell to fears
when the slide started, nor to entertain them
while running away from it. Instinct put me to
flight ; the situation set my wits working at their
best, and, once started, I could neither stop nor
look back; and so thick and fast did obstruc-
tions and dangers rise before me that only dimly
and incidentally did I think of the oncoming
danger behind.

I came down on the farther side of the gorge,
to glance forward like an arrow. There was only
an instant to shape my course and direct my
flight across the second arm of the gorge, over
which I leaped from a high place, sailing far
above the snow-mantled trees and boulders in
the bottom. My senses were keenly alert, and I
remember noticing the shadows of the fir trees
on the white snow and hearing while still in the
air the brave, cheery notes of a chickadee ; then
the snowslide on my trail, less than an eighth
of a mile behind, plunged into the gorge with a
thundering crash. I came back to the snow on

ii

of

the lower side, and went skimming down the
slope with the slide only a few seconds behind.

Fortunately most of the fallen masses of trees
were buried, though a few broken limbs peeped
through the snow to snag or trip me. How I
ever dodged my way through the thickly stand-
ing tree growths is one feature of the experience
that was too swift for recollection. Numerous
factors presented themselves which should have
done much to dispel mental procrastination and
develop decision. There were scores of progres-
sive propositions to decide within a few sec-
onds; should I dodge that tree on the left side
and duck under low limbs just beyond, or dodge
to the right and scrape that pike of rocks?
These, with my speed, required instant decision
and action.

With almost uncontrollable rapidity I shot
out into a small, nearly level glacier meadow,
and had a brief rest from swift decisions and
oncoming dangers. How relieved my weary
brain felt, with nothing to decide about dodg-
ing! As though starved for thought material,
I wondered if there were willows buried beneath

12

an

the snow. Sharp pains in my left hand com-
pelled attention, and showed my left arm drawn
tightly against my breast, with fingers and
thumb spread to the fullest, and all their mus-
cles tense.

The lower edge of the meadow was almost
blockaded with a dense growth of fire-killed
trees. Fortunately the easy slope here had so
checked my speed that I was able to dodge
safely through, but the heavy slide swept across
the meadow after me with undiminished speed,
and came crashing into the dead trees so close
to me that broken limbs were flung flying past
as I shot down off a steep moraine less than one
hundred feet ahead.

All the way down I had hoped to find a side
canon into which I might dodge. I was going
too rapidly to enter the one I had seen. As I
coasted the moraine it flashed through my mind
that I had once heard a prospector say it was
only a quarter of a mile from Aspen Gulch up
to the meadows. Aspen Gulch came in on the
right, as the now slightly widening track seemed
to indicate.

13

of

At the bottom of the moraine I was forced
between two trees that stood close together,
and a broken limb of one pierced my open coat
just beneath the left armhole, and slit the coat
to the bottom. My momentum and the resist-
ance of the strong material gave me such a
shock that I was flung off my balance, and my
left skee smashed against a tree. Two feet of the
heel was broken off and the remainder split. I
managed to avoid falling, but had to check my
speed with my staff for fear of a worse acci-
dent.

Battling breakers with a broken oar or racing
with a broken skee are struggles of short dura-
tion. The slide did not slow down, and so closely
did it crowd me that, through the crashing of
trees as it struck them down, I could hear the
rocks and splintered timbers in its mass grind-
ing together and thudding against obstructions
over which it swept. These sounds, and flying,
broken limbs cried to me "Faster!" and as I
started to descend another steep moraine, I
threw away my staff and "let go." I simply
flashed down the slope, dodged and rounded a

14

an

cliff, turned awkwardly into Aspen Gulch, and
tumbled heels over head — into safety.

Then I picked myself up, to see the slide go
by within twenty feet, with great broken trees
sticking out of its side, and a snow-cloud drag-
ging above.

^''WENTY-FOUR years ago, while studying gla-
^S ciation on the slope of Long's Peak, I
came upon a cluster of eight beaver houses.
These crude, conical mud huts were in a forest
pond far up on the mountainside. In this colony
of our first engineers were so many things of
interest that the fascinating study of the dead
Ice King's ruins and records was indefinitely
given up in order to observe Citizen Beaver's
works and ways.

The industrious beaver builds a permanent
home, keeps it clean and in repair, and beside
it stores food supplies for winter. He takes
thought for the morrow. These and other com-
mendable characteristics give him a place of
honor among the horde of homeless, hand-to-
mouth folk of the wild. His picturesque works
add a charm to nature and are helpful to man-
kind. His dams and ponds have saved vast

19

of

areas of soil, have checked many a flood, and
helped to equalize stream-flow.

A pile of granite boulders on the edge of the
pond stood several feet above the water-level,
and from the top of these the entire colony and
its operations could be seen. On these I spent
days observing and enjoying the autumnal ac-
tivities of Beaverdom.

It was the busiest time of the year for these
industrious folk. General and extensive prepar-
ations were now being made for the long winter
amid the mountain snows. A harvest of scores
of trees was being gathered, and work on a new
house was in progress, while the old houses were
receiving repairs. It was a serene autumn day
when I came into the picturesque village of
these primitive people. The aspens were golden,
the willows rusty, the grass tanned, and the
pines were purring in the easy air.

The colony-site was in a small basin amid
morainal debris at an altitude of nine thousand
feet above the sea-level. I at once christened it
the Moraine Colony. The scene was utterly
wild. Peaks of crags and snow rose steeply and

20

MT. MEEKER

high above; all around crowded a dense ever-
green forest of pine and spruce. A few small
swamps reposed in this forest, while here and
there in it bristled several gigantic windrows
of boulders. A ragged belt of aspens surrounded
the several ponds and separated the pines and
spruces from the fringe of water-loving willows
along the shores. There were three large ponds
in succession and below- these a number of
smaller ones. The dams that formed the large
ponds were willow-grown, earthy structures
about four feet in height, and all sagged down
stream. The houses were grouped in the middle
pond, the largest one, the dam of which was
more than three hundred feet long. Three of
these lake dwellings stood near the upper mar-
gin, close to where the brook poured in. The
other five were clustered by the outlet, just be-
low which a small willow-grown, boulder-dotted
island lay between the divided waters of the
stream.

A number of beavers were busy gnawing
down aspens, while others cut the felled ones
into sections, pushed and rolled the sections

21

of

into the water, and then floated them to the
harvest piles, one of which was being made be-
side each house. Some were quietly at work
spreading a coat of mud on the outside of each
house. This would freeze and defy the tooth
and claw of the hungriest or the strongest pre-
daceous enemy. Four beavers were leisurely
lengthening and repairing a dam. A few worked
singly, but most of them were in groups. All
worked quietly and with apparent deliberation,
but all were in motion, so that it was a busy
scene. " To work like a beaver !" What a stir-
ring exhibition of beaver industry and fore-
thought I viewed from my boulder-pile!

At times upward of forty of them were in
sight. Though there was a general cooperation,
yet each one appeared to do his part without
orders or direction. Time and again a group of
workers completed a task and without pause
silently moved off and began another. Every-
thing appeared to go on mechanically. It pro-
duced a strange feeling to see so many workers
doing so many kinds of work effectively and
automatically. Again and again I listened for

22

the superintendent's voice ; constantly I watched
to see the overseer move among them; but I
listened and watched in vain. Yet I feel that
some of the patriarchal fellows must have car-
ried a general plan of the work, and that during
its progress orders and directions that I could
not comprehend were given from time to time.
The work was at its height a little before mid-
day. Nowadays it is rare for a beaver to work
in daylight. Men and guns have prevented day-
light workers from leaving descendants. These
not only worked but played by day. One morn-
ing for more than an hour there was a general
frolic, in which the entire population appeared
to take part. They raced, dived, crowded in
general mix-ups, whacked the water with their
tails, wrestled, and dived again. There were
two or three play-centres, but the play went
on without intermission, and as their position
constantly changed, the merrymakers splashed
water all over the main pond before they calmed
down and in silence returned to work. I gave
most attention to the harvesters, who felled the
aspens and moved them, bodily or in sections,

23

of

by land and water to the harvest piles. One
tree on the shore of the pond which was felled
into the water was eight inches in diameter and
fifteen feet high. Without having even a limb
cut off, it was floated to the nearest harvest pile.
Another, about the same size, which was pro-
cured some fifty feet from the water, was cut into
four sections and its branches removed ; then a
single beaver would take a branch in his teeth,
drag it to the water, and swim with it to a har-
vest pile. But four beavers united to transport
the largest section to the water. They pushed
with fore paws, with breasts, and with hips.
Plainly it was too heavy for them. They paused.
''Now they will go for help," I said to myself,
"and I shall find out who the boss is." But to
my astonishment one of them began to gnaw
the piece in two, and two more began to clear a
narrow way to the water, while the fourth set
himself to cutting down another aspen. Good
roads and open waterways are the rule, and
perhaps the necessary rule, of beaver colo-
nies.

I was impatient to have a close view of a
24

beaver cutting down a tree, and at last one came
prospecting near where I was hidden. After a
prolonged period of repose and possibly reflec-
tion he rose, gazed into the treetop, as though
to see if it were entangled, then put his fore
paws against the tree, spread his hind legs, sat
back on his extended tail, and took a bite from
the trunk. Everything in his actions suggested
that his only intention was to devour the tree
deliberately. He did most of the cutting from
one side. Occasionally he pulled out a chip by
leaning backward ; sometimes he pried it out by
tilting his head to the horizontal, forcing his
lower front teeth behind it, then splitting it out
by using his jaws as a lever. He was a trifle
more than an hour in felling a four-inch tree;
just before it fell he thudded the ground a few
times with his tail and ran away.

I became deeply interested in this colony,
which was situated within two miles of my
cabin, and its nearness enabled me to be a fre-
quent visitor and to follow closely its fortunes
and misfortunes. About the hut-filled pond I
lingered when it was covered with winter's

25

of

white, when fringed with the gentian's blue,
and while decked with the pond-lily's yellow
glory.

Ruin befell it before my first visit ended.
One morning, while watching from the boulder-
pile, I noticed an occasional flake of ash drop-
ping into the pond. Soon smoke scented the air,
then came the awful and subdued roar of a
forest fire. I fled, and from above the timber-
line watched the storm-cloud of black smoke
sweep furiously forward, bursting and closing
to the terrible leaps of red and tattered flames.
Before noon several thousand acres of forest
were dead, all leaves and twigs were in ashes,
all tree- trunks blistered and blackened.

The Moraine Colony was closely embowered
in a pitchy forest. For a time the houses in the
water must have been wrapped in flames of
smelter heat. Could these mud houses stand
this? The beavers themselves I knew would
escape by sinking under the water. Next morn-
ing I went through the hot, smoky area and found
every house cracked and crumbling; not one
was inhabitable. Most serious of all was the

26

total loss of the uncut food supply, when har-
vesting for winter had only begun.

Would these energetic people starve at home
or would they try to find refuge in some other
colony? Would they endeavor to find a grove
that the fire had missed and there start anew?
The intense heat had consumed almost every
fibrous thing above the surface. The piles of
garnered green aspen were charred to the water-
line; all that remained of willow thickets and
aspen groves were thousands of blackened pick-
ets and points, acres of coarse charcoal stubble.
It was a dreary, starving outlook for my furred
friends.

I left the scene to explore the entire burned
area. After wandering for hours amid ashes and
charcoal, seeing here and there the seared car-
cass of a deer or some other wild animal, I came
upon a beaver colony that had escaped the fire.
It was in the midst of several acres of swampy
ground that was covered with fire-resisting wil-
lows and aspens. The surrounding pine forest
was not dense and the heat it produced in burn-
ing did no damage to the scattered beaver houses.

27

of

From the top of a granite crag I surveyed the
green scene of life and the surrounding sweep of
desolation. Here and there a sodden log smoul-
dered in the ashen distance and supported a
tower of smoke in the still air. A few miles to
the east, among the scattered trees of a rocky
summit, the fire was burning itself out: to the
west the sun was sinking behind crags and snow ;
near-by, on a blackened limb, a south-bound
robin chattered volubly but hopelessly.
' While I was listening, thinking, and watching,
a mountain lion appeared and leaped lightly
upon a block of granite. He was on my right,
about one hundred feet away and about an
equal distance from the shore of the nearest
pond. He was interested in the approach of
something. With a nervous switching of his
tail he peered eagerly forward over the crown
of the ridge just before him, and then crouched
tensely and expectantly upon his rock.

A pine tree that had escaped the fire screened
the place toward which the lion looked and
where something evidently was approaching.
While I was trying to discover what it could be,

28

a coyote trotted into view. Without catching
sight of the near-by lion, he suddenly stopped
and fixed his gaze upon the point that so inter-
ested the crouching beast. The mystery was
solved when thirty or forty beavers came hurry-
ing into view. They had come from the ruined
Moraine Colony.

I thought to myself that the coyote, stuffed
as he must be with the seared flesh of fire-
roasted victims, would not attack them; but a
lion wants a fresh kill for every meal, and so I
watched the movements of the latter. He ad-
justed his feet a trifle and made ready to spring.
The beavers were getting close; but just as I
was about to shout to frighten him the coyote
leaped among them and began killing.

In the excitement of getting off the crag I
narrowly escaped breaking my neck. Once on
the ground I ran for the coyote, shouting wildly
to frighten him off; but he was so intent upon
killing that a violent kick in the ribs first made
him aware of my presence. In anger and excite-
ment he leaped at me with ugly teeth as he fled.
The lion had disappeared, and by this time the

29

of tfc

beavers in the front ranks were jumping into
the pond, while the others were awkwardly
speeding down the slope. The coyote had killed
three. If beavers have a language, surely that
night the refugees related to their hospitable
neighbors some thrilling experiences.

Thernext morning I returned to the Moraine
Colony over the route followed by the refugees.
Leaving their fire-ruined homes, they had fol-
lowed the stream that issued from their ponds.
In places the channel was so clogged with fire
wreckage that they had followed alongside the
water rather than in it, as is their wont. At one
place they had hurriedly taken refuge in the
stream. Coyote tracks in the scattered ashes
explained this. But after going a short distance
they had climbed from the water and again
traveled the ashy earth.

" Beavers, like fish, commonly follow water
routes, but in times of emergency or in moments
of audacity they will journey overland. To have
followed this stream down to its first tributary,
then up this to where the colony in which they
found refuge was situated, would have required

30

four miles of travel. Overland it was less than a
mile. After following the stream for some dis-
tance, at just the right place they turned off,
left the stream, and dared the overland dangers.
How did they know the situation of the colony
in the willows, or that it had escaped fire, and
how could they have known the shortest, best
way to it?

The morning after the arrival of the refugees,
work was begun on two new houses and a dam,
which was about sixty feet in length and built
across a grassy open. Green cuttings of willow,
aspen, and alder were used in its construction.
Not a single stone or a handful of mud was used.
When completed it appeared like a windrow of
freshly raked shrubs. It was almost straight,
but sagged a trifle downstream. Though the
water filtered freely through, it flooded the flat
above. As the two new houses 'could not shel-
ter all the refugees, it is probable that some of
them were sheltered in bank tunnels, while
room for others may have been found in the
old houses.

That winter the colony was raided by some
31

of 10* (gocftte

trappers; more than one hundred pelts were
secured, and the colony was left in ruins and
almost depopulated.

The Moraine Colony site was deserted for a
long time. Eight years after the fire I returned
to examine it. The willow growth about the
ruins was almost as thrifty as when the fire
came. A growth of aspen taller than one's head
clung to the old shore-lines, while a close seed-
ling growth of lodge-pole pine throve in the
ashes of the old forest. One low mound, merry
with blooming columbine, was the only house
ruin to be seen.

The ponds were empty and every dam was
broken. The stream, in rushing unobstructed
through the ruins, had eroded deeply. This
erosion revealed the records of ages, and showed
that the old main dam had been built on the
top of an older dam and a sediment-filled pond.
The second dam was on top of an older one still.
In the sediment of 'the oldest — the bottom
pond — I found a spear-head, two charred logs,
and the skull of a buffalo. Colonies of beaver,
as well as those of men, are often found upon

32

sites that have a tragic history. Beavers, with
Omar, might say, —

" When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the world shall last."

The next summer, 1893, the Moraine site was
resettled. During the first season the colonists
put in their time repairing dams and were con-
tent to live in holes. In autumn they gathered
no harvest, and no trace of them could be found
after the snow; so it is likely that they had
returned to winter in the colony whence they
had come. But early in the next spring there
were reinforced numbers of them at work estab-
lishing a permanent settlement. Three dams
were repaired, and in the autumn many of the
golden leaves that fell found lodgment in the
fresh plaster of two new houses.

Most beaver dams are built on the install-
ment plan, — are the result of growth. As the
pond fills with sediment, and the water becomes
shallower, the dam is built higher and, where
conditions require it, longer; or, as is often the
case, it may be raised and lengthened for the
purpose of raising or backing water to the trees

33

of

that are next to be harvested. The dams are
made of sticks, small trees, sods, mud, stones,
coal, grass, roots, — that is, combinations of
these. The same may be said of the houses.
For either house or dam the most convenient
material is likely to be used. But this is not
always the case; for the situation of the house,
or what the dam may have to endure, evidently
is sometimes considered, and apparently that
kind of material is used that will best meet all
the requirements.

Most beaver dams are so situated that they
are destined earlier or later to accumulate sedi-
ment, trash, and fallen leaves, and become
earthy; then they will, of course, be planted by
Nature with grass, shrubby willows, and even
trees. I have seen many trees with birds' nests
in them standing on a beaver dam; yet the
original dam had been composed almost entirely
of sticks or stones.

Why do beavers want or need ponds? They
have very heavy bodies and extremely short
legs. On land they are slow and awkward and
in the greatest danger from their enemies, —

34

wolves, lions, bears, and wildcats; but they are
excellent swimmers, and in water they easily
elude their enemies, and through it they con-
veniently bring their harvests home. Water is
necessary for their existence, and to have this at
all times compels the construction of dams and
ponds.

In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses
was torn to pieces by some animal, probably
a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About
midwinter a prospector left his tunnel a few
miles away, came to the colony, and dynamited
a house, and "got seven of them." Next year
two houses were built on the ruins of the
two just fallen. That year's harvest-home was
broken by deadly attacks of enemies. In gather-
ing the harvest the beavers showed a preference
for some aspens that were growing in a moist
place about one hundred feet from the water.
Whether it was the size of these or their pecu-
liar flavor that determined their election in pre-
ference to nearer ones, I could not determine.
One day, while several beavers were cutting
here, they were surprised by a mountain lion,

35

of

which leaped upon and killed one of the har-
vesters. The next day the lion surprised and
killed another. Two or three days later a coy-
ote killed one on the same blood-stained spot,
and then overtook and killed two others as they
fled for the water. I could not see these deadly
attacks from the boulder-pile, but in each case
the sight of flying beavers sent me rushing up-
on the scene, where I beheld the cause of their
desperate retreat. But despite dangers they per-
sisted until the last of these aspens was har-
vested. During the winter the bark was eaten
from these, and the next season their clean wood
was used in the walls of a new house.

One spring I several times visited a number of
colonies while trying to determine the number
of young brought forth at a birth. Six furry
little fellows sunning themselves on top of their
rude home were the first discovery; this was the
twelfth of May. By the close of the month I
had come in sight of many youngsters, and
found the average number to be five. One
mother proudly exhibited eight, while another,
one who all winter had been harassed by trap-

36

llttfft (Consemftontefe

pers and who lived in a burrow on the bank,
could display but one. In the Moraine Colony
the three sets of youngsters numbered two,
three, and five. Great times these had as they
were growing up. They played over the house,
and such fun they had nosing and pushing each
other off a large boulder into the water ! A thou-
sand merry ripples they sent to the shore as
they raced, wrestled, and dived in the pond,
both in the sunshine and in the shadows of the
willows along the shore.

The beaver has a rich birthright, though born
in a windowless hut of mud. Close to the primi-
tive place of his birth the wild folk of both woods
and water meet and often mingle; around it
are the ever-changing, never-ending scenes and
silences of the water or the shore. He grows up
with the many-sided wild, playing amid the
enameled flowers, the great boulders, — the Ice
King's marbles, — and the fallen logs in the
edge of the mysterious forest; learning to swim
and slide; listening to the strong, harmonious
stir of wind and water; living with the stars in
the sky and the stars in the pond; beginning

37

of

serious life when brilliant clouds of color enrich
the hills; helping to harvest the trees that wear
the robes of gold, while the birds go by for
the southland in the reflective autumn days. If
Mother Nature should ever call me to live upon
another planet I could wish that I might be
born a beaver, to inhabit a house in the water.
The autumn of the year when I watched the
young beavers I had the pleasure of seeing some
immigrants pass me en route for a new home in
the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have
been only visitors, or have come temporarily to
assist in the harvesting; but I like to think of
them as immigrants, and a number of things
testified that immigrants they were. One even-
ing I had long been lying on a boulder by the
stream below the colony, waiting for a gift from
the gods. It came. Out of the water within ten
feet of me scrambled the most patriarchal, as
well as the largest, beaver that I have ever seen.
I wanted to take off my hat to him, I wanted to
ask him to tell me the story of his life, but from
long habit I simply lay still and watched and
thought in silence. He was making a portage

38

round a cascade. As he scrambled up over the
rocks, I noticed that he had but two fingers on
his right hand. He was followed, in single file, by
four others ; one of these was minus a finger on
the left hand. The next morning I read that
five immigrants had arrived in the Moraine
Colony. They had registered their footprints
in the muddy margin of the lower pond. Had
an agent been sent to invite these colonists, or
had they come out of their own adventurous
spirit? The day following their arrival I trailed
them backward in the hope of learning whence
they came and why they had moved. They had
traveled in the water most of the time; but in
places they had come out on the bank to go
round a waterfall or to avoid an obstruction.
Here and there I saw their tracks in the mud
and traced them to a beaver settlement in which
the houses and dams had been recently wrecked.
A near-by rancher told me that he had been
"making it hot" for all beavers in his meadow.
During the next two years I occasionally saw
this patriarchal beaver or his tracks thereabout.
It is the custom among old male beavers to
39

of

idle away two or three months of each summer
in exploring the neighboring brooks and streams.
But they never fail to return in time for autumn
activities. It thus becomes plain how, when an
old colony needs to move, some one in it knows
where to go and the route to follow.

I had enjoyed the ways of "our first engi-
neers" for several years before it dawned upon
me that their works might be useful to man and
that the beaver might justly be called the first
conservationist. One dry winter the stream
through the Moraine Colony ran low and froze
to the bottom, and the only trout in it that
survived were those in the deep holes of these
beaver ponds. 'Another demonstration of their
usefulness came one gray day. The easy rain of
two days ended in a heavy downpour and a
deluge of water on the mountainside above.
This mountain-slope was still barren from the
forest fire. It had but little to absorb or delay
the excess of water, which was speedily shed
into the stream below. Flooding down the
stream's channel came a roaring avalanche or
waterslide, with a rubbish-filled front that was

40

five or six feet high. This expanded as it rolled
into the pond and swept far out on the sides,
while the front, greatly lowered, rushed over the
dam. Much of this water was caught and tem-
porarily detained in the ponds, and by the time
it poured over the last dam its volume was
greatly reduced and its speed checked. The
ponds had broken the rush and prevented a
flood.

Every beaver pond is a settling-basin that
takes sediment and soil from the water that
passes through it. If this soil were carried down
it would not only be lost, but it would clog the
deep waterway, the river channel. Deposited
in the pond, it will in time become productive.
During past ages the millions of beaver dams in
the United States have spread soil over thou-
sands of square miles and rendered them pro-
ductive. Beavers prepared the way for numer-
ous forests and meadows, for countless orchards
and peaceful, productive valleys.

The Moraine colonists gathered an unusually
large harvest during the autumn of 1909. Seven
hundred and thirty-two sapling aspens and

41

of

several hundred willows were massed in the
main pond by the largest house. This pile,
which was mostly below the water-line, was
three feet deep and one hundred and twenty-
four feet in circumference. Would a new house
be built this fall? This unusually large harvest
plainly told that either children or immigrants
had increased the population of the colony. Of
course, a hard winter may also have been ex-
pected.

No; they were not to build a new house, but
the old house by the harvest pile was to be
enlarged. One day, just as the evening shadow
of Long's Peak had covered the pond, I peeped
over a log on top of the dam to watch the work.
The house was only forty feet distant. Not a
ripple stirred among the inverted peaks and
pines in the clear, shadow-enameled pond. A
lone beaver rose quietly in the scene from the
water near the house. Swimming noiselessly,
he made a circuit of the pond. Then for a time,
and without any apparent purpose, he swam
back and forth over a short, straight course ; he
moved leisurely, and occasionally made a shal-

42

low, quiet dive. He did not appear to be watch-
ing anything in particular or to have anything
special on his mind. Yet his eyes may have been
scouting for enemies and his mind may have
been full of house plans. Finally he dived deeply,
and the next I saw of him he was climbing up
the side of the house addition with a pawful of
mud.

By this time a number of beavers were swim-
ming in the pond after the manner of the first
one. Presently all began to work. The addition
already stood more than two feet above the
water-line. The top of this was crescent-shaped
and was about seven feet long and half as wide.
It was made mostly of mud, which was plenti-
fully reinforced with willow cuttings and aspen
sticks. For a time all the workers busied them-
selves in carrying mud and roots from the bot-
tom of the pond and placing these on the slowly
rising addition. Eleven were working at one
time. By and by three swam ashore, each in a
different direction and each a few seconds apart.
After a minute or two they returned from the
shore, each carrying or trailing a long willow.

43

of

These were dragged to the top of the addition,
laid down, and trampled in the mud. Meantime
the mud-carriers kept steadily at their work;
again willows were brought, but this time four
beavers went, and, as before, each was inde-
pendent of the others. I did not see how this
work could go on without some one bossing the
thing, but I failed to detect any beaver acting
as overseer. While there was general coopera-
tion, each acted independently most of the time
and sometimes was apparently oblivious of the
others. These beavers simply worked, — slowly,
silently, and steadily; and they were still work-
ing away methodically and with dignified delib-
eration when darkness hid them.
- Most beaver houses are conical and round of
outline. This house originally was slightly ellip-
tical and measured forty- one feet in circumfer-
ence. After enlargement it was almost a flattened
ellipse and measured sixty-three feet in circum-
ference. Generally I have found that small
beaver houses are round and large ones elliptical.
One of the last large interesting works of the
Moraine Colony was the making of a new pond.

44

This was made alongside the main pond and
about fifty feet distant from it. A low ridge
separated the two. As it was nearly one hun-
dred feet from the stream, a ditch or canal was
dug from the stream, below the main pond, to
fill it. The new pond was made for the purpose
of reaching with a waterway an aspen grove on
its farther shore.

The making of the dam showed more fore-
thought than the getting of the water into the
pond. With the exception of aspen, no dam-
making material such as beavers commonly use
was to be found. The population of the colony
was now large, while aspen, the chief food-sup-
ply, was becoming scarce. Would the beavers
see far enough ahead to realize this? Evidently
they did ; at any rate not a single precious aspen
was used in making the dam. Close to the dam-
site was a supply of young lodge-pole pines; but
it is against the tradition of the beaver to cut
green pines or spruces. Two of these lodge-poles
were cut, but evidently these pitchy, smelly
things were not to the beavers' taste and no
more of them were used.

45

of

Not far away were scores of fire-killed trees,
both standing and fallen. "Surely," I said to
myself, when two dead chunks had been dragged
into place, "they are not going to use this dead
timber? " A beaver avoids gnawing dead wood ;
it is slow work, and besides is very hard on the
teeth. Most of these dead trees were incon-
veniently large, and were fire-hardened and full
of sand-filled weather-cracks; but contrary to
all my years of observation, they, after long,
hard labor, built an excellent dam from this
material.

I have determined to do all I can to perpetu-
ate the beaver, and I wish I could interest every
man, woman, boy, and girl in the land to help
in this. Beaver works are so picturesque and so
useful to man that I trust this persistent prac-
ticer of conservation will not perish from the
hills and mountains of our land. His growing
scarcity is awakening some interest in him, and
I hope and half believe that before many years
every brook that is born on a great watershed
will, as it goes swiftly, merrily singing down the

46

slopes toward the sea, pass through and be
steadied in a poetic pond that is made and will
be maintained by our patient, persistent, faithful
friend the beaver.

ONE autumn I watched a beaver colony and
observed the customs of its primitive in-
habitants as they gathered their harvest for
winter. It was the Spruce Tree Colony, the
most attractive one of the sixteen beaver muni-
cipalities on the big moraine on the slope of
Long's Peak.

The first evening I concealed myself close to
the beaver house by the edge of the pond. Just
at sunset a large, aged beaver of striking, patri-
archal appearance, rose in the water by the
house and swam slowly, silently round the pond.
He kept close to the shore and appeared to be
scouting to see if an enemy lurked near. On
completing the circuit of the pond, he climbed
upon the end of a log that was thrust a few feet
out into the water. Presently several other
beaver appeared in the water close to the house.
A few of these at once left the pond and nosed
quietly about on the shore. The others swam

of

about for some minutes and then joined their
comrades on land, where all rested for a time.

Meanwhile the aged beaver had lifted a small
aspen limb out of the water and was squatted
on the log, leisurely eating bark. Before many
minutes elapsed the other beaver became rest-
less and finally started up the slope in a runway.
They traveled slowly in single file and one by one
vanished amid the tall sedge. The old beaver
slipped noiselessly into the water, and a series of
low waves pointed toward the house. It was
dark as I stole away in silence for the night, and
Mars was gently throbbing in the black water.
. This was an old beaver settlement, and the
numerous harvests gathered by its inhabitants
had long since exhausted the near-by growths
of aspen, the bark of which is the favorite food
of North American beaver, though the bark of
willow, cottonwood, alder, and birch is also
eaten. An. examination of the aspen supply,
together with the lines of transportation, — the
runways, canals, and ponds, — indicated that
this year's harvest would have to be brought a
long distance. The place it would come from was

52

an aspen grove far up the slope, about a quar-
ter of a mile distant from the main house, and
perhaps a hundred and twenty feet above it.
In this grove I cut three notches in the trunks
of several trees to enable me to identify them
whether in the garnered pile by a house or
along the line of transportation to it.

-The grounds of this colony occupied several
acres on a terraced, moderately steep slope of a
mountain moraine. Along one side rushed a
swift stream on which the colonists maintained
three but little used ponds. On the opposite
side were the slope and summit of the moraine.
There was a large pond at the bottom, and one
or two small ponds, or water-filled basins, dotted
each of the five terraces which rose above. The
entire grounds were perforated with subter-
ranean passageways or tunnels.

Beaver commonly fill their ponds by dam-
ming a brook or a river. But this colony ob-
tained most of its water-supply from springs
poured forth abundantly on the uppermost ter-
race, where the water was led into one pond and
a number of basins. Overflowing from these, it

53

either made a merry, tiny cascade or went to
lubricate a slide on the short slopes which led
to the ponds on the terrace below. The waters
from all terraces were gathered into a large
pond at the bottom. This pond measured six
hundred feet in circumference. The crooked
and almost encircling grass-grown dam was six
feet high, and four hundred feet long. In its
upper edge stood the main house, which was
eighty feet high and forty feet in circumference.
There was also another house on one of the
terraces.

After notching the aspens I spent some time
exploring the colony grounds and did not return
to the marked trees until forty-eight hours had
elapsed. Harvest had begun, and one of the
largest notched trees had been felled and re-
moved. Its gnawed stump was six inches in
diameter and stood fifteen inches high. The
limbs had been trimmed off, and a number of
these lay scattered about the stump. The
trunk, which must have been about eighteen
feet long, had disappeared, cut into lengths of
from three to six feet, probably, and started

54

toward the harvest pile. Wondering* for which
house these logs were intended, I followed, hop-
ing to trace and trail them to the house, or find
them en route. From the spot where they were
cut, they had evidently been rolled down a
steep, grassy seventy-foot slope, at the bottom
of this dragged an equal distance over a level
stretch among some lodge-pole pines, and then
pushed or dragged along a narrow runway that
had been cut through a rank growth of willows.
Once through the willows, they were pushed
into the uppermost pond. They were taken
across this, forced over the dam on the opposite
side, and shot down a slide into the pond which
contained the smaller house. Only forty-eight
hours before, the little logs which I was follow-
ing were in a tree, and now I expected to find
them by this house. It was good work to have
got them here so quickly, I thought. But no logs
could be found by the house or in the pond ! The
folks at this place had not yet laid up anything
for winter. The logs must have gone farther.

On the opposite side of this pond I found
where the logs had been dragged across the

55

fkydl of ity Q£oc«ie0

broad dam and then heaved into a long, wet
slide which landed them in a small, shallow
harbor in the grass. From this point a canal
about eighty feet long ran around the brow of
the terrace and ended at the top of a long slide
which reached to the big pond. This canal was
new and probably had been dug especially for
this harvest. For sixty feet of its length it was
quite regular in form and had an average width
of thirty inches and a depth of fourteen. The
mud dug in making it was piled evenly along
the lower side. Altogether it looked more like
the work of a careful man with a shovel than
of beaver without tools. Seepage and overflow
water from the ponds above filled and flowed
slowly through it and out at the farther end,
where it swept down the long slide into the big
pond. Through this canal the logs had been
taken one by one. At the farther end I found
the butt-end log. It probably had been too
heavy to heave out of the canal, but tracks in
the mud indicated that there was a hard tussle
before it was abandoned.

The pile of winter supplies was started. Close
56

A BEAVER CANAL
Length 334 feet, average depth 1 5 inches, average width 26 inches

to the big house a few aspen leaves fluttered
on twigs in the water; evidently these twigs
were attached to limbs or larger pieces of aspen
that were piled beneath the surface. Could it be
that the aspen which I had marked on the
mountainside a quarter of a mile distant so
short a time before, and which I had followed
over slope and slide, canal and basin, was now
piled on the bottom of this pond? I waded out
into the water, prodded about with a pole, and
found several smaller logs. Dragging one of
these to the surface, I found there were three
notches on it.

Evidently these heavy green tree cuttings
had been sunk to the bottom simply by the
piling of other similar cuttings upon them.
With this heavy material in the still water a
slight contact with the bottom would prevent
the drifting of accumulating cuttings until a
heavy pile could be formed. However, in deep
or swift water I have noticed that an anchorage
for the first few pieces was secured by placing
these upon the lower slope of the house or
against the dam.

57

e $pdt of

Scores of aspens were felled in the grove
where the notched ones were. They were
trimmed, cut into sections, and limbs, logs, and
all taken over the route of the one I had fol-
lowed, and at last placed in a pile beside the big
house. This harvest gathering went on for a
month. All about was busy, earnest prepara-
tion for winter. The squirrels from the tree- tops
kept a rattling rain of cones on the leaf-strewn
forest floor, the cheery chipmunk foraged and
frolicked among the withered leaves and plants,
while aspens with leaves of gold fell before the
ivory sickles of the beaver. Splendid glimpses,
grand views, I had of this strange harvest-home.
How busy the beavers were! They were busy
in the grove on the steep mountainside; they
tugged logs along the runways; they hurried
them across the water-basins, wrestled with
them in canals, and merrily piled them by the
rude house in the water. And I watched them
through the changing hours; I saw their shad-
owy activity in the starry, silent night; I saw
them hopefully leave home for the harvest
groves in the serene twilight, and I watched

58

them working busily in the light of the noonday
sun.

Most of the aspens were cut off between
thirteen and fifteen inches above the ground.
A few stumps were less than five inches high,
while a number were four feet high. These high
cuttings were probably made from reclining
trunks of lodged aspens which were afterward
removed. The average diameter of the aspens
cut was four and one half inches- at the top
of the stump. Numerous seedlings of an inch
diameter were cut, and the largest tree felled
for this harvest measured fourteen inches across
the stump. This had been laid low only a few
hours before I found it, and a bushel of white
chips and cuttings encircled the lifeless stump
like a wreath. In falling, the top had become
entangled in an alder thicket and lodged six
feet from the ground. It remained in this posi-
tion for several days and was apparently aban-
doned; but the last time I went to see it the
alders which upheld it were being cut away.
Although the alders were thick upon the ground,
only those which had upheld the aspen had

59

of

been cut. It may be that the beaver which
felled them looked and thought before they
went ahead with the cutting.

Why had this and several other large aspens
been left uncut in a place where all were con-
venient for harvest? All other neighboring
aspens were cut years ago. One explanation is
that the beaver realized that the tops of the
aspens were entangled and interlocked in the
limbs of crowding spruces and would not fall if
cut off at the bottom. This and one other were
the only large ones that were felled, and the
tops of these had been recently released by the
overturning of some spruces and the breaking of
several branches on others. Other scattered
large aspens were left uncut, but all of these
were clasped in the arms of near-by spruces.

It was the habit of these colonists to transfer
a tree to the harvest pile promptly after cutting
it down. But one morning I found logs on slides
and in canals, and unfinished work in the grove,
as though everything had been suddenly dropped
in the night when work was at its height. Coy-
otes had howled freely during the night, but

60

this was not uncommon. In going over the
grounds I found the explanation of this untidy
work in a bear track and numerous wolf tracks,
freshly moulded in the muddy places.

After the bulk of the harvest was gathered, I
went one day to the opposite side of the moraine
and briefly observed the methods of the Island
beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies
were in some things very different. In the
Spruce Tree Colony the custom was to move the
felled aspen promptly to the harvest pile. In
the Island Colony the custom was to cut down
most of the harvest before transporting any of
it to the pile beside the house. Of the one hun-
dred and sixty-two trees that had been felled
for this harvest, one hundred and twenty-seven
were still lying where they fell. However, the
work of transporting was getting under way; a
few logs were in the pile beside the house, and
numerous others were scattered along the ca-
nals, runways, and slides between the house and
the harvest grove.

There was more wasted labor, too, in the
Island Colony. This was noticeable in the at-

61

of f 0e (£oc8t<!6

tempts that had been made to fell limb-en-
tangled trees that could not fall. One five-inch
aspen had three times been cut off at the bot-
tom. The third cut was more than three feet
from the ground, and was made by a beaver
working from the top of a fallen log. Still this
high-cut aspen refused to come down and there
it hung like a collapsed balloon entangled in tree-
tops.

Before the white man came it is probable
that beaver did most of their work in the day-
time. But at present, except in the most re-
mote localities, day work is perilous. Prowling
hunters have compelled most beaver to work
at night. The Spruce Tree Colony was an iso-
lated one, and occasionally its members worked
and even played in the sunshine. Each day I
secluded myself, kept still, and waited; and on a
few occasions watched them as they worked in
the light.

One windy day, just as I was unroping my-
self from the shaking limb of a spruce, four
beaver were plodding along in single file be-
neath. They had come out of a hole between

62

the roots of the spruce. At an aspen growth
about fifty feet distant they separated. Though
they had been closely assembled, each appeared
utterly oblivious of the presence of the others.
One squatted on the ground by an aspen, took
a bite of bark out of it and ate leisurely. By
and by he rose, clasped the aspen with fore
paws and began to bite chips from it systemati-
cally. He was deliberately cutting it down. The
most aged beaver waddled near an aspen, gazed
into its top for a few seconds, then moved away
about ten feet and started to fell a five-inch
aspen. The one rejected was entangled at the
top. Presently the third beaver selected a tree,
and after some trouble to get comfortably
seated, or squatted, also began cutting. The
fourth beaver disappeared and I did not see
him again. While I was looking for this one the
huge, aged beaver whose venerable appearance
had impressed me the first evening appeared on
the scene. He came out of a hole beneath some
spruces about a hundred feet distant. He looked
neither to right nor to left, nor up nor down,
as he ambled toward the aspen growth. When

63

of $*

about halfway there he wheeled suddenly and
took an uneasy survey of the open he had tra-
versed, as though he had heard an enemy be-
hind. Then with apparently stolid indifference
he went on leisurely, and for a time paused
among the cutters, which did nothing to indi-
cate that they realized his presence. He ate
some bark from? a green limb on the ground,
moved on, and went into the hole beneath me.
He appeared so large that I afterward measured
the distance between the two aspens where he
paused. He was not less than three and a half
feet long and probably weighed fifty pounds.
He had all his toes; there was no white spot on
his body; in fact, there was neither mark nor
blemish by which I could positively identify
him. Yet I feel that in my month around the
colony I beheld the patriarch of the first even-
ing in several scenes of action.

Sixty-seven minutes after the second beaver
began cutting he made a brief pause; then he
suddenly thudded the ground with his tail,
hurriedly took out a few more chips, and ran
away, with the other two beaver a little in

64

advance, just as his four-inch aspen settled over
and then fell. All paused for a time close to the
hole beneath me, and then the old beaver re-
turned to his work. The one that had felled his
tree followed closely and at once began on an-
other aspen. The other beaver, with his aspen
half cut off, went into the hole and did not again
come out. By and by an old and a young beaver
came out of the hole. The young one at once
began cutting limbs off the recently felled
aspen, while the other began work on the half-
cut tree ; but he ignored the work already done,
and finally severed the trunk about four inches
above the cut made by the other. Suddenly
the old beaver whacked the ground and ran,
but at thirty feet distant he paused and nerv-
ously thumped the ground with his tail, as his
aspen slowly settled and fell. Then he went
into the hole beneath me.

This year's harvest was so much larger than
usual that it may be the population of this col-
ony had been increased by the arrival of emi-
grants from a persecuted colony down in the
valley. The total harvest numbered four hun-

65

of

dred and forty-three trees. These made a har-
vest pile four feet high and ninety feet in cir-
cumference. A thick covering of willows was
placed on top of the harvest pile, — I cannot
tell for what reason unless it was to sink all the
aspen below reach of the ice. This bulk of stores
together with numerous roots of willow and
water plants, which in the water are eaten from
the bottom of the pond, would support a num-
erous beaver population through the days of
ice and snow.

On the last tour through the colony every-
thing was ready for the long and cold winter.
Dams were in repair and ponds were brimming
over with water, the fresh coats of mud on the
houses were freezing to defy enemies, and a
bountiful harvest was home. Harvest-gathering
is full of hope and romance. What a joy it must
be to every man or animal who has a hand in it!
What a satisfaction, too, for all dependent upon
a harvest, to know that there is abundance
stored for all the frosty days!

The people of this wild, strange, picturesque
colony had planned and prepared well. I wished

66

them a winter tmvisited by cruel fate or foe, and
trusted that when June came again the fat and
furry young beaver would play with the aged
one amid the tiger lilies in the shadows of the
big spruce trees.

QUounfofa

E narrow Alpine zone of peaks and snow
that forms the crest of the Rocky Moun-
tains has its own individual elemental moods,
its characteristic winds, its electrical and other
peculiarities, and a climate of its own. Com-
monly its days are serene and sunny, but from
time to time it has hail and snow and showers
of wind-blown rain, cold as ice-water. It is
subject to violent changes from clear, calm air
to blizzard.

I have enjoyed these strange, silent heights
in every season of the year. In climbing scores
of these peaks, in crossing the passes, often on
snowshoes, and in camping here and there on
the skyline, I have encountered these climatic
changes and had numerous strange experiences.
From these experiences I realize that the trans-
continental aviator, with this realm of peak and
sky, will have some delightful as well as serious
surprises. He will encounter stern conditions.

of

He may, like a storm-defying bird, be carried
from his course by treacherous currents and
battle with breakers or struggle in vain in the
monstrous, invisible maelstroms that beset this
ocean of air. Of these skyline factors the more
imposing are wind, cold, clouds, rain, snow, and
subtle, capricious electricity.

High winds are common across the summits
of these mountains ; and they are most prevalent
in winter. Those of summer, though less fre-
quent and much more short-lived, are a menace
on account of their fury and the suddenness with
which they surprise and sweep the heights.

Early one summer, while exploring a wide
alpine moorland above the timber-line, I — and
some others — had an experience with one of
those sudden stormbursts. The region was
utterly wild, but up to it straggling tourists
occasionally rode for a view of the surrounding
mountain world. All alone, I was studying the
ways of the wild inhabitants of the heights. I
had spent the calm, sunny morning in watching
a solitary bighorn that was feeding among some
boulders. He was aged, and he ate as though his

72

teeth were poor and walked as though afflicted
with rheumatism. Suddenly this patriarch for-
got his age and fled precipitately, with almost
the speed of frightened youth. I leaped upon a
boulder to watch him, but was instantly knocked
headlong by a wild blast of wind. In falling I
caught sight of a straw hat and a wrecked um-
brella falling out of the sky. Rising amid the
pelting gale of flung hail, ice-water, and snow,
I pushed my way in the teeth of the storm, hop-
ing for shelter in the lee of a rock-pile about a
hundred yards distant. A lady's disheveled hat
blew by me, and with the howl of the wind
came, almost drowned, excited human utter-
ances. Nearing the rock-pile, I caught a vague
view of a merry-go-round of man and horse,
then a glimpse of the last gyration, in which an
elderly Eastern gentleman parted company with
a stampeded bronco.

Five tourists had ridden up in the sunshine
to enjoy the heights, and the suddenness and
fierceness of the storm had thrown them into a
panic and stampeded their horses. They were
drenched and severely chilled, and they were

73

of

frightened. I made haste to tell them that the
storm would be brief. While I was still trying to
reassure them, the clouds commenced to dis-
solve and the sun came out. Presently all were
watching the majestic soaring of two eagles up
in the blue, while I went off to collect five scat-
tered saddle-ponies that were contentedly feed-
ing far away on the moor.

Though the winter winds are of slower devel-
opment, they are more prolonged and are tem-
pestuously powerful. Occasionally these winds
blow for days; and where they follow a fall of
snow they blow and whirl this about so wildly
that the air is befogged for several hundred feet
above the earth. So violently and thickly is
the powdered snow flung about that a few min-
utes at a time is the longest that one can see or
breathe in it. These high winter winds come
out of the west in a deep, broad stratum that
is far above most of the surface over which they
blow. Commonly a high wind strikes the west-
ern slope of the Continental Divide a little be-
low the altitude of eleven thousand feet. This
striking throws it into fierce confusion. It rolls

74

whirling up the steeps and frequently shoots
far above the highest peaks. Across the passes
it sweeps, roars down the canons on the eastern
slope, and rushes out across the plains. Though
the western slope below eleven thousand feet
is a calm zone, the entire eastern slope is being
whipped and scourged by a flood of wind.
Occasionally the temperature of these winds is
warm.

These swift, insistent winds, torn, inter-
cepted, and deflected by dashing against the
broken skyline, produce currents, counter-cur-
rents, sleepy eddies, violent vertical whirls,
and milling maelstroms that are tilted at every
angle. In places there is a gale blowing upward,
and here and there the air pours heavily down
in an invisible but almost crushing air-fall.

One winter I placed an air-meter in Granite
Pass, at twelve thousand feet altitude on the
slope of Long's Peak. During the first high wind
I fought my way up to read what the meter
said. Both the meter and myself found the
wind exceeded the speed limit. Emerging above
the trees at timber-line, I had to face the un-

75

of

broken fury of the gale as it swept down the
slope from the heights above. The region was
barren of snow. The wind dashed me with
sandblasts and pelted me with gravel volleys
that were almost unbearable. My face and
wrists were bruised, and blood was drawn in
many places where the gravel struck.

Seeking rest and shelter from this persistent
punishment, I approached a crag and when only
a few yards away was struck and overturned by
the milling air-current around it. The air was
so agitated around this crag that its churnings
followed me, like disturbed water, under and
behind the large rock-fragments, where shelter
was hoped for but only partly secured.

On the last slope below the meter the wind
simply played with me. I was overthrown,
tripped, knocked down, blown explosively off
my feet and dropped. Sometimes the wind
dropped me heavily, but just as often it eased
me down. I made no attempt to stand erect;
most of the time this was impossible and at all
times it was very dangerous. Now and then the
wind rolled me as I lay resting upon a smooth

76

QHounfain^op

place. Advancing was akin to swimming a
whirlpool or to wrestling one's way up a slope
despite the ceaseless opposition of a vigorous,
tireless opponent.

At last I crawled and climbed up to the buz-
zing cups of the meter. So swiftly were they
rotating they formed a blurred circle, like a
fast-revolving life-preserver. The meter showed
that the wind was passing with a speed of from
one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and
seventy miles an hour. The meter blew up —
or, rather, flew to pieces — during a swifter
spurt.

The wind so loudly ripped and roared round
the top of the peak that I determined to scale
the summit and experience its wildest and
most eloquent efforts. All my strength and
climbing knowledge were required to prevent
my being literally blown out of converging
rock channels through which the wind gushed;
again and again I clung with all my might to
avoid being torn from the ledges. Fortunately
not a bruise was received, though many times
this was narrowly avoided.

77

of 10*

The top of the peak, an area of between three
and four acres and comparatively level, was in an
easy eddy, almost a calm when compared with
the wind's activities below and near by. Ap-
parently the wind-current collided so forcefully
with the western wall of the peak that it was
thrown far above the summit before recovering
to continue its way eastward; but against the
resisting spurs and pinnacles a little below
summit-level the wind roared, boomed, and
crashed in its determined, passionate onsweep.

The better to hear this grand uproar, I ad-
vanced to the western edge of the summit. Here
my hat was torn off, but not quite grasped, by
the upshooting blast. It fell into the swirl above
the summit and in large circles floated upward
at slow speed, rising directly above the top of
the peak. It rose and circled so slowly that I
threw several stones at it, trying to knock it
down before it rose out of range. The diameter
of the circle through which it floated was about
one hundred and fifty feet; when it had risen
five, or perhaps six, hundred feet above the
summit it suddenly tumbled over and over as

78

though about to fall, but instead of falling it
sailed off toward the east as though a carrier
pigeon hurrying for a known and definite place
in the horizon.

Some of the gulf-streams, hell-gates, whirl-
pools, rough channels, and dangerous tides in
the sea of air either are in fixed places or
adjust themselves to winds from a different
quarter so definitely that their location can be
told by considering them in connection with
the direction of the wind. Thus the sea of air
may be partly charted and the position of some
of its dangerous places, even in mountain-top
oceans, positively known.

However, there are dangerous mountain-top
winds of one kind, or, more properly, numerous
local air-blasts, that are sometimes created
within these high winds, that do not appear to
have any habits. It would be easier to tell
where the next thunderbolt would fall than
where the next one of these would explode. One
of these might be called a cannon wind. An old
prospector, who had experienced countless high
winds among the crags, once stated that high,

79

gpdt of tfo

gusty winds on mountain-slopes "sometimes
shoot off a cannon." These explosive blasts
touch only a short, narrow space, but in this
they are almost irresistible.

Isolated clouds often soften and beautify the
stern heights as they silently float and drift
among peaks and passes. Flocks of these sky
birds frequently float about together. On sunny
days, in addition to giving a charm to the peaks,
their restless shadows never tire of readjusting
themselves and are ever trying to find a found-
ation or a place of rest upon the tempestuous
topography of the heights below. Now and then
a deep, dense cloud-stratum will cover the crests
and envelop the summit slopes for days. These
vapory strata usually feel but little wind and
they vary in thickness from a few hundred to a
few thousand feet. Sometimes one of these rests
so serenely that it suggests an aggregation of
clouds pushed off to one side because temporarily
the sky does not need them elsewhere for either
decorative or precipitative purposes. Now and
then they do drop rain or snow, but most of
the time they appear to be in a procrastinating

80

(ttlounfain^op

mood and unable to decide whether to precipi-
tate or to move on.

Commonly the upper surfaces of cloud-strata
appear like a peaceful silver-gray sea. They
appear woolly and sometimes fluffy, level, and
often so vast that they sweep away beyond the
horizon. Peaks and ridges often pierce their
interminable surface with romantic continents
and islands; along their romantic shores, above
the surface of the picturesque sea, the airship
could sail in safe poetic flight, though the foggy
depths below were too dense for any traveler
to penetrate.

One spring the snow fell continuously around
my cabin for three days. Reports told that the
storm was general over the Rocky Mountain
region. Later investigations showed that that
cloud and storm were spread over a quarter of
a million square miles. Over this entire area
there was made a comparatively even deposit
of thirty inches of snow.

All over the area, the bottom, or under sur-
face, of the cloud was at an altitude of approxi-
mately nine thousand feet. My cabin, with an

81

of

altitude of nine thousand, was immersed in
cloud, though at times it was one hundred feet
or so below it. Fully satisfied of the widespread
and general nature of the storm, and convinced
of the comparatively level line of the bottom
surface of the cloud, I determined to measure
its vertical depth and observe its slow move-
ments by climbing above its silver lining. This
was the third day of the storm. On snowshoes
up the mountainside I went through this almost
opaque sheep's-wool cloud. It was not bitterly
cold, but cloud and snow combined were blind-
ing, and only a ravine and instinct enabled me
to make my way.

At an altitude of about twelve thousand feet
the depth of the snow became suddenly less,
soon falling to only an inch or so. Within a few
rods of where it began to grow shallow I burst
through the upper surface of the cloud. Around
me and above there was not a flake of snow.
Over the entire storm-area of a quarter of a
million square miles, all heights above twelve
thousand had escaped both cloud and snow.
The cloud, which thus lay between the altitudes

82

of nine thousand and twelve thousand feet, was
three thousand feet deep.

When I rose above the surface of this sea the
sun was shining upon it. It was a smooth sea;
not a breath of wind ruffled it. The top of Long's
Peak rose bald and broken above. Climbing to
the top of a commanding ridge, I long watched
this beautiful expanse of cloud and could
scarcely realize that it was steadily flinging
multitudes of snowflakes upon slopes and
snows below. Though practically stationary,
this cloud expanse had some slight movements.
These were somewhat akin to those of a huge
raft that is becalmed in a quiet harbor. Slowly,
easily, and almost imperceptibly the entire mass
slid forward along the mountains ; it moved but
a short distance, paused for some minutes, then
slowly slid back a trifle farther than it had ad-
vanced. After a brief stop the entire mass, as
though anchored in the centre, started to swing
in an easy, deliberate rotation; after a few de-
grees of movement it paused, hesitated, then
swung with slow, heavy movement back. In
addition to these shifting horizontal motions

83

of

there was a short vertical one. The entire mass
slowly sank and settled two or three hundred
feet, then, with scarcely a pause, rose easily to
the level from which it sank. Only once did it
rise above this level.

During all seasons of the year there are oft-
recurring periods when the mountains sit in
sunshine and all the winds are still. In days
of this kind the transcontinental passengers in
glass-bottomed airships would have a bird's-
eye view of sublime scenes. The purple forests,
the embowered, peaceful parks, the drifted
snows, the streams that fold and shine through
the forests, — all these combine and cover mag-
nificently the billowed and broken distances,
while ever floating up from below are the soft,
ebbing, and intermittent songs from white water
that leaps in glory.

Though the summits of the Rocky Mount-
ains are always cool, it is only in rare, brief
times that they fall within the frigid spell of
Farthest North and become cruelly cold. The
climate among these mountain- tops is much
milder than people far away imagine.

84

The electrical effects that enliven and some-
times illuminate these summits are peculiar and
often highly interesting. Thunderbolts — light-
ning-strokes — are rare, far less frequent than
in most lowland districts. However, when light-
ning does strike the heights, it appears to have
many times the force that is displayed in
lowland strokes. My conclusions concerning
the infrequency of thunderbolts on these sky-
piercing peaks are drawn chiefly from my own
experience. I have stood through storms upon
more than a score of Rocky Mountain summits
that were upward of fourteen thousand feet
above the tides. Only one of these peaks was
struck; this was Long's Peak, which rises to the
height of 14,256 feet above the sea.

Seventy storms I have experienced on the
summit of this peak, and during these it was
struck but three times to my knowledge. One
of these strokes fell a thousand feet below the
top ; two struck the same spot on the edge of the
summit. The rock struck was granite, and the
effects of the strokes were similar; hundreds of
pounds of shattered rock fragments were flung

85

of

horizontally afar. Out of scores of experiences
in rain-drenched passes I have record of but two
thunderbolts. Both of these were heavy. In all
these instances the thunderbolt descended at a
time when the storm-cloud was a few hundred
feet above the place struck.

During the greater number of high-altitude
storms the cloud is in contact with the surface
or but little removed from it. Never have I
known the lightning to strike when the clouds
were close to the surface or touching it. It is,
however, common, during times of low-drag-
ging clouds, for the surface air to be heavily
charged with electrical fluid. This often is
accompanied with strange effects. Prominent
among these is a low pulsating hum or an inter-
mittent buz-z-z-z, with now and then a sharp
zit-zit! Sometimes accompanying, at other times
only briefly breaking in, are subdued camp-fire
cracklings and roarings. Falling snowflakes,
during these times, are occasionally briefly
luminous, like fireflies, the instant they touch
the earth. Hair-pulling is the commonest effect
that people experience in these sizzling electrical

86

QfHounfain*£op

storms. There is a straightening of the hairs
and apparently a sharp pull upon each. As John
Muir has it, "You are sure to be lost in" wonder
and praise and every hair of your head will
stand up and hum and sing like an enthusiastic
congregation." Most people take very gravely
their first experience of this kind; especially
when accompanied, as it often is, with apparent
near-by bee-buzzings and a purplish roll or halo
around the head. During these times a sudden
finger movement will produce a crackling snap
or spark.

On rare occasions these interesting peculiari-
ties become irritating and sometimes serious to
one. In " A Watcher on the Heights," in "Wild
Life on the Rockies," I have described a case of
this kind. A few people suffer from a muscular
cramp or spasm, and occasionally the muscles
are so tensed that breathing becomes difficult
and heart-action disturbed. I have never
known an electrical storm to be fatal. Relief
from the effects of such a storm may generally
be had by lying between big stones or beneath
shelving rocks. On one occasion I saw two

87

of

ladies and four gentlemen lay dignity aside and
obtain relief by jamming into a place barely
large enough for two. In my own case, activity
invariably intensified these effects; and the
touching of steel or iron often had the same
results. For some years a family resided upon
the slope of Mt. Teller, at an altitude of twelve
thousand feet. Commonly during storms the
stove and pipe were charged with fluid so heav-
ily that it was a case of hands off and let din-
ner wait, and sometimes spoil, until the heavens
shut off the current.

The sustaining buoyancy of the air to aerial
things decreases with altitude. In this "light"
air some motor machinery is less efficient than
it is in the lowlands. It is probable that avia-
tors will always find the air around uplifted
peaks much less serviceable than this element
upon the surface of the sea. But known and
unknown dangers in the air will be mastered,
and ere long the dangers to those who take flight
through the air will be no greater than the
dangers to those who go down to the sea in ships.
Flying across the crest of the continent, above

88

the crags and canons, will be enchanting, and
this journey through the upper air may bring to
many the first stirring message from the rocks
and templed hills.

of tfy

(Ko6 of t$t (Roefcto

'JKuRRYiNG out of the flood-swept mountains
^i/ in northern Colorado, in May, 1905, I
came upon a shaggy black and white dog, hope-
lessly fastened in an entanglement of flood-
moored barbed-wire fence that had been caught
in a clump of willows. He had been carried
down with the flood and was coated with earth.
Masses of mud clung here and there to his mat-
ted hair, and his handsome tail was encased as
though in a plaster cast. He was bruised, and
the barbs had given him several cuts. One ear
was slit, and a blood-clot from a cut on his head
almost closed his left eye.

Had I not chanced upon him, he probably
would have perished from hunger and slow tor-
ture. Though he must have spent twelve hours
in this miserable barbed binding, he made no
outcry. The barbs repeatedly penetrated his
skin, as I untangled and uncoiled the wires from
around his neck and between his legs. As he

93

of

neither flinched nor howled, I did him the in-
justice to suppose that he was almost dead. He
trusted me, and as I rolled him about, taking
off that last thorny tangle, the slit ear, bloody
muzzle, and muddy head could not hide from
me an expression of gratitude in his intelli-
gent face.

Returning from a camping-trip, and narrowly
escaping drowning, too, I was a dirty vagabond
myself. When the last wire dropped from the
prisoner, he enthusiastically began to share his
earth coating with me. He leaped up and half
clasped me in his fore legs, at the same time
wiping most of the mud off his head on one side
of my face. Then he darted between my legs,
racing about and occasionally leaping or fling-
ing himself against me; each time he leaped, he
twisted as he came up so that he struck me with
his back, head, or side, and thus managed to
transfer much of this fertile coat to me. He
finally ended by giving several barks, and then
racing to the near-by river for a drink and a
bath. I, too, needed another cloudburst.

Just what kinds of dogs may have made his
94

(goB of i 0*

mixed ancestry could not be told. Occasionally
I had a glimpse of a collie in him, but for all
practical purposes he was a shepherd, and he
frequently exhibited traits for which the shep-
herd is celebrated. I could never find out where
he came from. It may be that the flood sepa-
rated him from his master's team; he may have
been washed away from one of the flooded
ranches; or he may have been, as the stage-
driver later told me, "a tramp dog that has
been seen in North Park, Cheyenne, and Gree-
ley." Home he may have left; master he may
have lost; or tramp he may have been; but he
insisted on going with me, and after a kindly
though forceful protest, I gave in and told him
he might follow.

The flood had swept all bridges away, and I
was hurrying down the Poudre, hoping to find
a place to cross without being compelled to swim.
He followed, and kept close to my heels as I
wound in and out among flood debris and wil-
low-clumps. But I did not find a place that
appeared shallow.

As it was necessary to cross, I patted my
95

of

companion good-by, thinking he would not
care to go farther, and waded in. He squatted
by the water's edge and set up a howl. I stopped
and explained to him that this was very bad
crossing for an injured dog, and jthat we would
better separate; but he only howled the more.
He wanted to go with me, but was afraid to try
alone.

Returning to the bank, I found a rope in the
flood wreckage, tied this around his neck and
waded in. He followed cheerfully, but swam
with effort. When about half way across, and
in the water up to my shoulders, I attached
myself to a floating log lest the dog should
weaken and need help. Within sixty or seventy
feet of the desired bank we struck a stretch of
swift, deep water, in which I was compelled to
let the animal go and swim for the shore. My
companion was swept down by the current, and
the rope caught on a snag, entangling my legs
so that I had to cut it or drown. The current
swept poor doggie against some stranded wreck-
age in midstream. On this he climbed, while I
struggled on to the bank.

96

$06 of $*

I called to him to come on, but he only howled.
Again I called, patted my knees, made friendly
gesticulations, and did all I could think of to
encourage him. Finally, I told him that if he
would only start I would come part way and be
ready to help him if he got into trouble. But
he would not start. Not desiring the task of
returning for him through the cold, strong cur-
rent, and feeling in a hurry, I started on. He
howled and then cried so piteously that I went
back and towed him safely ashore.

That night some good people of the ranch
house treated both of us kindly, and in the
morning they wanted to keep my companion.
I was willing that he should stay, for he would
have a good place, and I was bound for Denver,
where I feared some accident would befall him.
But he growled and ran away when the man
advanced to tie him. I started on afoot and he
joined me, insisting on following.

All the time he had been with me his only
thought appeared to be to stay with me. Game,
dogs, horses, and people he saw and passed with
expressionless face, except two or three times

97

gytU of $* (Roc&e*

when he imagined I was in danger; then he was
instantly alert for my defense. When the stage
overtook us, and stopped to let me in, he leaped
in also, and squatted by the driver with such an
air of importance that I half expected to see him
take the lines and drive.

I lost him in my rush to make the train at the
station. He could, of course, have kept with
me had he been without fear, or if he had really
so desired. As the train pulled out, I saw him
start down-street with an air of unconscious
confidence that told of wide experience. He
was a tramp dog.

The next time I saw him was several months
later, in Leadville, some two hundred miles from
where he left me. Where, in the mean time, he
may have rambled, what towns he may have
visited, or what good days or troubles he may
have had, I have no means of knowing.

I came walking into Leadville with snowshoes
under my arm, from two weeks' snowshoeing
and camping on the upper slopes of the Rockies.
The ends of broken tree limbs had torn numer-
ous right-angled triangles in my clothes, my

98

of

soft hat was unduly slouchy, and fourteen
nights' intimate association with a camp-fire,
along with only an infrequent, indifferent con-
tact with water, had made me a sight to behold,
— for dogs, anyway. On the outskirts, one
snarly cur noticed me and barked; in a few
minutes at least a dozen dogs were closely fol-
lowing and making me unwelcome to their
haunts. They grew bold with time, numbers,
and closer inspection of me. They crowded
unpleasantly close. Realizing that if one of
them became courageous enough to make a snap
at my legs, all might follow his example, I began
to sidle out of the middle of the street, intending
to leap a fence close by and take refuge in a
house.

Before I could realize it, they were snapping
right and left at me, and howling as they col-
lided with the tail of a snowshoe which I used as
a bayonet. We were close to the fence, I trying
to find time to turn and leap over; but I was
too busy, and, without assistance, it is probable
that I should have been badly bitten.

Suddenly there was something like a football
99

of

mix-up at my feet, then followed a yelping of
curs, with tucked tails dashing right and left to
avoid the ferocious tackles of a shaggy black
and white dog. It was Rob, who was delighted
to see me, and whom I assured that he was most
welcome.

He had been seen about Leadville for two or
three months, and several persons had bits of
information concerning him. All agreed that
he had held aloof from other dogs, and that he
quietly ignored the friendly greetings of all who
made advances. He was not quarrelsome, but
had nearly killed a bulldog that had attacked a
boy. On one occasion, a braying burro so irri-
tated him that he made a savage attack on the
long-eared beast, and sent him pell-mell down
the street, braying in a most excited manner.

The drivers of ore wagons reported that he
occasionally followed them to and from the
mines up the mountainside. At one livery-
stable he was a frequent caller, and usually
came in to have a drink ; but no one knew where
he ate or slept. One day a little mittened girl
had left her sled, to play with him. He had

IOO

(Bo6 of tfy

responded in a most friendly manner, and had
raced, jumped, circled, and barked; at last he
had carried her slowly, proudly on his back.

I grew greatly interested in his biography,
and wondered what could have shaped his life
so strangely. In what kind of a home was his
pretty puppyhood spent? Why was he so indif-
ferent to dogs and people, and had he left or
lost a master?

Early next spring, after vainly trying to fol-
low the trail of explorer Pike, I struck out on a
road that led me across the Wet Mountain val-
ley up into Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When
well up into the mountains, I saw a large dog
walking slowly toward me, and at once recog-
nized him as Rob. Although clean and well-fed,
he held his head low and walked as though dis-
couraged. The instant he scented me, however,
he leaped forward and greeted me with many a
wag, bark, and leap. He was one hundred miles
from Leadville, and fully three hundred miles
from the flood scene on the Poudre. He faced
about and followed me up into the alpine heights,
far beyond trail. We saw a number of deer and

IOI

of

many mountain sheep; these he barely noticed,
but a bear that we came upon he was most eager
to fight.

The second night in the mountains, near
Home's Peak, we had an exciting time with a
mountain lion. Coyotes howled during the
evening, much to the dog's annoyance. It was
a cold night, and, being without bedding, I had
moved the fire and lain down upon the warm
earth. The fire was at my feet, a crag rose above
my head, and Rob was curled up against my
back. A shrill, uncanny cry of the lion roused me
after less than an hour's sleep. The dog was
frightened and cuddled up close to my face.
The lion was on a low terrace in the crag, not
many yards distant. Having been much in the
wilds alone and never having been attacked by
lions, I had no fear of them; but none had ever
been so audacious as this one. I began to think
that perhaps it might be true that a lion would
leap upon a dog boldly at night, even though
the dog lay at the feet of his master. I kept close
watch, threw stones at suspicious shadows on
the cliff terraces, and maintained a blazing fire.

102

QM of

Long before sunrise we started down the
mountain. Both Rob and I were hungry, and
although we startled birds and rabbits, Rob
paid not the least attention to them. At noon,
on Madano Pass, I lay down for a sleep and used
Rob for a pillow. This he evidently enjoyed,
for he lay still with head stretched out and one
eye open.

At mid-afternoon we met a sheep-herder who
was carrying a club. I had seen this man else-
where, and, on recognizing me as he came up,
he waved his club by the way of expressing
gladness. Rob misinterpreted this demonstra-
tion, and dragged me almost to the frightened
herder before I could make him understand that
this ragged, unwashed, club-carrying fellow had
no ill wishes for me.

I had in mind to climb Sierra Blanca the fol-
lowing day, and hoped to spend the night in a
ranch house on the northern slope of this great
peak. Toward sundown Rob and I climbed
through a pole fence and entered the ranch
house-yard. Round a corner of the house came
a boy racing on a willow switch pony. On seeing

103

of

us, he stopped, relaxed his hold on the willow
and started for Rob. How happily he ran, hold-
ing out both eager hands ! The dog sprang play-
fully backward, and began to dodge and bark as
the boy laughingly and repeatedly fell while
trying to catch him. Just as I entered the house,
Rob was trying to climb to the top of the fence
after his new playmate.

That night Rob was agreeable with every one
in the house, and even had a romp with the cat.
These people wanted to keep him, and offered
money and their best saddle-horse. I knew that
with them he would have kind treatment to the
day of his death. I wanted him, too, but I knew
the weeks of mountain-exploring just before me
would be too hard for him. "Rob is a free dog,"
I said, "and is, of his own choice, simply travel-
ing with me as a companion. I cannot sell or
give him away. I like him, but, if he wants to
stay, it will be a pleasure to me to leave him."

The next morning every one was wondering
whether Rob would go or stay. The dog had
made up his mind. He watched me prepare to
leave with keenest interest, but it was evident

104

(FoB of tfc

that he had planned to stay, and his boy friend
was very happy. As I passed through the yard,
these two were playing together; at the gate I
called good-by, at which Rob paused, gave a
few happy barks, and then raced away, to try
to follow his mountain boy to the top of the old
pole fence.

3 WAS rambling alone on snowshoes, doing some
winter observations in the alpine heights of
the Sangre de Cristo range. It was miles to
the nearest house. There was but little snow
upon the mountains, and, for winter, the day
was warm. I was thirsty, and a spring which
burst forth among the fragments of petrified
wood was more inviting than the water-bottle
in my pocket. The water was cool and clear,
tasteless and, to all appearances, pure.

As I rose from drinking, a deadly, all-gone
feeling overcame me. After a few seconds of
this, a violent and prolonged nausea came on.
Evidently I had discovered a mineral spring!
Perhaps it was arsenic, perhaps some other
poison. Poison of some kind it must have
been, and poisonous mineral springs are not
unknown.

The sickness was very like seasickness, with

a severe internal pain and a mental stimulus

109

of ®t QRocfiie*

added. After a few minutes I partly recovered
from these effects and set off sadly for the near-
est house of which I had heard. This was eight
or ten miles distant and I hoped to find it
through the guidance of a crude map which a
prospector had prepared for me. I had not be-
fore explored this mountainous section.

The gulches and ridges which descended the
slope at right angles to my course gave me a
rough sea which kept me stirred up. I ad-
vanced in tottering installments; a slow, short
advance would be made on wobbly legs, then a
heave- to, as pay for the advance gained.

Now and then there was smoothness, and I
took an occasional look at severe Sierra Blanca
now looming big before me. It was mostly bare
and brown with a number of icy plates and orna-
ments shining in the sun.

At last in the evening light, from the top of
a gigantic moraine, I looked down upon the
river and a log ranch-house nestling in a grassy
open bordered with clumps of spruces. An old
lady and gentleman with real sympathy in their
faces stood in the doorway and for a moment

no

SIERRA BLANCA IN WINTER

nca

watched me, then hastened to help me from the
pole fence to the door.

While giving them an incoherent account of
my experience, I fell into a stupor, and although
I had evidently much to say concerning drink-
ing and apparently showed symptoms of too
much drink, these old people did not think me
drunk. Waking from a fantastic dream I heard,
" Does he need any more sage tea? " The West-
ern pioneers have faith in sage tea and many
ascribe to it all the life-saving, life-extending
qualities usually claimed for patent medicines.
The following morning I was able to walk about,
while my slightly bloated, bronzed face did not
appear so badly. Altogether, I looked much
better than I felt.

These good old people declared that they had
not seen better days, but that they were living
the simple life from choice. They loved the
peace of this isolated mountain home and the
companionship of the grand old peak. In the
Central States the wife had been a professor
in a State school, while the husband had been a
State's Attorney.

in

of tfc

The nearest neighbor was four miles down-
stream, and no one lived farther up the moun-
tain. The nearest railroad station was seventy
rough mountain-road miles away. It appeared
best to hasten to Denver, but two days in a
jarring wagon to reach the railroad seemed more
than I could endure. I had not planned even to
try for the top of Colorado's highest peak in
midwinter, but the way across Sierra Blanca
was shorter and probably much easier than the
way around. Across the range, directly over
the shoulder of Sierra Blanca, lay historic Fort
Garland. It was only thirty miles away, and I
determined to cross the range and reach it in
time for the midnight train. On hearing this
resolution the old people were at first astonished,
but after a moment they felt that they at last
knew who I was.

"You must be the Snow Man! Surely no one
but he would try to do this in winter."

They, with scores of other upland-dwellers,
had heard numerous and wild accounts of my
lone, unarmed camping-trips and winter adven-
tures in the mountain snows.

112

The misgivings of the old gentleman concern-
ing the wisdom of my move grew stronger when
he perceived how weak I was, as we proceeded
on mule-back up the slope of Sierra Blanca. The
ice blocked us at timber-line, and in his parting
handclasp I felt the hope and fear of a father
who sees his son go away into the world. He
appeared to realize that I was not only weak,
but that at any moment I might collapse. He
knew the heights were steep and stern, and that
in the twenty-odd miles to Fort Garland there
was neither house nor human being to help me.
Apparently he hoped that at the last moment I
would change my mind and turn back.

Up the northern side of the peak I made my
way. Now and then it was necessary to cut a
few steps in the ice-plated steeps. The shoulder
of the peak across which I was to go was thir-
teen thousand feet above the sea, and in making
the last climb to this it was necessary to choose
between a precipitous ice-covered slope and an
extremely steep rock-slide, — more correctly a
rock glacier. I picked my way up this with
the greatest caution. To start a rock avalanche

"3

gpttt of tfy

would be easy, for the loose rocks lay insecure
on a slope of perilous steepness. From time to
time in resting I heard the entire mass settling,
snarling, and grinding its way with glacier slow-
ness down the steep.

Just beneath the shoulder the tilting steep-
ness of this rocky debris showed all too well that
the slightest provocation would set a grinding
whirlpool of a stone river madly flowing. The
expected at last happened when a boulder upon
which I lightly leaped settled and then gave
way. The rocks before made haste to get out
of the way, while those behind began readjust-
ing themselves. The liveliest of foot-work kept
me on top of the now settling, hesitating, and
inclined-to-roll boulder. There was nothing sub-
stantial upon which to leap.

Slowly the heavy boulder settled forward
with a roll, now right, now left, with me on top
trying to avoid being tumbled into the grinding
mill hopper below. At last, on the left, a sliding
mass of crushed, macadamized rock offered a
possible means of escape. Not daring to risk
thrusting a leg into this uncertain mass, I al-

114

lowed myself to fall easily backwards until my
body was almost horizontal, and then face up-
wards I threw myself off the boulder with all
my strength. The rock gave a great plunge,
and went bounding down the slope, sending the
smaller stuff flying before at each contact with
the earth.

Though completely relaxed, and with the
snowshoes on my back acting as a buffer, the
landing was something of a jolt. For a few sec-
onds I lay limp and spread out, and drifted
slowly along with the slow-sliding mass of
macadam. When this came to rest, I rose up
and with the greatest concern for my founda-
tion, made my way upwards, and at last lay
down to breathe and rest upon the solid granite
shoulder of Sierra Blanca.

In ten hours the midnight train would be due
in Fort Garland, and as the way was all down-
grade, I hoped that my strength would hold
out till I caught it. But, turning my eyes from
the descent to the summit, I forgot the world
below, and also my poison-weakened body.
Suddenly I felt and knew only the charm and

"5

of

the call of the summit. There are times when
Nature completely commands her citizens. A
splendid landscape, sunset clouds, or a rainbow
on a near-by mountain's slope, — by these one
may be as completely charmed and made as
completely captive as were those who heard the
music of Orpheus' lyre. My youthful dream
had been to scale peak after peak, and from the
earthly spires to see the scenic world far below
and far away. All this had come true, though
of many trips into the sky and cloudland, none
had been up to the bold heights of Blanca.
Thinking that the poisoned water might take
me from the list of those who seek good tidings
in the heights, I suddenly determined to reach
those wintry wonder-heights while yet I had
the strength. I rose from relaxation, laid down
my snowshoes, and started for the summit.

Blanca is a mountain with an enormous
amount of material in it, — enough for a score
of sizable peaks. Its battered head is nearly
two thousand feet above its rugged shoulder.
The sun sank slowly as I moved along a rocky
skyline ridge and at last gained the summit.

116

Beyond an infinite ocean of low, broken
peaks, sank the sun. It was a wonderful sun-
set effect in that mountain-dotted, mountain-
walled plain, the San Luis Valley. Mist-
wreathed peaks rose from the plain, one side
glowing in burning gold, the other bannered
with black shadows. The low, ragged clouds
dragged slanting shadows across the golden
pale. A million slender silver threads were flung
out in a measureless horizontal fan from the
far-away sun. The sunset from the summit of
Sierra Blanca was the grandest that I have ever
seen. The prismatic brilliancy played on peak
and cloud, then changed into purple, fading
into misty gray, while the light of this strong
mountain day slowly vanished in the infinite
silence of a perfect mountain night.

Then came the serious business of getting
down and off the rough slope and out of the
inky woods before darkness took complete pos-
session. After intense vigilance and effort for
two hours, I emerged from the forest-robed
slope and started across the easy, sloping plain
beneath a million stars.

117

The night was mild and still. Slowly, across
the wide brown way, I made my course, guided
by a low star that hung above Fort Garland.
My strength ran low, and, in order to sustain
it, I moved slowly, lying down and relaxing
every few minutes. My mind was clear and
strangely active. With pleasure I recalled in
order the experiences of the day and the won-
derful sunset with which it came triumphantly
to a close. As I followed a straight line across
the cactus-padded plains, I could not help
wondering whether the Denver physicians
would tell me that going up to see the sunset
was a serious blunder, or a poison-eliminating
triumph. However, the possibility of dying was
a thought that never came.

At eleven o'clock, when instinctively and
positively I felt that I had traveled far enough,
I paused ; but from Fort Garland neither sound
nor light came to greet me in the silent, mysteri-
ous night. I might pass close to the low, dull
adobes of this station without realizing its pres-
ence. So confident was I that I had gone far
enough that I commenced a series of constantly

118

enlarging semicircles, trying to locate in the
darkness the hidden fort. In the midst of these,
a coyote challenged, and a dog answered. I hast-
ened toward the dog and came upon a single
low adobe full of Mexicans who could not un-
derstand me. However, their soft accents awak-
ened vivid memories in my mind, and distinctly
my strangely stimulated brain took me back
through fifteen years to the seedling orange
groves in the land of to-morrow where I had
lingered and learned to speak their tongue. An
offer of five dollars for transportation to Fort
Garland in time for the midnight train sent
Mexicans flying in all directions as though I
had hurled a bomb.

Two boys with an ancient, wobbling horse
and buckboard landed me at the platform as the
headlight-glare of my train swept across it. The
big, good-natured conductor greeted me with
"Here's the Snow Man again, — worse starved
than ever!"

T&wttjJ of

E ancients told many wonderful legends
concerning the tree, and claimed for it
numerous extraordinary qualities. Modern ex-
perience is finding some of these legends to be
almost literal truth, and increasing knowledge
of the tree shows that it has many of those high
qualities for which it was anciently revered.
Though people no longer think of it as the Tree
of Life, they are beginning to realize that the
tree is what enables our race to make a living
and to live comfortably and hopefully upon this
beautiful world.

Camping among forests quickly gives one a
home feeling for them and develops an apprecia-
tion of their value. How different American his-
tory might have been had Columbus discovered
a treeless land! The American forests have
largely contributed to the development of the
country. The first settlers on the Atlantic coast
felled and used the waiting trees for home-

123

of ifa

building; they also used wood for fuel, furniture,
and fortifications. When trading-posts were
established in the wilderness the axe was as
essential as the gun. From Atlantic to Pacific
the pioneers built their cabins of wood. As the
country developed, wood continued to be indis-
pensable ; it was used in almost every industry,
and to-day it has a more general use than ever.

Forests enrich us in many ways. One of these
is through the supply of wood which they pro-
duce, — which they annually produce. Wood is
one of the most useful materials used by man.
Wood is the home-making material. It gives
good cheer to a million hearthstones. How
extensively it is used for tools, furniture, and
vehicles, for mine timbers and railroad develop-
ment ! The living influences which forests exert,
the environments which they create and main-
tain, are potent to enable man best to manage
and control the earth, the air, and the water, so
that these will give him the greatest service and
do him the least damage.

Forests are water-distributors, and every-
where their presence tends to prevent both

124

SPANISH MOSS AT LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA

T&eaftfl of tfy

floods and extreme low water; they check evap-
oration and assist drainage; they create soil;
they resist sudden changes of temperature ; they
break and temper the winds; they do sanitary
work by taking impurities from the air; they
shelter and furnish homes for millions of birds
which destroy enormous numbers of weed-seed
and injurious insects. Lastly, and possibly most
important, forests make this earth comfortable
and beautiful. Next to the soil, they are the
most useful and helpful of Nature's agencies.

Forests are moderators of climate. They heat
and cool slowly. Their slow response to change
resists sudden changes, and, consequently, they
mitigate the rudeness with which sudden changes
are always accompanied. Sudden changes of
temperature are often annoying and enervat-
ing to man, and frequently do severe damage to
domestic plants and animals. They sometimes
have what may be called an explosive effect
upon the life-tissues of many plants and animals
which man has domesticated and is producing
for his benefit. Many plants have been domesti-
cated and largely so specialized that they have

"5

of tfy

been rendered less hardy. With good care, these
plants are heavy producers, but, to have from
them a premium harvest each year, they need
the genial clime, the stimulating shelter, and
the constant protection which only forests can
supply. Closely allied to changes of tempera-
ture is the movement of the air. In the sea
every peninsula is a breakwater: on land every
grove is a windbreak. The effect of the violence
of high winds on fruited orchards and fields of
golden grain may be compared to the beatings
of innumerable clubs. Hot waves and cold
waves come like withering breaths of flame and
frost to trees and plants. High winds may be
mastered by the forest. The forest will make
even the Storm King calm, and it will also
soften, temper, and subdue the hottest or the
coldest waves that blow. Forests may be placed
so as to make every field a harbor.

The air is an invisible blotter that is con-
stantly absorbing moisture. Its capacity to
evaporate and absorb increases with rapidity
of movement. Roughly, six times as much
water is evaporated from a place that is swept

126

of

by a twenty-five-mile wind as from a place in
the dead calm of the forest. The quantity of
water evaporated within a forest or in its shelter
is many times less than is evaporated from the
soil in an exposed situation. This shelter and
the consequent decreased evaporation may save
a crop in a dry season. During seasons of scanty
rainfall the crops often fail, probably not be-
cause sufficient water has not fallen, but because
the thirsty winds have drawn from the soil so
much moisture that the water-table in the soil
is lowered below the reach of the roots of the
growing plants.

In the arid West the extra-dry winds are in-
satiable. In many localities their annual capa-
city to absorb water is greater than the annual
precipitation of water. In "dry-farming" local-
ities, the central idea is to save all the water
that Nature supplies, to prevent the moisture
from evaporating, to protect it from the robber
winds. Forests greatly check evaporation, and
Professor L. G. Carpenter, the celebrated irri-
gation engineer, says that forests are absolutely
necessary for the interests of irrigated agricul-

127

of

ture. Considering the many influences of the
forest that are beneficial to agriculture, it would
seem as though ideal forest environments would
be the best annual assurance that the crops of
the field would not fail and that the soil would
most generously respond to the seed-sower.

So well is man served in the distribution of the
waters and the management of their movements
by the forests, that forests seem almost to think.
The forest is an eternal mediator between winds
and gravity in their never-ending struggle for
the possession of the waters. The forest seems
to try to take the intermittent and ever- varying
rainfall and send the collected waters in slow
and steady stream back to the sea. It has
marked success, and one may say it is only to
the extent the forest succeeds in doing this that
the waters become helpful to man. Possibly
they may need assistance in this work. Any-
way, so great is the evaporation on the moun-
tains of the West that John Muir says, "Cut
down the groves and the streams will vanish."
Many investigators assert that only thirty per
cent of the rainfall is returned by the rivers

128

TXtotQ of

to the sea. Evaporation — winds — probably
carry away the greater portion of the remainder.
Afforestation has created springs and streams,
not by increasing rainfall, although the forests
may do this, but by saving the water that falls,
— by checking evaporation. On some exposed
watersheds the winds carry off as much as
ninety per cent of the annual precipitation. It
seems plain that wider, better forests would
mean deeper, steadier streams. Forests not only
check evaporation, but they store water and
guard it from the greed of gravity. The forest
gets the water into the ground where a brake is
put upon the pull of gravity. Forest floors are
covered with fluffy little rugs and pierced with
countless tree-roots. So all-absorbing is the
porous, rug-covered forest floor that most of
the water that falls in the forest goes into the
ground; a small percentage may run off on the
surface, but the greater part settles into the
earth and seeps slowly by subterranean drain-
age, till at last it bubbles out in a spring some
distance away and below the place where the
raindrops came to earth. The underground

129

of

drainage, upon which the forest insists, is much
slower and steadier than the surface drainage
of a treeless place. The tendency of the forest
is to take the water of the widely separated
rainy days and dole it out daily to the streams.
The forest may be described as a large, ever-
leaking reservoir.

The forest is so large a reservoir that it rarely
overflows, and seepage from it is so slow that it
seldom goes dry. The presence of a forest on a
watershed tends to give the stream which rises
thereon its daily supply of water, whether it
rains every day or not. By checking evapora-
tion, the forest swells the volume of sea-going
water in this stream, and thereby increases its
water-power and makes it more useful as a deep
waterway. Forests so regulate stream-flow that
if all the watersheds were forested but few floods
would occur. Forest-destruction has allowed
many a flood to form and foam and to ruin a
thousand homes. A deforested hillside may, in
a single storm, loose the hoarded soil of a thou-
sand years. Deforestation may result in filling
a river-channel and in stopping boats a thou-

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of

sand miles downstream. By bringing forests to
our aid, we may almost domesticate and con-
trol winds and waters!

One of the most important resources is soil,
— the cream of the earth, the plant-food of the
world. Scientists estimate that it takes nature
ten thousand years to create a foot of soil. This
heritage of ages, though so valuable and so
slowly created, may speedily be washed away
and lost. Forests help to anchor it and to hold
it in productive places. Every tree stands upon
an inverted basket of roots and rootlets. Rains
may come and rains may go, but these roots
hold the soil in place. The soil of forest-covered
hillsides is reinforced and anchored with a web-
work of the roots and rootlets of the forest.
Assisting in the soil-anchorage is the accumu-
lation of twigs and leaves, the litter rugs on the
forest floor. These cover the soil, and protect it
from both wind and water erosion. The roots
and rugs not only hold soil, but add to the soil
matter by catching and holding the trash, silt,
dust, and sediment that is blown or washed into
the forest. The forest also creates new soil,

of

enriches the very land it is using. Trash on a
forest floor absorbs nitrogenous matter from
the air ; every fallen leaf is a flake of a fertilizer ;
roots pry rocks apart, and this sets up chemical
action. Acids given off by tree-roots dissolve
even the rocks, and turn these to soil. A tree,
unlike most plants, creates more soil than it con-
sumes. In a forest the soil is steadily growing
richer and deeper.

Birds are one of the resources of the country.
They are the protectors, the winged watchmen,
of the products which man needs. Birds are
hearty eaters, and the food which they devour
consists mostly of noxious weed-seed and inju-
rious insects. Several species of birds feed freely
upon caterpillars, moths, wood-lice, wood-bor-
ers, and other deadly tree-enemies. Most spe-
cies of birds need the forest for shelter, a
home, and a breeding-place; and, having the
forest, they multiply and fly out into the fields
and orchards, and wage a more persistent war-
fare even than the farmer upon the insistent
and innumerable crop-injuring weeds, and also
the swarms of insatiable crop-devouring insects.

132

of

Birds work for us all the time, and board them-
selves most of the time. Birds are of inestimable
value to agriculture, but many of these useful
species need forest shelter. So to lose a forest
means at the same time to lose the service of
these birds.

The forest is a sanitary agent. It is constantly
eliminating impurities from the earth and the
air. Trees check, sweep, and filter from the air
quantities of filthy, germ-laden dust. Their
leaves absorb the poisonous gases from the air.
Roots assist in drainage, and absorb impurities
from the soil. Roots also give off acids, and
these acids, together with the acids released by
the fallen, decaying leaves, have a sterilizing
effect upon the soil. Trees help to keep the earth
sweet and clean, and water which comes from a
forested watershed is likely to be pure. Many
unsanitary areas have been redeemed and ren-
dered healthy by tree-planting.

Numerous are the products and the influences
of the trees. Many medicines for the sick-room
are compounded wholly or in part from the
bark, the fruit, the juices, or the leaves of trees.

133

of t$t

Fruits and nuts are at least the poetry of the
dining-table. One may say of trees what the
French physician said of water: needed exter-
nally, internally, and eternally ! United we stand,
but divided we fall, is the history of peoples
and forests. Forest-destruction seems to offer
the speediest way by which a nation may go
into decline or death. "Without forests " are two
words that may be written upon the maps of
most depopulated lands and declining nations.

When one who is acquainted with both his-
tory and natural history reads of a nation that
"its forests are destroyed," he naturally pic-
tures the train of evils that inevitably follow, —
the waste and failure that will come without the
presence of forests to prevent. He realizes that
the ultimate condition to be expected in this
land is a waste of desolate distances, arched
with a gray, sad sky beneath which a few lonely
ruins stand crumbling and pathetic in the des-
ert's drifting sand.

The trees are our friends. As an agency for
promoting and sustaining the general welfare,
the forest stands preeminent. A nation which

of

appreciates trees, which maintains sufficient
forests, and these in the most serviceable places,
may expect to enjoy regularly the richest of
harvests; it will be a nation of homes and land
that is comfortable, full of hope, and beautiful.

Jtte

SOREST fires led me to abandon the most
nearly ideal journey through the wilds I
had ever embarked upon, but the conflagra-
tions that took me aside filled a series of my
days and nights with wild, fiery exhibitions and
stirring experiences. It was early September
and I had started southward along the crest of
the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains
in northern Colorado. All autumn was to be
mine and upon this alpine skyline I was to
saunter southward, possibly to the land of cac-
tus and mirage. Not being commanded by
either the calendar or the compass, no day was
to be marred by hurrying. I was just to linger
and read all the nature stories in the heights that
I could comprehend or enjoy. From my start-
ing-place, twelve thousand feet above the tides,
miles of continental slopes could be seen that
sent their streams east and west to the two far-
off seas. With many a loitering advance, with

139

of

many a glad going back, intense days were lived.
After two great weeks I climbed off the treeless
heights and went down into the woods to watch
and learn the deadly and dramatic ways of
forest fires.

This revolution in plans was brought about
by the view from amid the broken granite on
the summit of Long's Peak. Far below and far
away the magnificent mountain distances re-
posed in the autumn sunshine. The dark crags,
snowy summits, light-tipped peaks, bright
lakes, purple forests traced with silver streams
and groves of aspen, — all fused and faded
away in the golden haze. But these splendid
scenes were being blurred and blotted out by
the smoke of a dozen or more forest fires.

Little realizing that for six weeks I was to
hesitate on fire-threatened heights and hurry
through smoke-filled forests, I took a good look
at the destruction from afar and then hastened
toward the nearest fire-front. This was a smoke-
clouded blaze on the Rabbit-Ear Range that
was storming its way eastward. In a few hours
it would travel to the Grand River, which

140

flowed southward through a straight, mountain-
walled valley that was about half a mile wide.
Along the river, occupying about half the width
of the valley, was a picturesque grassy avenue
that stretched for miles between ragged forest-
edges.

There was but little wind and, hoping to see
the big game that the flames might drive into
the open, I innocently took my stand in the
centre of the grassy stretch directly before the
fire. This great smoky fire-billow, as I viewed
it from the heights while I was descending,
was advancing with a formidable crooked front
about three miles across. The left wing was
more than a mile in advance of the active though
lagging right one. As I afterward learned, the
difference in speed of the two wings was caused
chiefly by topography; the forest conditions
were similar, but the left wing had for some time
been burning up a slope while the right had
traveled down one. Fire burns swiftly up a
slope, but slowly down it. Set fire simultane-
ously to the top and the bottom of a forest on a
steep slope and the blaze at the bottom will

141

gpttt of tfy (gocfiiee

overrun at least nine-tenths of the area. Flame
and the drafts that it creates sweep upward.

Upon a huge lava boulder in the grassy stretch
I commanded a view of more than a mile of the
forest-edge and was close to where a game trail
came into it out of the fiery woods. On this
burning forest-border a picturesque, unplanned
wild-animal parade passed before me.

Scattered flakes of ashes were falling when a
herd of elk led the exodus of wild folk from the
fire-doomed forest. They came stringing out of
the woods into the open, with both old and
young going forward without confusion and as
though headed for a definite place or pasture.
They splashed through a beaver pond without
stopping and continued their way up the river.
There was no show of fear, no suggestion of
retreat. They never looked back. Deer strag-
gled out singly and in groups. It was plain that
all were fleeing from danger, all were excitedly
trying to get out of the way of something; and
they did not appear to know where they were
going. Apparently they gave more troubled
attention to the roaring, the breath, and the

142

movements of that fiery, mysterious monster
than to the seeking of a place of permanent
safety. In the grassy open, into which the
smoke was beginning to drift and hang, the
deer scattered and lingered. At each roar of the
fire they turned hither and thither excitedly to
look and listen. A flock of mountain sheep, in
a long, narrow, closely pressed rank and led by
an alert, aggressive bighorn, presented a fine
appearance as it raced into the open. The ad-
mirable directness of these wild animals put
them out of the category occupied by tame,
"silly sheep." Without slackening pace they
swept across the grassy valley in a straight line
and vanished in the wooded slope beyond. Now
and then a coyote appeared from somewhere
and stopped for a time in the open among the
deer; all these wise little wolves were a trifle
nervous, but each had himself well in hand.
Glimpses were had of two stealthy mountain
lions, now leaping, now creeping, now swiftly
fleeing.

Bears were the most matter-of-fact fellows
in the exodus. Each loitered in the grass and

of $e (gocfiiw

occasionally looked toward the oncoming dan-
ger. Their actions showed curiosity and anger,
but not alarm. Each duly took notice of the
surrounding animals, and one old grizzly even
struck viciously at a snarling coyote. Two
black bear cubs, true to their nature, had a
merry romp. Even these serious conditions
could not make them solemn. Each tried to
prevent the other from climbing a tree that
stood alone in the open; around this tree they
clinched, cuffed, and rolled about so merrily
that the frightened wild folks were attracted
and momentarily forgot their fears. The only
birds seen were some grouse that whirred and
sailed by on swift, definite wings; they were
going somewhere.

With subdued and ever-varying roar the fire
steadily advanced. It constantly threw off an
upcurling, unbroken cloud of heavy smoke that
hid the flames from view. Now and then a
whirl of wind brought a shower of sparks to-
gether with bits of burning bark out over the
open valley.

Just as the flames were reaching the margin
144

$QU*t $\U

of the forest a great bank of black smoke curled
forward and then appeared to fall into the grassy
open. I had just a glimpse of a few fleeing ani-
mals, then all became hot, fiery, and dark. Red
flames darted through swirling black smoke.
It was stifling. Leaping into a beaver pond, I
lowered my own sizzling temperature and that
of my smoking clothes. The air was too hot and
black for breathing; so I fled, floundering
through the water, down Grand River.

A quarter of a mile took me beyond danger-
line and gave me fresh air. Here the smoke
ceased to settle to the earth, but extended in
a light upcurling stratum a few yards above
it. Through this smoke the sunlight came so
changed that everything around was magically
covered with a canvas of sepia or rich golden
brown. I touched the burned spots on hands
and face with real, though raw, balsam and then
plunged into the burned-over district to explore
the extensive ruins of the fire.

A prairie fire commonly consumes everything
to the earth-line and leaves behind it only a
black field. Rarely does a forest fire make so

145

gpdt of tfy (Roc6te0

clean a sweep; generally it burns away the
smaller limbs and the foliage, leaving the tree
standing all blackened and bristling. This fire,
like thousands of others, consumed the litter
carpet on the forest floor and the mossy covering
of the rocks; it ate the underbrush, devoured
the foliage, charred and burned the limbs, and
blackened the trunks. Behind was a dead for-
est in a desolate field, a territory with millions
of bristling, mutilated trees, a forest ruin im-
pressively picturesque and pathetic. From a
commanding ridge I surveyed this ashen desert
and its multitude of upright figures all blurred
and lifeless; these stood everywhere, — in the
gulches, on the slopes, on the ridges against the
sky, — and they bristled in every vanishing
distance. Over the entire area only a few trees
escaped with their lives; these were isolated in
soggy glacier meadows or among rock fields and
probably were defended by friendly air-currents
when the fiery billow rolled over them.

When I entered the burn that afternoon the
fallen trees that the fire had found were in ashes,
the trees just killed were smoking, while the

146

fvttet 5

standing dead trees were just beginning to burn
freely. That night these scattered beacons
strangely burned among the multitudinous
dead. Close to my camp all through that night
several of these fire columns showered sparks
like a fountain, glowed and occasionally lighted
up the scene with flaming torches. Weird and
strange in the night were the groups of silhou-
etted figures in a shadow-dance between me and
the flickering, heroic torches.

The greater part of the area burned over con-
sisted of mountain-slopes and ridges that lay
between the altitudes of nine thousand and
eleven thousand feet. The forest was made up
almost entirely of Engelmann and Douglas
spruces, alpine fir, and flexilis pine. A majority
of these trees were from fifteen to twenty-four
inches in diameter, and those examined were
two hundred and fourteen years of age. Over
the greater extent of the burn the trees were tall
and crowded, about two thousand to the acre.
As the fire swept over about eighteen thousand
acres, the number of trees that perished must
have approximated thirty-six million.

147

of

Fires make the Rocky Mountains still more
rocky. This bald fact stuck out all through this
burn and in dozens of others afterward visited.
Most Rocky Mountain fires not only skin off
the humus but so cut up the fleshy soil and so
completely destroy the fibrous bindings that
the elements quickly drag much of it from the
bones and fling it down into the stream-chan-
nels. Down many summit slopes in these moun-
tains, where the fires went to bed-rock, the
snows and waters still scoot and scour. The fire
damage to some of these steep slopes cannot
be repaired for generations and even centuries.
Meantime these disfigured places will support
only a scattered growth of trees and sustain
only a sparse population of animals.

In wandering about I found that the average
thickness of humus — decayed vegetable mat-
ter — consumed by this fire was about five
inches. The removal of even these few inches
of covering had in many places exposed boul-
ders and bed-rock. On many shallow-covered
steeps the soil-anchoring roots were consumed
and the productive heritage of ages was left to

148

fvctet Jtee

be the early victim of eager running water and
insatiable gravity.

Probably the part of this burn that was most
completely devastated was a tract of four or five
hundred acres in a zone a little below timber-
line. Here stood a heavy forest on solid rock
in thirty-two inches of humus. The tree-roots
burned with the humus, and down crashed the
trees into the flames. The work of a thousand
years was undone in a day!

The loss of animal life in this fire probably
was not heavy; in five or six days of exploring
I came upon fewer than three dozen fire vic-
tims of all kinds. Among the dead were ground-
hogs, bobcats, snowshoe rabbits, and a few
grouse. Flying about the waste were crested
jays, gray jays ("camp birds"), and magpies.
Coyotes came early to search for the feast pre-
pared by the fire.

During the second day's exploration on the
burn, a grizzly bear and I came upon two roasted
deer in the end of a gulch. I was first to arrive,
so Mr. Grizzly remained at what may have been
a respectful distance, restlessly watching me.

149

gpttt of

With his nearness and impolite stare I found it
very embarrassing to eat alone. However, two
days of fasting had prepared me for this primi-
tive feast; and, knowing that bears were better
than their reputation, I kept him waiting until
I was served. On arising to go, I said, "Come,
you may have the remainder; there is plenty of
it."

The fire was followed by clear weather, and
for days the light ash lay deep and undisturbed
over the burn. One morning conditions changed
and after a few preliminary whirlwinds a gusty
gale set in. In a few minutes I felt and appeared
as though just from an ash-barrel. The ashen
dust-storm was blinding and choking, and I fled
for the unburned heights. So blinding was the
flying ash that I was unable to see; and, to make
matters worse, the trees with fire-weakened
foundations and limbs almost severed by flames
commenced falling. The limbs were flung about
in a perfectly reckless manner, while the falling
trees took a fiendish delight in crashing down
alongside me at the very moment that the storm
was most blinding. Being without nerves and

150

incidentally almost choked, I ignored the falling
bodies and kept going.

Several times I rushed blindly against limb-
points and was rudely thrust aside; and finally
I came near walking off into space from the edge
of a crag. After this I sought temporary refuge to
the leeward of a boulder, with the hope that the
weakened trees would speedily fall and end the
danger from that source. The ash flew thicker
than ever did gale-blown desert dust ; it was im-
possible to see and so nearly impossible to breathe
that I was quickly driven forth. I have been in
many dangers, but this is the only instance in
which I was ever irritated by Nature's blind
forces. At last I made my escape from them.

From clear though wind-swept heights I long
watched the burned area surrender its slowly
accumulated, rich store of plant- food to the in-
satiable and all-sweeping wind. By morning,
when the wind abated, the garnered fertility
and phosphates of generations were gone, and
the sun cast the shadows of millions of leafless
trees upon rock bones and barren earth. And
the waters were still to take their toll.

of

Of course Nature would at once commence to
repair and would again upbuild upon the found-
ations left by the fire; such, however, were. the
climatic and geological conditions that improv-
ing changes would come but slowly. In a cen-
tury only a good beginning could be made. For
years the greater portion of the burn would be
uninhabitable by bird or beast; those driven
forth by this fire would seek home and food in
the neighboring territory, where this influx of
population would compel interesting readjust-
ments and create bitter strife between the old
wild-folk population and the new.

This fire originated from a camp-fire which a
hunting-party had left burning; it lived three
weeks and extended eastward from the starting-
place. Along most of its course it burned to the
timber-line on the left, while rocky ridges, gla-
cier meadows, and rock fields stopped its ex-
tension and determined the side line on the
right; it ran out of the forest and stopped in
the grassy Grand River Valley. Across its course
were a number of rocky ridges and grassy
gorges where the fire could have been easily

152

stopped by removing the scattered trees, — by
burning the frail bridges that enabled the fire to
travel from one dense forest to abundant fuel
beyond. In a city it is common to smother a fire
with water or acid, but with a forest fire usually
it is best to break its inflammable line of com-
munication by removing from before it a width
of fibrous material. The axe, rake, hoe, and
shovel are the usual fire-fighting tools.

A few yards away from the spot where the
fire started I found, freshly cut in the bark of
an aspen, the inscription : —

JSM
YALE 18

A bullet had obliterated the two right-hand
figures. -

For days I wandered over the mountains, go-
ing from fire to smoke and studying burns new
and old. One comparatively level tract had been
fireswept in 1791. On this the soil was good.
Lodge-pole pine had promptly restocked the
burn, but these trees were now being smothered
out by a promising growth of Engelmann spruce.

Fifty-seven years before my visit a fire had
burned over about four thousand acres and was
brought to a stand by a lake, a rocky ridge, and
a wide fire-line that a snowslide had cleared
through the woods. The surface of the burn was
coarse, disintegrated granite and sloped toward
the west, where it was exposed to prevailing
high westerly winds. A few kinnikinnick rugs
apparently were the only green things upon the
surface, and only a close examination revealed
a few stunted trees starting. It was almost bar-
ren. Erosion was still active; there were no
roots to bind the finer particles together or to
anchor them in place. One of the most striking
features of the entire burn was that the trees
killed by the fire fifty-seven years ago were
standing where they died. They had excellent
root-anchorage in the shattered surface, and
many of them probably would remain erect for
years. The fire that killed them had been a hot
one, and it had burned away most of the limbs,
and had so thoroughly boiled the pitch through
the exterior of the trunk that the wood was in
an excellent state of preservation.

A YELLOW PINE, FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AFTER IT
HAD BEEN KILLED BY FIRE

fovtet Jtt*

Another old burn visited was a small one in an
Engelmann spruce forest on a moderate north-
ern slope. It had been stopped while burning
in very inflammable timber. It is probable that
on this occasion either a rain or snow had saved
the surrounding forest. The regrowth had
slowly extended from the margin of the forest
to the centre of the burn until it was restocked.

One morning I noticed two small fires a few
miles down the mountain and went to examine
them. Both were two days old, and both had
started from unextinguished camp-fires. One
had burned over about an acre and the other
about four times that area. If the smaller had
not been built against an old snag it probably
would have gone out within a few hours after the
congressman who built it moved camp. It was
wind-sheltered and the blaze had traveled slowly
in all directions and burned a ragged circle that
was about sixty feet across.

The outline of the other blaze was that of a
flattened ellipse, like the orbit of many a wander-
ing comet in the sky. This had gone before the
wind, and the windward end of its orbit closely

of

encircled the place of origin. The camp-fire
nucleus of this blaze had also been built in the
wrong place, — against a fallen log which lay
in a deep bed of decaying needles.

Of course each departing camper should put
out his camp-fire. However, a camp-fire built
on a humus-covered forest floor, or by a log, or
against a dead tree, is one that is very difficult
to extinguish. With the best of intentions one
may deluge such a fire with water without de-
stroying its potency. A fire thus secreted ap-
pears, like a lie, to have a spark of immortality
in it.

A fire should not be built in contact with sub-
stances that will burn, for such fuel will prolong
the fire's life and may lead it far into the forest.
There is but little danger to the forest from a
fire that is built upon rock, earth, sand, or
gravel. A fire so built is isolated and it usually
dies an early natural death. Such a fire — one
built in a safe and sane place — is easily ex-
tinguished.

The larger of these two incipient fires was
burning quietly, and that night I camped within

156

its orbit. Toward morning the wind began to
blow, this slow-burning surface fire began to
leap, and before long it was a crown fire, tra-
veling rapidly among the tree-tops. It swiftly
expanded into an enormous delta of flame. At
noon I looked back and down upon it from a
mountain-top, and it had advanced about three
miles into a primeval forest sea, giving off more
smoke than a volcano.

I went a day's journey and met a big fire that
was coming aggressively forward against the
wind . 1 1 was burning a crowded , stunted growth
of forest that stood in a deep litter carpet. The
smoke, which flowed freely from it, was dis-
tinctly ashen green; this expanded and main-
tained in the sky a smoky sheet that was several
miles in length.

Before the fire lay a square mile or so of old
burn which was covered with a crowded growth
of lodge-pole pine that stood in a deep, criss-
crossed entanglement of fallen fire-killed timber.
A thousand or more of these long, broken dead
trees covered each acre with wreckage, and in
this stood upward of five thousand live young

of

ones. This would make an intensely hot and
flame-writhing fire. It appears that a veteran
spruce forest had occupied this burn prior to
the fire. The fire had occurred fifty-seven years
before. Trees old and young testified to the
date. In the margin of the living forest on the
edge of the burn were numerous trees that were
fire-scarred fifty-seven years before; the re-
growth on the burn was an even-aged fifty-six-
year growth.

That night, as the fire neared the young tree
growth, I scaled a rock ledge to watch it. Before
me, and between the fire and the rocks, stood
several veteran lodge-pole pines in a mass of
dead-and-down timber. Each of these trees had
an outline like that of a plump Lombardy pop-
lar. They perished in the most spectacular man-
ner. Blazing, wind-blown bark set fire to the
fallen timber around their feet; this fire, to-
gether with the close, oncoming fire-front, so
heated the needles on the lodge-poles that they
gave off a smoky gas ; this was issuing from every
top when a rippling rill of purplish flame ran up
one of the trunks. Instantly there was a flash

158

and white flames flared upward more than one
hundred feet, stood gushing for a few seconds,
and then went out completely. The other trees
in close succession followed and flashed up like
giant geysers discharging flame. This discharge
was brief, but it was followed by every needle
on the trees glowing and changing to white in-
candescence, then vanishing. In a minute these
leafless lodge-poles were black and dead.

The fire-front struck and crossed the lodge-
pole thicket in a flash ; each tree flared up like a
fountain of gas and in a moment a deep, ragged-
edged lake of flame heaved high into the dark,
indifferent night. A general fire of the dead-
and-down timber followed, and the smelter heat
of this cut the green trees down, the flames
widely, splendidly illuminating the surrounding
mountains and changing a cloud-filled sky to
convulsed, burning lava.

Not a tree was left standing, and every log
went to ashes. The burn was as completely
cleared as a fireswept prairie; in places there
were holes in the earth where tree-roots had
burned out. This burn was an ideal place for

159

of

another lodge-pole growth, and three years
later these pines were growing thereon as thick
as wheat in a field. In a boggy area within the
burn an acre or two of aspen sprang up; this
area, however, was much smaller than the one
that the fire removed from the bog. Aspens
commonly hold territory and extend their hold-
ings by sprouting from roots; but over the
greater portion of the bog the fire had either
baked or burned the roots, and this small aspen
area marked the wetter part of the bog, that in
which the roots had survived.

After destroying the lodge-pole growth the
fire passed on, and the following day it burned
away as a quiet surface fire through a forest of
scattered trees. It crept slowly forward, with
a yellow blaze only a few inches high. Here and
there this reddened over a pile of cone-scales
that had been left by a squirrel, or blazed up in
a pile of broken limbs or a fallen tree-top ; it con-
sumed the litter mulch and fertility of the for-
est floor, but seriously burned only a few trees.

Advancing along the blaze, I came upon a
veteran yellow pine that had received a large

1 60

pot-hole burn in its instep. As the Western yel-
low pine is the best fire-fighter in the conifer
family, it was puzzling to account for this deep
burn. On the Rocky Mountains are to be found
many picturesque yellow pines that have a
dozen times triumphed over the greatest enemy
of the forest. Once past youth, these trees pos-
sess a thick, corky, asbestos-like bark that de-
fies the average fire. Close to this injured old
fellow was a rock ledge that formed an influen-
tial part of its environment; its sloping surface
shed water and fertility upon its feet; cones,
twigs, and trash had also slid down this and
formed an inflammable pile which, in burning,
had bored into its ankle. An examination of its
annual rings in the burned hole revealed the
fact that it too had been slightly burned fifty-
seven years before. How long would it be until
it was again injured by fire or until some one
again read its records?

Until recently a forest fire continued until
stopped by rain or snow, or until it came to the
edge of the forest. I have notes on a forest fire
that lived a fluctuating life of four months. Once

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a fire invades an old forest, it is impossible
speedily to get rid of it. "It never goes out,"
declared an old trapper. The fire will crawl into
a slow-burning log, burrow down into a root,
or eat its way beneath a bed of needles, and give
off no sign of its presence. In places such as
these it will hibernate for weeks, despite rain
or snow, and finally some day come forth as
ferocious as ever.

About twenty-four hours after the lodge-pole
blaze a snow-storm came to extinguish the sur-
face fire. Two feet of snow — more than three
inches of water — fell. During the storm I was
comfortable beneath a shelving rock, with a
fire in front; here I had a meal of wild rasp-
berries and pine-nuts and reflected concerning
the uses of forests, and wished that every one
might better understand and feel the injustice
and the enormous loss caused by forest fires.

During the last fifty years the majority of
the Western forest fires have been set by unex-
tinguished camp-fires, while the majority of the
others were the result of some human careless-
ness. The number of preventable forest fires

162

fwet 5 it*

is but little less than the total number. True,
lightning does occasionally set a forest on fire;
I have personal knowledge of a number of such
fires, but I have never known lightning to set
fire to a green tree. Remove the tall dead trees
from forests, and the lightning will lose the
greater part of its kindling.

In forest protection, the rivers, ridge- tops,
rocky gulches, rock-fields, lake-shores, meadows,
and other natural fire-resisting boundary lines
between forests are beginning to be used and
can be more fully utilized for fire-lines, fire-
fighting, and fire-defying places. These natural
fire-barriers may be connected by barren cleared
lanes through the forest, so that a fire-break
will isolate or run entirely around any natural
division of forest. With such a barrier a fire
could be kept within a given section or shut out
of it.

In order to fight fire in a forest it must be
made accessible by means of roads and trails;
these should run on or alongside the fire-barrier
so as to facilitate the movements of fire patrols
or fire- fighters. There should be with every for-

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of

est an organized force of men who are eternally
vigilant to prevent or to fight forest fires. Fires
should be fought while young and small, before
they are beyond control.

There should be crows' -nests on commanding
crags and in each of these should be a lookout
to watch constantly for starting fires or suspi-
cious smoke in the surrounding sea of forest.
The lookout should have telephonic connection
with rangers down the slopes. In our national
forests incidents like the following are beginning
to occur: Upon a summit is stationed a ranger
who has two hundred thousand acres of forest
to patrol with his eyes. One morning a smudgy
spot appears upon the purple forest sea about
fifteen miles to the northwest. The lookout
gazes for a moment through his glass and,
although not certain as to what it is, decides to
get the distance with the range-finder. At that
instant, however, the wind acts upon the
smudge and shows that a fire exists and reveals
its position. A ranger, through a telephone at
the forks of the trail below, hears from the
heights, "Small fire one mile south of Mirror

164

Lake, between Spruce Fork and Bear Pass
Trail, close to O'Brien's Spring." In less than
an hour a ranger leaps from his panting pony
and with shovel and axe hastily digs a narrow
trench through the vegetable mould in a circle
around the fire. Then a few shovelfuls of sand
go upon the liveliest blaze and the fire is under
control. As soon as there lives a good, sympa-
thetic public sentiment concerning the forest,
it will be comparatively easy to prevent most
forest fires from starting and to extinguish those
that do start.

With the snow over, I started for the scene of
the first fire, and on the way noticed how much
more rapidly the snow melted in the open than
in a forest. The autumn sun was warm, and at
the end of the first day most of the snow in open
or fireswept places was gone, though on the
forest floor the slushy, compacted snow still
retained the greater portion of its original mois-
ture. On the flame-cleared slopes there was
heavy erosion; the fire had destroyed the root-
anchorage of the surface and consumed the
trash that would ordinarily have absorbed and

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of

delayed the water running off; but this, un-
checked, had carried off with it tons of earthy
material. One slope on the first burn suffered
heavily; a part of this day's "wash" was de-
posited in a beaver pond, of half an acre, which
was filled to the depth of three feet. The beav-
ers, finding their subterranean exits filled with
wash, had escaped by tearing a hole in the top
of their house.

Leaving this place, I walked across the range
to look at a fire that was burning beyond the
bounds of the snowfall. It was in a heavily for-
ested cove and was rapidly undoing the con-
structive work of centuries. This cove was a
horseshoe-shaped one and apparently would
hold the fire within its rocky ridges. While fol-
lowing along one of these ridges, I came to a
narrow, tree-dotted pass, the only break in the
confining rocky barrier. As I looked at the fire
down in the cove, it was plain that with a high
wind the fire would storm this pass and break
into a heavily forested alpine realm beyond. In
one day two men with axes could have made
this pass impregnable to the assaults of any fire,

166

no matter how swift the wind ally; but men were
not then defending our forests and an ill wind
was blowing.

Many factors help to determine the speed of
these fires, and a number of observations showed
that under average conditions a fire burned
down a slope at about one mile an hour; on the
level it traveled from two to eight miles an hour,
while up a slope it made from eight to twelve.
For short distances fires occasionally roared
along at a speed of fifty or sixty miles an hour
and made a terrible gale of flames.

I hurried up into the alpine realm and after
half an hour scaled a promontory and looked
back to the pass. A great cloud of smoke was
streaming up just beyond and after a minute
tattered sheets of flame were shooting high
above it. Presently a tornado of smoke and
flame surged into the pass and for some seconds
nothing could be seen. As this cleared, a suc-
cession of tongues and sheets of flame tried to
reach over into the forest on the other side of
the pass, but finally gave it up. Just as I was
beginning to feel that the forest around me was

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of

safe, a smoke-column arose among the trees by
the pass. Probably during the first assault of
the flames a fiery dart had been hurled across the
pass.

Up the shallow forested valley below me came
the flames, an inverted Niagara of red and yel-
low, with flying spray of black. It sent forward
a succession of short-lived whirlwinds that went
to pieces explosively, hurling sparks and blaz-
ing bark far and high. During one of its wilder
displays the fire rolled forward, an enormous
horizontal whirl of flame, and then, with thun-
der and roar, the molten flames swept upward
into a wall of fire; this tore to pieces, collapsed,
and fell forward in fiery disappearing clouds.
With amazing quickness the splendid hanging
garden on the terraced heights was crushed and
blackened. By my promontory went this mag-
nificent zigzag surging front of flame, blowing
the heavens full of sparks and smoke and fling-
ing enormous fiery rockets. Swift and slow,
loud and low, swelling and vanishing, it sang its
eloquent death song.

A heavy stratum of tarlike smoke formed
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fouet

above the fire as it toned down. Presently this
black stratum was uplifted near the centre and
then pierced with a stupendous geyser of yellow
flame, which reddened as it fused and tore
through the tarry smoke and then gushed as-
tonishingly high above.

A year or two prior to the fire a snow slide
from the heights had smashed down into the
forest. More than ten thousand trees were
mowed, raked, and piled in one mountainous
mass of wreckage upon some crags and in a nar-
row-throated gulch between them. This wood-
pile made the geyser flames and a bonfire to
startle even the giants. While I was trying to
account for this extraordinary display, there
came a series of explosions in rapid succession,
ending in a violent crashing one. An ominous,
elemental silence followed. All alone I had en-
joyed the surprises, the threatening uncertain-
ties, and the dangerous experiences that swiftly
came with the fire-line battles of this long,
smoky war; but when those awful explosions
came I for a time wished that some one were
with me. Had there been, I should have turned

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of

and asked, while getting a better grip on my
nerves, "What on earth is that?" While the
startled mountain-walls were still shuddering
with the shock, an enormous agitated column
of steam shot several hundred feet upward
where the fiery geyser had flamed. Unable to
account for these strange demonstrations, I
early made my way through heat and smoke to
the big bonfire. In the bottom of the gulch, be-
neath the bonfire, flowed a small stream; just
above the bonfire this stream had been tempo-
rarily dammed by fire wreckage. On being re-
leased, the accumulated waters thus gathered
had rushed down upon the red-hot rocks and
cliffs and produced these explosions.

In the morning light this hanging terraced
garden of yesterday's forest glory was a stupen-
dous charcoal drawing of desolation.

n

E big trees of California are never attacked
by insects. This immunity is extraordin-
ary and may be the chief characteristic that
enables these noble trees to live so long. Un-
fortunately it is not shared by other species.
The American forests are infested with thou-
sands of species of injurious and destructive in-
sects. These insects, like the forest fires, annu-
ally kill numerous forest areas, and in addition
leave millions of deformed and sickly trees scat-
tered through the living forest to impair and
imperil it. After some general tree studies
which have occupied odd times for years and
extended through the groves and forests of
every State and Territory in the Union, the con-
clusion has been forced upon me that the forests
are more widely wasted by insects than by fire.
Some of Nature's strange ways are exhibited
in the interrelation of insects and fires in tree-
killing. It is common for the attack of one of

£p*Cl of tf e

these tree-enemies to open the way for the de-
predations of the other. The trees that insects
kill quickly become dry and inflammable and
ready kindling for the forest fire. On the other
hand, the injuries that green trees often receive
from forest fires render them most susceptible to
the attacks of insects.

This interrelation — almost cooperation —
between these arch-enemies of the forest was
impressed upon me during my early tree stud-
ies. One day I enjoyed a splendid forest sea
from the summit of a granite crag that pierced
this purple expanse. Near the crag a few clumps
of trees stood out conspicuous in robes of sear
yellow brown. Unable to account for this color-
ing of their needles, I went down and looked
them over. The trees had recently been killed
by insects. They were Western yellow pine,
and their needles, changed to greenish yellow,
still clung to them. In each clump of these pines
there were several stunted or deformed trees,
or trees that showed a recent injury. The
stunted and injured trees in these clumps were
attacked and killed by beetles the summer be-

i74

in

fore my visit. In these injured trees the beetles
had multiplied, and they emerged the following
summer and made a deadly attack upon the sur-
rounding vigorous trees. Although this latter
attack was made only a month or two before
my arrival, the trees were already dead and
their needles had changed to a sickly greenish
yellow. Amid one of these clumps was a veteran
yellow pine that lightning had injured a few
years before. Beetles attacked and killed this
old pine about a year before I appeared upon
the scene. It was the only tree in this now dead
clump that was attacked on that first occasion;
but some weeks before my visit the beetles in
multiplied numbers swarmed forth from it and
speedily killed the sound neighboring trees.

These conclusions were gathered from the
condition of the trees themselves together with
a knowledge of beetle habits. Not a beetle could
be found in the lightning-injured pine, and its
needles were dry and yellow. The near-by dead
pines were full of beetles and their eggs; the
needles, of a greenish yellow, were slightly tough
and still contained a little sap.

gfdt of tfy

While I was in camp one evening, in the midst
of these tree studies, the veteran pine, now dead,
was again struck by lightning. As everything
was drenched with rain, there appeared to be no
likelihood of fire. However, the following morn-
ing the old pine was ablaze. In extinguishing
the fire I found that it had started at the base of
the tree at a point where the bolt had descended
and entered the earth. At this place there was
an accumulation of bark-bits from the trunk,
together with fallen twigs and needles from the
dead tree-top. Thus a dead, inflammable tree
in the woods is kindling which at any moment
may become a torch and set fire to the surround-
ing green forest. Although fires frequently
sweep through and destroy a green forest, they
commonly have their start among dead trees or
trash.

The pine beetle just mentioned attacks and
burrows into trees for the purpose of laying its
eggs therein. When few in number they confine
their attacks to trees of low vitality, — those
that will easily succumb to their attack. The
speedy death of the tree and the resultant chem-

176

n

ical change in its sap "appear to be necessary
for the well-being of the deposited eggs or the
youngsters that emerge from them. When these
beetles are numerous they freely attack and
easily kill the most vigorous of trees.

The pine beetle is one of a dozen species of
bark beetles that are grouped under a name that
means "killer of trees." Each year they kill
many acres of forest, and almost every year
some one depredation extends over several thou-
sand acres. The way of each species is similar
to that of the others. The beetles of each species
vary in length from a tenth to a fifth of an
inch. They migrate in midsummer, at the time
of the principal attack. Swarming over the tree,
they at once bore into and through the bark.
Here short transverse or vertical galleries are
run, and in these the eggs are laid.

In a short time the eggs hatch into grubs, and
these at once start to feed upon the inner bark
at right angles to the galleries, extending to
right and left around the tree. It does not re-
quire many of them to girdle the tree. Com-
monly the tree is dead in two months or less.

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of tfc

All these little animals remain in the tree until
late spring or early summer, when they emerge
in multiplied swarms and repeat the deadly
work in other trees.

The depredations of these insects are enor-
mous. During the early eighties the Southern
pine beetle ruined several thousand acres of
pines in Texas. Ten years later, 1890-92, it
swarmed through western North Carolina, Vir-
ginia, and West Virginia to southern Pennsyl-
vania and over an area aggregating seventy-five
thousand square miles, and killed pines of all
species and ages, leaving but few alive. Within
the past few years the mountain and Western
pine beetles have ruined a one-hundred-thou-
sand-acre lodge-pole pine tract in northeastern
Oregon, destroying not less than ninety per cent
of the stand. During the past decade the Black
Hills beetle has been active over the Rocky
Mountains, where in some districts it has de-
stroyed from ten to eighty per cent of the West-
ern yellow pines. In the Black Hills the forests
over several thousand square miles are ruined.

These bug-killed trees deteriorate rapidly. In
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n

most cases a beetle-killed pine is pretty well
rotted in five years and usually falls to pieces in
less than a decade. Borers attack upon the heels
of the beetles, and the holes made by the beetles
admit water and fungi into the wood. This rap-
idly reduces the wood to a punky, rotten mass.

One day in Colorado I tore a number of wind-
wrecked, bug-killed trees to pieces and was
busily engaged examining the numerous popula-
tion of grubs and borers, when some robins and
other birds discovered the feast, collected, and
impatiently awaited their turn. Perceiving the
situation, I dragged a fragment of a log to one
side for examination while the birds assembled
to banquet and dispute.

Returning to the rotten logs for another grub-
filled fragment, I paused to watch some wasps
that, like the birds, were feasting upon these
grubs. A wasp on finding a grub simply thrust
his snout into the grub and then braced himself
firmly as he bored down and proceeded to suck
his victim's fluids. In throwing a log to one side
I disturbed a bevy of slender banqueters that
I had not seen. Instantly a number of wasps

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of

were effervescing round my head. Despite busy
arms, they effectively peppered my face, and I
fled to a neighboring brook to bathe my wounds.
While I was at a safe distance, cogitating as
to the wisdom of returning for further examin-
ation of the logs, a black bear appeared down
the opening. From his actions I realized that he
had scented not myself but the feast in the log-
pile. After sniffling, pointing, and tip-toeing, he
lumbered toward the logs. Of course I was curi-
ous as to the manner of his reception and al-
lowed him to go unwarned to the feast. Two
Rocky Mountain jays gave a low, indifferent
call on his approach, but the other birds ignored
his coming. With his fore paw he tore a log
apart and deftly picked up a number of grubs.
All went well until he climbed upon the pile of
wreckage and rolled a broken log off the top.
This disturbed another wasp feast. Suddenly
he grabbed his nose with both fore paws and
tumbled off the pile. For a few seconds he was
slapping and battling at a lively pace; then,
with a woof-f-f-f! he fled — straight at me. I

made a tangential move.

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n

The hardwoods are also warred upon by bugs,
weevils, borers, and fungi. The percentage of
swift deaths, however, that the insects cause
among the hardwoods is much smaller than
that among the pines ; but the percentage of
diseased and slow-dying hardwoods is much
greater. The methods of beetles that attack
oaks, hickories, aspens, and birches are simi-
lar to the methods of those that attack pines
and spruces. They attack in swarms, bore
through the bark, and deposit their eggs either
in the inner bark or in the cambium, — the
vitals of the tree. The grubs, on hatching, begin
to feed upon the tree's vitals. In this feeding
each grub commonly drives a minute tunnel
from one to several inches in length. Where
scores of grubs hatch side by side they drive a
score of closely parallel tunnels. Commonly
these are either horizontal or vertical and gener-
ally they are numerous enough to make many
complete girdles around the tree. Girdling
means cutting off the circulation, and this pro-
duces quick death.

While these beetles are busy killing unnum-
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of

bered millions of trees annually, the various
species of another group of beetles known as
weevils are active in deforming and injuring
even a greater number. They mutilate and
deform trees by the millions. The work of the
white-pine weevil is particularly devilish. It
deposits its eggs in the vigorous shoots of the
white-pine sapling. The eggs hatch, and the
grubs feed upon and kill the shoot. Another
shoot bursts forth to take the place of the one
killed; this is attacked and either killed or in-
jured. The result is a stunted, crooked, and
much-forked tree.

Borers attack trees both old and young of
many species, and a few of these species with
wholesale deadly effect. Birches by the million
annually fall a prey to these tree-tunnelers, and
their deadly work has almost wiped the black
locust out of existence. Borers pierce and hon-
eycomb the tree- trunk. If their work is not
fatal, it is speedily extended and made so by the
fungi and rot that its holes admit into the tree.

Trees, like people, often entertain a number
of troubles at once and have misfortunes in

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n

series. A seedling injured by one insect is more
likely to be attacked again, and by some other
insect, than is the sound seedling by its side.
Let a seedling be injured, and relays of insects
— often several species at a time and each spe-
cies with a way of its own — will attack it
through the seedling, sapling, pole, tree, and
veteran stages of its growth until it succumbs.
Or let a vigorous tree meet with an accident,
and like an injured deer it becomes food for an
enemy. If lightning, wind, or sleet split the
bark or break a limb, through these wounds
some spore or borer will speedily reach the tree's
vitals. In many cases the deadly work of para-
sitic plants and fungi is interrelated with, and
almost inseparable from, the destructive opera-
tions of predacious insects. Many so-called tree
diseases are but the spread of rot and fungi
through the wood by means of an entrance
bored by a borer, weevil, or beetle.

The bark of a tree, like the skin on one's body,
is an impervious, elastic armor that protects
blood and tissues from the poisonous or cor-
rupting touch or seizure of thousands of deadly

183

€#e £ptf f of

and incessantly clamoring germs. Tear the skin
on one's body or the bark upon a tree, and eter-
nally vigilant microbes at once sow the wound
with the seeds of destruction or decay. A single
thoughtless stroke of an axe in the bark of a tree
may admit germs that will produce a kind of
blood-poisoning and cause slow death.

The false-tinder fungus apparently can spread
and do damage only as it is admitted into the
tree through insect-holes or the wounds of acci-
dents. Yet its annual damage is almost beyond
computation. This rot is widely distributed and
affects a large number of species. As with in-
sects, its outbreaks often occur and extend over
wide areas upon which its depredations are
almost complete. As almost all trees are sus-
ceptible to this punk-producer, it will not be
easy to suppress.

The study of forest insects has not progressed
far enough to enable one to make more than a
rough approximation of the number of the im-
portant species that attack our common trees.
However, more than five hundred species are
known to afflict the sturdy oak, while four hun-

184

n

dred prey upon the bending willow. The birches
supply food to about three hundred of these
predacious fellows, while poplars feed and shel-
ter almost as many. The pines and spruces are
compelled permanently to pension or provide
for about three hundred families of sucking,
chewing parasites.

The recent ravages of the chestnut-tree blight
and the appalling depredations of the gypsy
and brown-tailed moths, together with other
evils, suggest at once the bigness of these pro-
blems and the importance of their study and
solution. The insect army is as innumerable as
the leaves in the forest. This army occupies
points of vantage in every part of the tree zone,
has an insatiable appetite, is eternally vigilant
for invasion, and is eager to multiply. It main-
tains incessant warfare against the forest, and
every tree that matures must run a gantlet of
enemies in series, each species of which is armed
with weapons long specialized for the tree's de-
struction. Some trees escape unscarred, though
countless numbers are killed and multitudes
maimed, which for a time live almost useless

185

of tfe (Bocfites

lives, ever ready to spread insects and disease
among the healthy trees.

Every part of the tree suffers; even its roots
are cut to pieces and consumed. Caterpillars,
grubs, and beetles specialize on defoliation and
feed upon the leaves, the lungs of the trees. The
partial defoliation of the tree is devitalizing, and
the loss of all its leaves commonly kills it. Not
only is the tree itself attacked but also its efforts
toward reproduction. The dainty bloom is food
for a number of insect beasts, while the seed is
fed upon and made an egg-depository by other
enemies. Weevils, blight, gall, ants, aphids,
and lice prey upon it. The seed drops upon the
earth into another army that is hungry and wait-
ing to devour it. The moment it sprouts it is
gnawed, stung, bitten, and bored by ever-active
fiends.

Many forest trees are scarred in the base by
ground fires. These trees are entered by insects
through the scars and become sources of rot and
insect infection. Although these trees may for a
time live on, it is with a rotten heart or as a mere
hollow shell. A forest fire that sweeps raging

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n

through the tree- tops has a very different effect:
the twigs and bark are burned off and the
pitches are boiled through the exterior of the
trunk and the wood fortified against all sources
of decay. This preservative treatment often
gives long endurance to fire-killed timber, espe-
cially when the trees killed are yellow pine or
Douglas spruce. Many a night in the Rocky
Mountains my eager, blazing camp-fire was
burning timber that forest fires had killed forty
and even sixty years before.

In forest protection and improvement the
insect factor is one that will not easily down.
Controlling the depredations of beetles, borers,
weevils, and fungi calls for work of magnitude,
but work that insures success. This work con-
sists of the constant removal of both the in-
fected trees and the dwarfed or injured ones that
are susceptible to infection. Most forest insects
multiply with amazing rapidity; some mother
bark-beetles may have half a million descend-
ants in less than two years. Thus efforts for
the control of insect outbreaks should begin at
once, — in the early stages of their activity. A

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of

single infested tree may in a year or two spread
destruction through thousands of acres of forest.

Most insects have enemies to bite them. The
ichneumon-fly spreads death among injurious
grubs. Efforts to control forest-enemies will
embrace the giving of aid and comfort to those
insects that prey upon them. Bugs will be
hunted with bugs. Already the gypsy moth in
the East is being fought in this way. Many
species of birds feed freely upon weevils, borers,
and beetles. Of these birds, the woodpeckers
are the most important. They must be protected
and encouraged.

There are other methods of fighting the enemy.
A striking and successful device for putting an
end to the spruce-destroying beetle is to hack-
girdle a spruce here and there in the forest at a
season when the physiological make-up of the
tree will cause it to change into a condition most
favorable for the attraction of beetles. Like
carrion, this changed condition appears to be
scented from all quarters and afar. Swarms of
beetles concentrate their attack upon this tree
and bury themselves in it and deposit their eggs.

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n

The multiplied army will remain in the tree
until late spring. Thus months of time may be
had to cut and burn the tree, with its myriads
of murderous guests. The freedom of the big
trees from insect attacks suggests that man as
well as nature may develop or breed species of
trees that will better resist or even defy insects.
Insects are now damaging our forests to the
extent of not less than one hundred million dol-
lars annually. This we believe to be a conserva-
tive estimate. Yet these figures only begin to
tell the story of loss. They tell only the com-
mercial value of the timber. The other greater
and higher values cannot be resolved into figures.
Forest influences and forest scenes add much to
existence and bestow blessings upon life that
cannot be measured by gold.

©*.

LTHOUGH the eagle has the emblematic
place of honor in the United States, the
downy woodpecker is distinguished as the most
useful bird citizen. Of the eight hundred and
three kinds of birds in North America, his services
are most helpful to man. He destroys destruct-
ive forest insects. Long ago Nature selected
the woodpecker to be the chief caretaker — the
physician and surgeon — of the tree world.
This is a stupendous task. Forests are extens-
ive and are formed of hundreds of species of
trees. The American woodpeckers have the
supervision of uncounted acres that are forested
with more than six hundred kinds of trees.

With the exception of the California big tree,
each tree species is preyed upon by scores, and
many species by hundreds, of injurious and
deadly insects. Five hundred kinds of insects

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of

are known to prey upon the oak, and a complete
count may show a thousand kinds. Many of
these insects multiply with amazing rapidity,
and at all times countless numbers of these ag-
gressive pests form warrior armies with which
the woodpecker must constantly contend.

In this incessant struggle with insects the
woodpecker has helpful assistance from many
other bird families. Though the woodpecker
gives general attention to hundreds of kinds of
insects, he specializes on those which injure the
tree internally, — which require a surgical oper-
ation to obtain. He is a distinguished specialist;
the instruments for tree-surgery are intrusted to
his keeping, and with these he each year per-
forms innumerable successful surgical opera-
tions upon our friends the trees.

Woodpeckers are as widely distributed as for-
ests, — just how many to the square mile no
one knows. Some localities are blessed with a
goodly number, made up of representatives
from three or four of our twenty-four wood-
pecker species. Forest, shade, and orchard trees
receive their impartial attention. The annual

194

saving from their service is enormous. Although
this cannot be estimated, it can hardly be over-
stated.

A single borer may kill a tree; so, too, may
a few beetles; while a small number of weevils
will injure and stunt a tree so that it is left an
easy victim for other insects. Borers, beetles,
and weevils are among the worst enemies of
trees. They multiply with astounding rapidity
and annually kill millions of scattered trees.
Annually, too, there are numerous outbreaks
of beetles, whose depredations extend over hun-
dreds and occasionally over thousands of acres.
Caterpillars, moths, and saw-flies are exceed-
ingly injurious tree-pests, but they damage the
outer parts of the tree. Both they and their eggs
are easily accessible to many kinds of birds,
including the woodpeckers; but borers, beetles,
and weevils live and deposit their eggs in the
very vitals of the tree. In the tree's vitals, pro-
tected by a heavy barrier of wood or bark, they
are secure from the beaks and claws of all birds
except Dr. Woodpecker, the chief surgeon of
the forest. About the only opportunity that

of $e (goc&es

other birds have to feed upon borers and beetles
is during the brief time they occupy in emerging
from the tree that they have killed, in their
flight to some live tree, and during their brief
exposure while boring into it.

Beetles live and move in swarms, and, accord-
ing to their numbers, concentrate their attack
upon a single tree or upon many trees. Most
beetles are one of a dozen species of Dendroc-
tonus, which means "tree-killer." Left in un-
disturbed possession of a tree, many mother
beetles may have half a million descendants
in a single season. Fortunately for the forest,
Dr. Woodpecker, during his ceaseless round
of inspection and service, generally discovers
infested trees. If one woodpecker is not equal
to the situation, many are concentrated at this
insect-breeding place; and here they remain
until the last dweller in darkness is reached and
devoured. Thus most beetle outbreaks are pre-
vented. Now and then all the conditions are
favorable for the beetles, or the woodpecker
may be persecuted and lose some of his family;
so that, despite his utmost efforts, he fails to

196

make the rounds of his forest, and the result is
an outbreak of insects, with wide depredations.
So important are these birds that the shooting
of a single one may allow insects to multiply
and waste acres of forest.

During the periods in which the insects are
held in check the woodpecker ranges through
the forest, inspecting tree after tree. Many
times, during their tireless rounds of search and
inspection, I have followed them for hours. On
one occasion in the mountains of Colorado I
followed a Batchelder woodpecker through a
spruce forest all day long. Both of us had a
busy day. He inspected eight hundred and
twenty-seven trees, most of which were spruce
or lodge-pole pine. Although he moved quickly,
he was intensely concentrated, was systematic,
and apparently did the inspection carefully.
The forest was a healthy one and harbored only
straggling insects. Now and then he picked up
an isolated insect from a limb or took an egg-
cluster from a break in the bark on a trunk.
Only two pecking operations were required. On
another occasion I watched a hairy woodpecker

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of

spend more than three days upon one tree-
trunk; this he pecked full of holes and from its
vitals he dragged more than a gross of devour-
ing grubs. In this case not only was the beetle
colony destroyed but the tree survived.

Woodpecker holes commonly are shallow,
except in dead trees. Most of the burrowing or
boring insects which infest living trees work in
the outermost sapwood, just beneath the bark,
or in the inner bark. Hence the doctor does not
need to cut deeply. In most cases his peckings
in the wood are so shallow that no scar or re-
cord is found. Hence a tree might be operated
on by him a dozen times in a season, and still
not show a scar when split or sawed into pieces.
Most of his peckings simply penetrate the bark,
and on living trees this epidermis scales off ; thus
in a short time all traces of his feast-getting are
obliterated. I have, however, in dissecting and
studying fallen trees, found a number of deep
holes in their trunks which woodpeckers had
made years before the trees came to their death.
In one instance, as I have related in "The Story
of a Thousand-Year Pine" in "Wild Life on the

198

WOODPECKER HOLES IN A PINE INJURED
BY LIGHTNING

Rockies," a deep oblong hole was pecked in a
pine nearly eight hundred years before it died.
The hole filled with pitch and was overgrown
with bark and wood.

Woodpeckers commonly nest in a dead limb
or trunk, a number of feet from the ground.
Here, in the heart of things, they excavate a
moderately roomy nest. It is common for many
woodpeckers to peck out a deep hole in a dead
tree for individual shelter during the winter.
Generally neither nest nor winter lodging is used
longer than a season. The abandoned holes are
welcomed as shelters and nesting-places by many
birds that prefer wooden-walled houses but can-
not themselves construct them. Chickadees
and bluebirds often nest in them. Screech owls
frequently philosophize within these retreats.
On bitter cold nights these holes shelter and
save birds of many species. One autumn day,
while watching beneath a pine, I saw fifteen
brown nuthatches issue from a woodpecker's
hole in a dead limb. Just what they were doing
inside I cannot imagine ; the extraordinary num-
ber that had gathered therein made the incident

199

of t$t (Roc&es

so unusual that for a long time I hesitated to
tell it. However, early one autumn, Mr. Frank
M. Chapman climbed up the mountainside to
see me, and, while resting on the way up, he
beheld twenty-seven nuthatches emerge from a
hole in a pine.

By tapping against dead tree-trunks I have
often roused Mother Woodpecker from her nest.
Thrusting out her head from a hole far above, she
peered down with one eye and comically tilted
her head to discover the cause of the disturb-
ance. With long nose and head tilted to one
side, she had both a storky and a philosophical
appearance. The woodpecker, more than any
other bird of my acquaintance, at times actu-
ally appears to need only a pair of spectacles
upon his nose in order fully to complete his atti-
tude and expression of wisdom.

The downy woodpecker, the smallest member
of a family of twenty-four distinguished species,
is the honored one. He is a confiding little fellow
and I have often accompanied him on his daily
rounds. He does not confine his attacks to the
concealed enemies of the trees, but preys freely

200

upon caterpillars and other enemies which feast
upon their leaves and bloom. He appears most
content close to the haunts of man and spends
much of his time caring for orchards and clean-
ing up the shade trees. One morning in Mis-
souri a downy alighted against the base of an
apple tree within a few feet of where I was stand-
ing. He arrived with an undulating flight and
swept in sideways toward the trunk, as though
thrown. Spat! he struck. For a moment he
stuck motionless, then he began to sidle round
and up the trunk. Every now and then he
tapped with his bill or else stopped to peer into
a bark-cavity. He devoured an insect egg-
cluster, a spider, and a beetle of some kind be-
fore ascending to the first limb.

Just below the point of a limb's attachment
he edged about, giving the tree-trunk a rattling
patter of taps with his bill. He was sounding
for something. Presently a spot appeared to
satisfy him. Adjusting himself, he rained blows
with his pick-axe bill upon this, tilting his head
and directing the strokes with an apparently
automatic action, now and then giving a side

201

of

swipe with his bill, probably to tear out a splin-
ter or throw off a chip. In six minutes his prey
was evidently in sight. Then he enlarged the
hole and slightly deepened it vertically. Paus-
ing, he thrust his head into the hole and his bill
into a cavity beyond. With a backward tug he
pulled his head out, then his bill, and at last
his extended tongue with a grub impaled on its
barbed point. This grub was dragged from the
bottom of a crooked gallery at a point more than
three inches beyond the bottom of the pecked
hole. A useful bread-getting tool, this tongue of
his, — a flexible, extensible spear.

In another tree he uncovered a feast of ants
and their eggs. Once a grasshopper alighted
against another tree-trunk up which he was
climbing. Downy seized him instantly. In one
tree-top he consumed an entire tent-caterpillar
colony. In four hours he examined the trunks,
larger limbs, and many of the smaller ones of one
hundred and thirty-eight apple trees. In this
time he made twenty-two excavations, five of
which were large ones. Among the insects de-
voured were beetles, ants, their eggs and their

202

©tr* TUoobpecfter,

aphids, a grasshopper, a moth or two, and a
colony of caterpillars. I* followed him closely,
and frequently was within a few feet of him.
Often I saw his eyes, or rather one eye at a time;
and a number of times I imagined him about to
look round and with merry laugh fly away, for
he frequently acted like a happy child who is
closely watching you while all the time merrily
pretending not to see you. Yet, in all those four
hours, he did not do a single thing which showed
that he knew of my nearness or even of my
existence !

Examining each tree in turn, he moved down
a long row and at the end flew without the slight-
est pause to the first tree in the next row. From
here he examined a line of trees diagonally
across the orchard to the farther corner. Here
he followed along the outside row until he flew
away. The line of his inspection, from the time
I first saw him until he flew away, formed a big
letter "N."

During a wind-storm in a pine forest a dead
tree fell near me and a flying limb knocked a
downy, stunned, to the earth, by my feet. On

203

reviving in my hands, he showed but little ex-
citement, and when my hands opened he pushed
himself off as though to dive to the earth ; but
he skimmed and swung upward, landing against
a tree-trunk about twenty feet distant. Up this
he at once began to skate and sidle, exploring
away as though nothing had happened and I
were only a stump.

E day, while wandering in the pine woods
on the slope of Mt. Meeker, I came upon
two young grizzly bears. Though they dodged
about as lively as chickens, I at last cornered
them in a penlike pocket of fallen trees.

Getting them into a sack was one of the live-
liest experiences I ever had. Though small and
almost starved, these little orphans proceeded
to "chew me up" after the manner of big griz-
zlies, as is told of them in books. After an ex-
citing chase and tussle, I would catch one and
thrust him into the sack. In resisting, he would
insert his claws into my clothes, or thrust them
through the side of the sack; then, while I was
trying to tear him loose, or to thrust him forci-
bly in, he would lay hold of a finger, or take a
bite in my leg. Whenever he bit, I at once
dropped him, and then all began over again.

Their mother had been killed a few days be-
fore I found them ; so, of course, they were fam-

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of

ished and in need of a home ; but so bitterly did
they resist my efforts that I barely succeeded
in taking them. Though hardly so large as a
collie when he is at his prettiest, they were nim-
ble athletes.

At last I started home, the sack over my
shoulder, with these lively Ursus horribilis in the
bottom of it. Their final demonstration was
not needed to convince me of the extraordinary
power of their jaws. Nevertheless, while going
down a steep slope, one managed to bite into
my back through sack and clothes, so effectively
that I responded with a yell. Then I fastened
the sack at the end of a long pole, which I car-
ried across my shoulder, and I was able to travel
the remainder of the distance to my cabin with-
out another attack in the rear.

Of course the youngsters did not need to be
taught to eat. I simply pushed their noses down
into a basin of milk, and the little red tongues at
once began to ply ; then raw eggs and bread were
dropped into the basin. There was no hesita-
tion between courses; they simply gobbled the
food as long as I kept it before them.

208

Jenny and Johnny were pets before sundown.
Though both were alert, Johnny was the wiser
and the more cheerful of the two. He took
training as readily as a collie or shepherd-dog,
and I have never seen any dog more playful.
All bears are keen of wit, but he was the bright-
est one of the wild folk that I have ever known.
He grew rapidly, and ate me almost out of sup-
plies. We were intimate friends in less than a
month, and I spent much time playing and talk-
ing with him. One of the first things I taught
him was, when hungry, to stand erect with arms
extended almost horizontally, with palms for-
ward. I also taught him to greet me in this
manner.

One day, after two weeks with me, he climbed
to the top of a pole fence to which he was
chained. Up there he had a great time; he
perched, gazed here and there, pranced back
and forth, and finally fell off. His chain tangled
and caught. For a few seconds he dangled in
the air by the neck, then slipped through his
collar and galloped off up the mountainside and
quickly disappeared in the woods. I supposed

209

of

he was gone for good. Although I followed for
several hours, I did not even catch sight of him.

This little boy had three days of runaway
life, and then concluded to return. Hunger
drove him back. I saw him coming and went to
meet him; but kept out of sight until he was
within twenty feet, then stepped into view.
Apparently a confused or entangled mental
condition followed my appearance. His first
impulse was to let me know that he was hungry
by standing erect and outstretching his arms;
this he started hastily to do.

In the midst of this performance, it occurred
to him that if he wanted anything to eat he must
hurry to me; so he interrupted his first action,
and started to carry his second into instant
effect. These incomplete proceedings inter-
rupted and tripped one another three or four
times in rapid succession. Though he tumbled
about in comic confusion while trying to do two
things at once, it was apparent through all that
his central idea was to get something to eat.

And this, as with all boys, was his central
idea much of the time. I did not find anything

2IO

that he would not eat. He simply gobbled
scraps from the table, — mountain sage, rhu-
barb, dandelion, and apples. Of course, being a
boy, he liked apples best of all.

If I approached him with meat and honey
upon a plate and with an apple in my pocket, he
would smell the apple and begin to dance before
me, ignoring the eatables in sight. Instantly,
on permission, he would clasp me with both fore
paws and thrust his nose into the apple pocket.
Often, standing between him and Jenny, I alter-
nately fed each a bit. A few times I broke the
regular order and gave Jenny two bits in suc-
cession. At this Johnny raged, and usually
ended by striking desperately at me; I never
flinched, and the wise little rogue made it a point
each time to miss me by an inch or two. A few
other people tried this irritating experiment
with him, but he hit them every time. However,
I early tried to prevent anything being done
that teased or irritated him. Visitors did occa-
sionally tease him, and frequently they fed the
two on bad- temper-producing knickknacks.

Occasionally the two quarreled, but not more

211

of tfy (Koc6te0

frequently than two ordinary children; and
these quarrels were largely traceable to fight-
producing food mixtures. Anyway, bears will
maintain a better disposition with a diet of
putrid meat, snakes, mice, and weeds than upon
desserts of human concoction.

Naturally bears are fun-loving and cheerful;
they like to romp and play. Johnny played by
the hour. Most of the time he was chained to a
low, small shed that was built for his accom-
modation. Scores of times each day he covered
all the territory that could be traversed while
he was fastened with a twelve-foot chain. Often
he skipped back and forth in a straight line for
an hour or more. These were not the restless,
aimless movements of the caged tiger, but those
of playful, happy activity. It was a pleasure to
watch this eager play; in it he would gallop to
the outer limit of his chain, then, reversing his
legs without turning his body, go backward
with a queer, lively hippety-hop to the other
end, then gallop forward again. He knew the
length of his chain to an inch. No matter how
wildly he rushed after some bone-stealing dog,

212

he was never jerked off his feet by forgetting
his limitations.

He and Scotch, my collie, were good friends
and jolly playmates. In their favorite play
Scotch tried to take a bone which Johnny
guarded ; this brought out from both a lively lot
of feinting, dodging, grabbing, and striking.
Occasionally they clinched, and when this ended,
Johnny usually tried for a good bite or two on
Scotch's shaggy tail. Scotch appeared always to
have in mind that the end of Johnny's nose was
sensitive, and he landed many a good slap on
this spot.

Apparently, Johnny early appreciated the
fact that I would not tease him, and also that I
was a master who must be obeyed. One day,
however, he met with a little mishap, misjudged
things, and endeavored to make it lively for
me. I had just got him to the point where he
enjoyed a rocking-chair. In this chair he sat up
like a little man. Sometimes his fore paws lay
awkwardly in his lap, but more often each
rested on an arm of the big chair. He found
rocking such a delight that it was not long until

213

of

he learned to rock himself. This brought on the
mishap. He had grown over-confident, and one
day was rocking with great enthusiasm. Sud-
denly, the big rocker, little man and all, went
over backward. Though standing by, I was
unable to save him, and did not move. Seeing
his angry look when he struck the floor, and
guessing his next move, I leaped upon the table.
Up he sprang, and delivered a vicious blow that
barely missed, but which knocked a piece out of
my trousers.

Apparently no other large animal has such in-
tense curiosity as the grizzly. An object in the
distance, a scent, a sound, or a trail, may arouse
this, and for a time overcome his intense and
wary vigilance. In satisfying this curiosity he
will do unexpected and apparently bold things.
But the instant the mystery is solved he is him-
self again, and may run for dear life from some
situation into which his curiosity has unwit-
tingly drawn him. An unusual noise behind
Johnny's shed would bring him out with a rush,
to determine what it was. If not at once satis-
fied as to the cause, he would put his fore paws

214

on the top of the shed and peer over in the most
eager and inquiring manner imaginable. Like
a scout, he spied mysterious and dim objects
afar. If a man, a dog, or a horse, appeared in
the distance, he quickly discovered the object,
and at once stood erect, with fore paws drawn
up, until he had a good look at it. The instant
he made out what it was, he lost interest in it.
At all times he was vigilant to know what
was going on about him.

He was like a boy in his fondness for water.
Usually, when unchained and given the freedom
of the place, he would spend much of the time in
the brook, rolling, playing, and wading. He and
I had a few foot-races, and usually, in order to
give me a better chance, we ran down hill. In a
two-hundred-yard dash he usually paused three
or four times and waited for me to catch up,
and I was not a slow biped, either.

The grizzly, though apparently awkward and
lumbering, is really one of the most agile of
beasts. I constantly marveled at Johnny's light-
ness of touch, or the deftness of movement of his
fore paws. With but one claw touching it, he

215

of <0e $oc8ies

could slide a coin back and forth on the floor
more rapidly and lightly than I could. He would
slide an eggshell swiftly along without breaking
it. Yet by using but one paw, he could, without
apparent effort, overturn rocks that were heav-
ier than himself.

One day, while he slept in the yard, out-
stretched in the sun, I opened a large umbrella
and put it over him, and waited near for him to
wake up. By and by the sleepy eyes half opened,
but without a move he closed them and slept
again. Presently he was wide awake, making a
quiet study of the strange thing over him, but
except to roll his eyes, not a move did he make.
Then a puff of wind gave sudden movement to
the umbrella, rolling it over a point or two. At
this he leaped to his feet, terribly frightened,
and made a dash to escape this mysterious mon-
ster. But, as he jumped, the wind whirled the
umbrella, and plump into it he landed. An in-
stant of desperate clawing, and he shook off the
wrecked umbrella and fled in terror. A minute
or two later I found him standing behind the
house, still frightened and trembling. When I

216

came up and spoke to him, he made three or
four lively attempts to bite my ankles. Plainly,
he felt that I had played a mean and uncalled-
for trick upon him. I talked to him for some
time and endeavored to explain the matter to
him.

A sudden movement of a new or mysterious
object will usually frighten any animal. On
more than one occasion people have taken ad-
vantage of this characteristic of wild beasts, and
prevented an attack upon themselves. In one
instance I unconsciously used it to my advan-
tage. In the woods, one day, as I have related
elsewhere, two wolves and myself unexpectedly
met. With bared teeth they stood ready to leap
upon me. Needing something to keep up my
courage and divert my thoughts, it occurred to
me to snap a picture of them. This effectively
broke the spell, for when the kodak door flew
open they wheeled and fled.

Autumn came, and I was to leave for a for-
estry tour. The only man that I could persuade
to stay at my place for the winter was one who
neither understood nor sympathized with my

217

of $t (goatee

wide-awake and aggressive young grizzly. Real-
izing that the man and the bear would surely
clash, and perhaps to the man's disadvantage,
I settled things once and for all by sending
Johnny to the Denver Zoo.

He was seven months old when we parted,
and apparently as much attached to me as any
dog to master. I frequently had news of him,
but let two years go by before I allowed myself
the pleasure of visiting him. He was lying on
the ground asleep when I called, while around
him a number of other bears were walking
about. He was no longer a boy bear, but a big
fellow. In my eagerness to see him I forgot to
be cautious and, climbing to the top of the picket
fence, leaped into the pen, calling, "Hello,
Johnny!" as I leaped, and repeating this greet-
ing as I landed on the ground beside him. He
jumped up, fully awake, and at once recognized
me. Instantly, he stood erect, with both arms
extended, and gave a few happy grunts of joy
and by way of greeting.

I talked to him for a little while and patted
him as I talked. Then I caught a fore paw in

218

my hand and we hopped and pranced about as
in old times. A yell from the outside brought me
to my senses. Instinctively I glanced about for
a way of escape, though I really did not feel
that I was in danger. We were, however, the
observed of all observers, and I do not know
which throng was staring with greater interest
and astonishment, — the bears in the pen or
the spectators on the outside.

(KCone fcri$ a

ALKALIZING the importance of traveling as
Vi,*' lightly as possible during my hasty trip
through the Uncompahgre Mountains, I al-
lowed myself to believe that the golden days
would continue. Accordingly I set off with no
bedding, with but little food, and without even
snowshoes. A few miles up the trail, above Lake
City, I met a prospector coming down and out
of these mountains for the winter. "Yes," he
said, "the first snow usually is a heavy one, and
I am going out now for fear of being snowed-in
for the winter." My imagination at once pict-
ured the grand mountains deeply, splendidly
covered with snow, myself by a camp-fire in a
solemn primeval forest without food or bedding,
a camp-bird on a near-by limb sympathizing
with me in low, confiding tones, the snow waist-
deep and mountains-wide. Then I dismissed
the imaginary picture of winter and joyfully
climbed the grand old mountains amid the low

223

gyttt of

and leafless aspens and the tall and richly robed
firs.

I was impelled to try to make this mountain
realm a National Forest and felt that sometime
it would become a National Park. The wonder-
ful reports of prospectors about the scenery of this
region, together with what I knew of it from in-
complete exploration, eloquently urged this
course upon me. My plan was to make a series
of photographs, from commanding heights and
slopes, that would illustrate the forest wealth
and the scenic grandeur of this wonderland. In
the centre Uncompahgre Peak rose high, and
by girdling it a little above the timber I obtained
a number of the desired photographs, and then
hurried from height to height, taking other pict-
ures of towering summits or their slopes below
that were black and purpling with impressive,
pathless forests.

The second evening I went into camp among
some picturesque trees upon a skyline at an
altitude of eleven thousand feet above the tides.
While gathering wood for a fire, I paused to
watch the moon, a great globe of luminous gold,

224

($fone

rise strangely, silently into the mellow haze of
autumn night. For a moment on the horizon it
paused to peep from behind a crag into a scat-
tered group of weird storm-beaten trees on a
ridge before me, then swiftly floated up into
lonely, misty space. Just before I lay down for
the night, I saw a cloud-form in the dim, low
distance that was creeping up into my moonlit
world of mountains. Other shadowy forms fol-
lowed it. A little past midnight I was awakened
by the rain falling gently, coldly upon my face.
As I stood shivering with my back to the fire,
there fell an occasional feathery flake of snow.
Had my snowshoes been with me, a different
lot of experiences would have followed. With
them I should have stayed in camp and watched
the filmy flakes form their beautiful white feath-
ery bog upon the earth, watched robes, rugs,
and drapery decorate rocks and cliffs, or the fir
trees come out in pointed, spearhead caps, or
the festoons form upon the limbs of dead and
lifeless trees, — crumbling tree-ruins in the
midst of growing forest life. To be without food
or snowshoes in faraway mountain snows is

225

of

about as serious as to be adrift in a lifeboat
without food or oars in the ocean's wide waste.
In a few minutes the large, almost pelt-like
flakes were falling thick and fast. Hastily I put
the two kodaks and the treasured films into
water-tight cases, pocketed my only food, a
handful of raisins, adjusted hatchet and barome-
ter, then started across the strange, snowy moun-
tains through the night.

The nearest and apparently the speediest
way out lay across the mountains to Ridgway;
the first half of this fifteen miles was through a
rough section that was new to me. After the
lapse of several years this night expedition ap-
pears a serious one, though at the time it gave me
no concern that I recall. How I ever managed
to go through that black, storm-filled night
without breaking my neck amid the innumerable
opportunities for accident, is a thing that I can-
not explain.

I descended a steep, rugged slope for a thou-
sand feet or more with my eyes useless in the
eager falling of mingled rain and snow. Nothing
could be seen, but despite slow, careful going

226

toil® a

a dead limb occasionally prodded me. With the
deliberation of a blind man I descended the long,
steep, broken, slippery slope, into the bottom
of a canon. Now and then I came out upon a
jumping-off place; here I felt before and below
with a slender staff for a place to descend ; occa-
sionally no bottom could be found, and upon
this report I would climb back a short distance
and search out a way.

Activity kept me warm, although the cold
rain drenched me and the slipperiness of slopes
and ledges never allowed me to forget the law of
falling bodies. At last a roaring torrent told me
that I was at the bottom of a slope. Apparently
I had come down by the very place where the
stream contracted and dashed into a deep, nar-
row box canon. Not being able to go down
stream or make a crossing at this point, I turned
and went up the stream for half a mile or so,
where I crossed the swift, roaring water in inky
darkness on a fallen Douglas spruce, — for such
was the arrangement of its limbs and the feel of
the wood in its barkless trunk, that these told me
it was a spruce, though I could see nothing.

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gfttt of

During this night journey I put myself both in
feeling and in fact in a blind man's place, — the
best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation
and keenness of touch.

The next hour after crossing the stream I spent
in climbing and descending a low wooded ridge
with smooth surface and gentle slopes. Then
there was one more river, the Little Cimar-
ron, to cross. An Engelmann spruce, with scaly,
flaky bark, that had stood perfectly perpendicu-
lar for a century or two but had recently been
hurled to the horizontal, provided a long, vibrat-
ing bridge for me to cross on. Once across, I
started to climb the most unstable mountain
that I had ever trodden.

Mt. Coxcomb, up which I climbed, is not one
of the "eternal hills" but a crumbling, dissolv-
ing, tumbling, transient mountain. Every hard
rain dissolves, erodes, and uncovers the sides of
this mountain as if it were composed of sugar,
paste, and stones. It is made up of a confused
mingling of parts and masses of soluble and
flinty materials. Here change and erosion run
riot after every rain. There is a great falling to

228

NEAR THE TOP OF MT. COXCOMB

QWone

pieces; gravity, the insatiable, is temporarily
satisfied, and the gulches feast on earthy mate-
rials, while the river-channel is glutted with
crushed cliffs, acres of earth, and the debris of
ruined forests. Here and there these are flung
together in fierce confusion.

On this bit of the wild world's stage are the-
atrical lightning changes of scenes, — changes
that on most mountains would require ten thou-
sand years or more. It is a place of strange and
fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing
like the sky. In wreathed clouds a great cliff is
born, stands out bold and new in the sunshine
and the blue. The Storm King comes, the thun-
ders echo among crags and canons, the broken
clouds clear away, and the beautiful bow bends
above a ruined cliff.

Here and there strange, immature monsters
are struggling to rise, — to free themselves from
the earth. Occasionally a crag is brought forth
full grown during one operation of gravity, ero-
sion, and storm, and left upon a foundation that
would raise corn but never sustain cliff or crag.
Scattered monoliths at times indulge in a con-

229

of

test of leaning the farthest from the perpendic-
ular without falling. The potato-patch found-
ations of these in time give way, then gravity
drags them head foremost, or in broken install-
ments, down the slope.

Among the forested slopes that I traversed
there were rock-slides, earthy glaciers, and leaf-
less gulches with crumbling walls. Some of these
gulches extended from bottom to top of the
mountain, while others were digging their way.
An occasional one had a temporary ending
against the bottom of a kingly cliff, whose short
reign was about to end as its igneous throne was
disorganized and decomposed. The storm and
darkness continued as I climbed the mountain
of short-lived scenes, — a mountain so eagerly
moving from its place in the sky to a bed in the
sea. The saturation had softened and lubricated
the surface; these sedimentary slopes had been
made restless by the rain.

I endeavored to follow up one of the ridges,
but it was narrow and all the pulpy places very
slippery. Fearing to tumble off into the dark
unknown, I climbed down into a gully and up

230

($£one

fian&sftfce

this made my way toward the top. All my
mountain experience told me to stay on the
ridge and not travel in darkness the way in
which gravity flings all his spoils.

The clouds were low, and I climbed well up
into them. The temperature was cooler, and
snow was whitening the earth. When I was well
up to the silver lining of the clouds, a gust of
wind momentarily rent them, and I stood amid
snow-covered statuary, — leaning monoliths
and shattered minarets all weird and enchant-
ing in the moonlight. A few seconds later I was
in darkness and snowstorm again.

The gulch steepened and apparently grew
shallower. Occasionally a mass of mud or a few
small stones rolled from the sides of the gulch
to my feet and told that saturation was at work
dissolving and loosening anchorages and found-
ations. It was time to get out of the gulch. While
I was making haste to do so, there came a sud-
den tremor instantly followed by an awful
crash and roar. Then r-r-rip! z-zi-ip! s-w-w-r-r-ip!
A bombardment of flying, bounding, plunging
rocks from an overturned cliff above was raking

231

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my gulch. Nothing could be seen, but several
slaps in the face from dashes of snow which
these rock missiles disturbed and displaced was
expressively comprehensive.

As this brief bombardment ceased, the omi-
nous sounds from above echoing among the
cliffs shouted warning of an advancing land-
slide. This gave a little zest to my efforts to
get out of the gulch; too much perhaps, for
my scramble ended in a slip and a tumble back
to the bottom. In the second attempt a long,
uncovered tree-root reached down to me in the
darkness, and with the aid of this I climbed
out of the way of the avalanche. None too
soon, however. With quarreling and subdued
grinding sounds the rushing flood of landslide
material went past, followed by an offensive
smell.

While I paused listening to the monster groan
and grind his way downward, the cliffs fired a
few more rock missiles in my direction. One
struck a crag beside me. The explosive contact
gave forth a blast of sputtering sparks and an
offensive, rotten-egg smell. A flying fragment

232

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of this shattered missile struck my left instep,
breaking one of the small bones.

Fortunately my foot was resting in the mud
when struck. When consciousness came back
to me I was lying in the mud and snow, drenched,
mud-bespattered, and cold. The rain and snow
had almost ceased to fall, and while I was band-
aging my foot the pale light of day began to
show feebly through heavy clouds. If that lum-
inous place is in the eastern horizon, then I have
lost my sense of direction. An appeal to the
compass brought no consolation, for it said
laconically, "Yes, you are turned around now,
even though you never were before." The accu-
racy of the compass was at once doubted, —
but its decree was followed.

Slowly, painfully, the slippery, snowy steeps
were scaled beneath a low, gloomy sky. My
plan was to cross the north shoulder of Mt. Cox-
comb and then down slope and gulch descend
to the deeply filled alluvium Uncompahgre val-
ley and the railroad village of Ridgway. With
the summit only a few feet above, the wall be-
came so steep and the hold so insecure that it

233

gpttt of $e (Rocgtes

appeared best to turn back lest I be precipitated
from the cliff. The small, hard points in the
sedimentary wall had been loosened in their set-
tings by the rain. Climbing this wall with two
good feet in a dry time would be adventurous
pastime. While I was flattened against the wall,
descending with greatest caution, there came
a roaring crash together with a trembling of
earth and air. An enormous section of the oppo-
site side of the mass that I was on had fallen
away, and the oscillations of the cliff nearly
hurled me to the rock wreckage at the bottom
of the wall.

On safe footing at last, I followed along the
bottom of the summit cliff and encountered the
place from which the rocks had been hurled at
me in the darkness and where a cliff had fallen
to start the slide. It was evident that the storm
waters had wrecked the foundation of the cliff.
Ridges and gullies of the Bad Land's type fluted
the slope and prevented my traveling along
close to the summit at right angles to the slope.
There appeared no course for me but to descend
to the Little Cimarron River. Hours were re-

234

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quired for less than two miles of painful though
intensely interesting travel.

It was a day of landslides, — just as there
are, in the heights, days of snow slides. This
excessive saturation after months of drought
left cohesion and adhesion but slight hold on
these strange sedimentary mixtures. The sur-
face tore loose and crawled ; cliffs tumbled. After
counting the crash and echoing roar of forty-
three fallen cliffs, I ceased counting and gave
more attention to other demonstrations.

On the steeps, numerous fleshy areas crawled,
slipped, and crept. The front of a long one had
brought up against a rock ledge while the blind
rear of the mass pressed powerfully forward,
crumpling, folding, and piling the front part
against the ledge. At one place an enormous
rocky buttress had tumbled over. Below, the
largest piece of this, a wreck in a mass of mud,
floated slowly down the slope in a shallow, mod-
erately tilted gulch. This buttress had been
something of an impounding, retaining wall
against which loosened, down-drifting materials
had accumulated into a terrace. The terrace

235

of

had long been adorned with a cluster of tall
spruces whose presence produced vegetable
mould and improved soil conditions.

On the falling-away of this buttress the tree-
plumed terrace commenced to sag and settle.
The soil-covered debris was well roped together
and reinforced with tree-roots. When I came
along, these tall trees, so long bravely erect,
were leaning, drooping forward. Their entire
foundation had slipped several feet and was
steadily crowding out over the pit from which
gravity had dragged the buttress. The trees,
with their roots wedged in crevices, were an-
chored to bed-rock and clinging on for dear life.
Now and then a low, thudding, earth-muffled
sound told of strained or ruptured roots. The
foundation steadily gave way while the trees
drooped dangerously forward. United on the
heights, the brave trees had struggled through
the seasons, and united they would go down
together. They had fixed and fertilized the spoil
from the slopes above. This spoil had been held
and made to produce, and prevented from going
down to clog the channel of the Little Cimarron

236

or making with the waters the long, sifting, shift-
ing journey, joining at last the lifeless soil de-
posits in the delta tongues of the Colorado. But
the steadfast trees, with all their power to check
erosion and create soil, were to fall before the
overwhelming elements.

Farther and farther the unsupported and
water-lubricated foundation slipped; more and
more the trees leaned and drooped forward ; until
gravity tore all loose and plunged the trees head
foremost into the pit, crushing down upon tum-
bled tons of rocks, soil, matted mud, and [roots,
— all the wreckage of the time-formed, tree-
crowned terrace.

The slide that narrowly missed me in the
night was a monster one and grew in magnitude
as it brutally rooted and gouged its way down-
ward. After descending more than half a mile it
struck an enormous dome rock, which stayed
a small part of it, while the remainder, deflected,
made an awesome plunge and engulfed a small,
circular grove in an easily sloping grassy plot.
Most of the towering spruces were thrown down
and deeply buried beneath mud, smashed cliffs,

237

of

and the mangled forms of trees from up the
slope. A few trees on the margin of the grove
were left standing, but they suffered from cruel
bruises and badly torn bark.

On the farther side of the grove a number of
the trees were bent forward but only partly
buried ; with heads and shoulders out, they were
struggling to extricate themselves, and now and
then one shook an arm free from the debris.
Over the place where a few hours before tall tree
plumes had stood in the sky, a fierce confusion
of slide wreckage settled and tumbled to pieces
while the buried and half-buried trees whispered,
murmured, and sighed as they struggled to rise.

Out with nature trees are supposed to stand
in one place all their lives, but one of the most
interesting movements of this elemental day
was the transplanting, by gravity, of an entire
clump of tall old firs. Water released these trees,
and they appeared to enjoy being dragged by
gravity to a new home and setting. I was rest-
ing my foot and watching a gigantic monolithic
stone settle and come down gracefully, when a
tree-clump on the skyline just beyond appeared

238

(gfone u>tt0 a

to move forward several yards, then make a
stop. While I was trying to decide whether they
really had moved or not, they moved forward
again with all their earthly claims, a few square
rods of surface together with their foundations
beneath. With all tops merrily erect they slid
forward, swerving right and left along the line
of least resistance, and finally came to rest in a
small unclaimed flat in which no doubt they
grew up with the country.

The many-sized slides of that weird day
showed a change of position varying from a few
feet to a mile. Several ploughed out into the Lit-
tle Cimarron and piled its channel more than full
of spoils from the slopes. Through this the river
fought its way, and from it the waters flowed
richly laden with earthy matter.

The great changes which took place on Mt.
Coxcomb in a few hours were more marked and
extensive than the alterations in most mountains
since the Sphinx began to watch the shifting,
changing sands by the Nile.

By mid-afternoon the air grew colder and the
snow commenced to deepen upon the earth.

239

of

Bedraggled and limping, I made slow progress
down the slope. Just at twilight a mother bear
and her two cubs met me. They probably were
climbing up to winter-quarters. I stood still to
let them pass. When a few yards distant the bear
rose up and looked at me with a combination of
curiosity, astonishment, and perhaps contempt.
With Woof! Woof! more in a tone of disgust than
of fear or anger, she rushed off, followed by the
cubs, and the three disappeared in the darken-
ing, snow-filling forest aisles.

The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but
on and on I went. Years of training had given
me great physical endurance, and this, along
with a peculiar mental attitude that Nature had
developed in me from being alone in her wild
places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her
and an enthusiastic though unconscious confi-
dence in the ultimate success of whatever I at-
tempted to accomplish out of doors.

About two o'clock in the morning I at last
descended to the river. The fresh debris on my
side of the stream so hampered traveling that it
became necessary to cross. Not finding any

240

(gfon* )m$ a

fallen-tree bridge, I started to wade across in a
wide place that I supposed to be shallow. Mid-
way and hip-deep in the swift water, I struck
the injured foot against a boulder, momentarily
flinching, and the current swirled me off my feet.
After much struggling and battling with the tur-
bulent waters, I succeeded in reaching the oppo-
site shore. This immersion did not make me
any wetter than I was or than I had been for
hours, but the water chilled me; so I hurried
forward as rapidly as possible to warm up.

After a few steps the injured leg suddenly
became helpless, and I tumbled down in the
snow. Unable to revive the leg promptly and
being very cold from my icy-water experience,
I endeavored to start a fire. Everything was
soaked and snow-covered ; the snow was falling
and the trees dripping water; I groped about on
my hands and one knee, dragging the paralyzed
leg ; all these disadvantages, along with chatter-
ing teeth and numb fingers, made my fire-start-
ing attempts a series of failures.

That night of raw, primitive life is worse in
retrospect than was the real one. Still I was

241

of

deadly in earnest at the time. Twenty-four
hours of alertness and activity in the wilds,
swimming and wading a torrent of ice-water at
two o'clock in the morning, tumbling out into
the wet, snowy wilds miles from food and shel-
ter, a crushed foot and a helpless leg, the pene-
trating, clinging cold, and no fire, is going back
to nature about ten thousand years farther than
it is desirable to go. But I was not discouraged
even for a moment, and it did not occur to me
to complain, though, as I look back now, the
theory of non-resistance appears to have been
carried a trifle too far. At last the fire blazed.
After two hours beside it I went down the river
greatly improved. The snow was about fifteen
inches deep.

Shortly before daylight I felt that I was close
to a trail I had traveled, one that came to Ci-
marron near by Court-House Rock. Recrossing
the river on a fallen log, I lay down to sleep be-
neath a shelving rock with a roaring fire before
me, sleeping soundly and deeply until the crash
of an overturned cliff awakened me. Jumping
to my feet, I found the storm over with the

242

COURT-HOUSE ROCK

QWone urif 0 a

clouds broken and drifting back and forth in two
strata as though undecided whether to go or
remain. Above a low, lazy cloud, I caught a
glimpse of Turret-Top, and turning, beheld
Court-House Rock.

The foot gave no pain as I limped along the
trail I had so often followed. Now and then I
turned to take a photograph. The stars and the
lights in the village were just appearing when I
limped into the surgeon's office in Ridgway.

of

<mb

(fltafo* of £cen*vg

CURING my first boyish exploring trip in the
Rocky Mountains I was impressed with
the stupendous changes which the upper slope
of these mountains had undergone. In places
were immense embankments and wild deltas
of debris that plainly had come from else-
where. In other places the rough edges of the
canons and ridges had been trimmed and pol-
ished; their cliffs and projections were gone and
their surfaces had been swept clean of all loose
material. Later, I tried vainly to account for
some canon walls being trimmed and polished
at the bottom while their upper parts were
jagged. In most canons the height of the pol-
ishings above the bottom was equal on both
walls, with the upper edge of the polish even or
level for the entire length of the canon. In one
canon, in both floor and walls, were deep lateral
scratches in the rocks.

247

of $*

One day I found some polished boulders
perched like driftwood on the top of a polished
rock dome ; they were porphyry, while the dome
was flawless granite. They plainly had come
from somewhere else. How they managed to be
where they were was too much for me. Mount-
ain floods were terrible but not wild enough in
their fiercest rushes to do this. Upon a mount-
ainside across a gorge about two miles distant,
and a thousand feet above the perched boulders
on the dome, I found a porphyry outcrop; but
this situation only added to my confusion. I
did not then know of the glacial period, or the
actions of glaciers. It was a delightful revela-
tion when John Muir told me of these wonders.

Much of the earth's surface, together with
most mountain-ranges, have gone through a
glacial period or periods. There is extensive and
varied evidence that the greater portion of the
earth has been carved and extensively changed
by the Ice King. Substantial works, blurred
and broken records, and impressive ruins in
wide array over the earth show long and active
possession by the Ice King, as eloquently as the

248

(Wlafiet of |kmerj> anb

monumental ruins in the Seven Hills tell of their
intense association with man.

Both the northern and the southern hemi-
spheres have had their heavy, slow-going floods
of ice that appear to have swept from the polar
world far toward the equator. During the great
glacial period, which may have lasted for ages,
a mountainous flood of ice overspread America
from the north and extended far down the Mis-
sissippi Valley. This ice may have been a mile
or more in depth. It utterly changed the topo-
graphy and made a new earth. Lakes were filled
and new ones made. New landscapes were
formed : mountains were rubbed down to plains,
morainal hills were built upon plains, and
streams were moved bodily.

It is probable that during the last ice age
the location and course of both the Ohio and
the Missouri Rivers were changed. Originally the
Missouri flowed east and north, probably emp-
tying into a lake that had possession of the
Lake Superior territory. The Ice King delib-
erately shoved this river hundreds of miles to-
ward the south. The Ohio probably had a sim-

249

gpttt of tfy

ilar experience. These rivers appear to mark
the "Farthest South" of the ice; their position
probably was determined by the ice. Had a line
been traced on the map along the ragged edge
and front of the glacier at its maximum exten-
sion, this line would almost answer for the pre-
sent position of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers.

The most suggestive and revealing words con-
cerning glaciers that I have ever read are these
of John Muir in "The Mountains of California":
"When we bear in mind that all the Sierra for-
ests are young, growing upon moraine soil re-
cently deposited, and that the flank of the range
itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, re-
cently sculptured, and brought to light of day
from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial win-
ter, then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear
and broad harmonies take their places."

"A glacier," says Judge Junius Henderson,
in the best definition that I have heard, "is a
body of ice originating in an area where the
annual accumulation of snow exceeds the dissi-
pation, and moving downward and outward to
an area where dissipation exceeds accumulation."

250

THE HALLETT GLACIER

of

A glacier may move forward only a few feet
in a year or it may move several feet in a day.
It may be only a few hundred feet in length, or,
as during the Ice Age, have an area of thousands
of square miles. The Arapahoe Glacier moves
slowly, as do all small glaciers and some large
ones. One year's measured movement was 27.7
feet near the centre and 11.15 near the edge.
This, too, is about the average for one year, and
also an approximate movement for most small
mountain glaciers. The centre of the glacier,
meeting less resistance than the edges, com-
monly flows much more rapidly. The enormous
Alaskan glaciers have a much more rapid flow,
many moving forward five or more feet a
day.

A glacier is the greatest of eroding agents. It
wears away the surface over which it flows. It
grinds mountains to dust, transports soil and
boulders, scoops out lake-basins, gives flowing
lines to landscapes. Beyond comprehension we
are indebted to them for scenery and soil.

Glaciers, or ice rivers, make vast changes.
Those in the Rocky Mountains overthrew cliffs,

251

of

pinnacles, and rocky headlands. These in part
were crushed and in part they became embedded
in the front, bottom, and sides of the ice. This
rock-set front tore into the sides and bottom of
its channel — after it had made a channel ! —
with a terrible, rasping, crushing, and grinding
effect, forced irresistibly forward by a pressure
of untold millions of tons. Glaciers, large and
small, the world over, have like characteristics
and influences. To know one glacier will enable
one to enjoy glaciers everywhere and to appre-
ciate the stupendous influence they have had
upon the surface of the earth.

They have planed down the surface and even
reduced mountain-ridges to turtle outlines. In
places the nose of the glacier was thrust with
such enormous pressure against a mountainside
that the ice was forced up the slope which it
flowed across and then descended on the oppo-
site side. Sustained by constant and measure-
less pressure, years of fearful and incessant ap-
plication of this weighty, flowing, planing,
ploughing sandpaper wore the mountain down.
In time, too, the small ragged-edged, V-shaped

252

of

ravines became widened, deepened, and ex-
tended into enormous U-shaped glaciated gorges.

Glaciers have gouged or scooped many basins
in the solid rock. These commonly are made at
the bottom of a deep slope where the descending
ice bore heavily on the lever or against a reverse
incline. The size of the basin thus made is de-
termined by the size, width, and weight of the
glacier and by other factors. In the Rocky
Mountains these excavations vary in size from
a few acres to a few thousand. They became
lake-basins on the disappearance of the ice.

More than a thousand lakes of glacial origin
dot the upper portions of the Rocky Mountains
of Colorado. Most of these are above the alti-
tude of nine thousand feet, and the largest,
Grand Lake, is three miles in length. Landslides
and silt have filled many of the old glacier lake
basins, and these, overgrown with grass and
sedge, are called glacier meadows.

Vast was the quantity of material picked up
and transported by these glaciers. Mountains
were moved piecemeal, and ground to boulders,
pebbles, and rock-flour in the moving. In addi-

253

of

tion to the material which the glacier gathered
up and excavated, it also carried the wreckage
brought down by landslides and the eroded
matter poured upon it by streams from the
heights. Most of the material which falls upon
the top of the upper end of the glacier ulti-
mately works its way to the bottom, where,
with the other gathered material, it is pressed
against the bottom and sides and used as a cut-
ting or grinding tool until worn to a powder or
pebbles.

Train-loads of debris often accumulate upon
the top of the glacier. On the lower course this
often is a hundred feet or more above the sur-
face, and as the glacier descends and shrivels,
enormous quantities of this rocky debris fall off
the sides and, in places, form enormous embank-
ments; these often closely parallel long stretches
of the glacier like river levees.

The large remainder of the material is carried
to the end of the glacier, where the melting ice
unloads and releases it. This accumulation,
which corresponds to the delta of a river, is the
terminal moraine. For years the bulk of the ice

254

of

may melt away at about the same place; this
accumulates an enormous amount of debris; an
advance of the ice may plough through this and
repile it, or the retreat of the ice or a changed
direction of its flow may pile the debris else-
where and over wide areas. Many of these ter-
minal moraines are an array of broken embank-
ments, small basin-like holes and smooth, level
spaces. The debris of these moraines embraces
rock-flour, gravel, pebbles, a few angular rock-
masses, and enormous quantities of many-sized
boulders, — rocks rounded by the grind of the
glacial mill.

Strange freight, of unknown age, these creep-
ing ice rivers bring down. One season the frozen
carcass of a mountain sheep was taken from the
ice at the end of the Arapahoe Glacier. If this
sheep fell into a crevasse at the upper end of the
glacier, its carcass probably had been in the ice
for more than a century. Human victims, too,
have been strangely handled by glaciers. It
appears that in 1820 Dr. Hamil and a party
of climbers were struck by a snowslide on the
slope of Mont Blanc. One escaped with his life,

255

of 10*

while the others were swept down into a cre-
vasse and buried so deeply in the snow and
ice that their bodies could not be recovered.
Scientists said that at the rate the glacier was
moving it would give up its dead after forty
years. Far down the mountain forty-one years
afterward, the ice gave up its victims. A writer
has founded on this incident an interesting
story, in which the bodies are recovered in an
excellent state of preservation, and an old wo-
man with sunken cheeks and gray hair clasps
the youthful body of her lover of long ago, the
guide.

Where morainal debris covers thousands of
acres, it is probable that valuable mineral veins
were in some cases covered, prospecting pre-
vented, and mineral wealth lost; but on the
other hand, the erosion done by the glacier, often
cutting down several hundred feet, has in many
cases uncovered leads which otherwise prob-
ably would have been left buried beyond search.
Then, too, millions of dollars of placer gold have
been washed from moraines.

In addition to the work of making and giving
256

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anb

the mountains flowing lines of beauty, the gla-
ciers added inconceivably to the richness of the
earth's resources by creating vast estates of soil.
It is probable that glaciers have supplied one
half of the productive areas of the earth with
soil; the mills of the glaciers have ground as
much rock-flour — soil — for the earth as wind,
frost, heat, and rain, — all the weathering forces.
This flour and other coarser glacial grindings
were quickly changed by the chemistry of Na-
ture into plant-food, — the staff of life for for-
ests and flowers.

Glaciers have not only ground the soil but in
many places have carried this and spread it out
hundreds of miles from the place where the
original raw rocks were obtained. Wind and
water have done an enormous amount of work
sorting out the soil in moraines and, leaving
the boulders behind, this soil was scattered and
sifted far and wide to feed the hungry plant-life.

At last the Glacial Winter ended, and each
year more snow melted and evaporated than
fell. Snow-line retreated up the slopes and fin-
ally became broken, even in the heights. To-

257

gpttt of ffo

day, in the Rockies, there are only a dozen or so
small glaciers, mere fragments of the once great
ice cap which originally covered deeply all the
higher places and slopes, 'and extended unbroken
for hundreds of miles, pierced strangely with a
few sharp peaks.

The small remaining glaciers in the Rocky
Mountains lie in sheltered basins or cirques in
the summits and mostly above the altitude of
thirteen thousand feet., These are built and sup-
plied by the winds which carry and sweep snow
to them from off thousands of acres of treeless,
barren summits. The present climate of these
mountains is very different from what it was
ages ago. Then for a time the annual snowfall
was extremely heavy. Each year the sun and
the wind removed only a part of the snow which
fell during the year. This icy remainder was
added to the left-over of preceding years until
the accumulation was of vast depth and weight.

On the summit slopes this snow appears to
have been from a few hundred to a few thousand
feet deep. Softened from the saturation of melt-
ing and compressed from its own weight, it be-

258

(Nla&r of ^ornery anb

came a stratum of ice. This overlay the sum-
mit of the main ranges, and was pierced by only
a few of the higher, sharper peaks which were
sufficiently steep to be stripped of snow by
snowslides and the wind.

The weight of this superimposed icy stratum
was immense; it was greater than the bottom
layers could support. Ice is plastic — rubbery
— if sufficient pressure or weight be applied.
Under the enormous pressure the bottom layers
started to crawl or flow from beneath like
squeezed dough. This forced mass moved out-
ward and downward in the direction of the least
resistance, — down the slope. Thus a glacier
is conceived and born.

Numbers of these glaciers — immense ser-
pents and tongues of ice — extended down the
slopes, in places miles beyond the line of per-
petual snow. Some of these were miles in length,
a thousand or more feet wide, and hundreds of
feet deep, and they forced and crushed their
way irresistibly. It is probable they had a sus-
tained, continuous flow for centuries.

A glacier is one of the natural wonders of the
259

of

world and well might every one pay a visit to
one of these great earth-sculpturers. The time
to visit a glacier is during late summer, when the
snows of the preceding winter are most com-
pletely removed from the surface. With the
snows removed, the beauty of the ice and its
almost stratified make-up are revealed. The
snow, too, conceals the yawning bergschlunds
and the dangerous, splendid crevasses. A visit
to one of these ponderous, patient, and effect-
ive monsters is not without danger; concealed
crevasses, or thinly covered icy caverns, or
recently deposited and insecurely placed boul-
ders on the moraines are potent dangers that
require vigilance to avoid. However, the care-
ful explorer will find one of these places far safer
than the city's chaotic and crowded street.

For the study of old glacier records few places
can equal the Estes Park district in Colorado.
The Arapahoe, on Arapahoe Peak, Colorado, is
an excellent glacier to visit. It is characteristic
and is easy of access. It is close to civilization, —
within a few miles of a railroad, — is comprehen-
sively situated, and is amid some of the grandest

260

(Tfta&r of £kenerj> anb

scenery in the Rocky Mountains. It has been
mapped and studied, and its rate of movement
and many other things concerning it are accu-
rately known. It is the abstract and brief chron-
icle of the Ice Age, a key to all the glacier ways
and secrets.

In the Arapahoe Glacier one may see the
cirque in which the snow is deposited or drifted
by the wind ; and the bergschlund-yawn —
crack of separation — made by glacier ice where
it moves away from the neve or snowy ice above.
In walking over the ice in summer one may see
or descend into the crevasses. These deep, wide
cracks, miniature canons, are caused by the ice
flowing over inequalities in the surface. At the
end of this glacier one may see the terminal
moraine, — a raw, muddy pile of powdered,
crushed, and rounded rocks. Farther along
down the slope one may see the lakes that were
made, the rocks that were polished, and the
lateral moraine deposited by the glacier in its
bigger days, — times when the Ice King almost
conquered the earth.

In the Rocky Mountains the soil and mo-
261

of

rainal debris were transported only a few miles,
while the Wisconsin and Iowa glaciers brought
thousands of acres of rich surfacing, now on the
productive farms of Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa,
from places hundreds of miles to the north in
Canada. In the Rocky Mountains most of the
forests are growing in soil or moraines that were
ground and distributed by glaciers. Thus the
work of the glaciers has made the earth and the
mountains far more useful in addition to giving
them gentler influences, — charming lakes and
flowing landscape lines. It is wonderful that
the mighty worker and earth-shaper, the Ice
King, should have used snowflakes for edge-
tools, millstones, and crushing stamps!

To know the story of the Ice King — to be
able to understand and restore the conditions
that made lakes and headlands, moraines and
fertile fields — will add mightily to the enjoy-
ment of a visit to the Rocky Mountains, the
Alps, the coasts and mountains of Norway and
New England, Alaska's unrivaled glacier realm,
or the extraordinary ice sculpturing in the Yo-
semite National Park.

262

Qtlaftet of £kenerj> anb

Edward Orton, Jr., formerly State Geologist
of Ohio, who spent weeks toiling over and map-
ping the Mills Moraine on the east slope of
Long's Peak, gave a glimpse of what one may
feel and enjoy from nature investigation in his
closing remarks concerning this experience. He
said, "If one adds to the physical pleasures of
mountaineering, the intellectual delight of look-
ing with the seeing eye, of explaining, interpret-
ing, and understanding the gigantic forces
which have wrought these wonders; if by these
studies one's vision may be extended past the
sublime beauties of the present down through
the dim ages of the past until each carved and
bastioned peak tells a romance above words; if
by communion with this greatness, one's soul is
uplifted and attuned into fuller accord with the
great cosmic forces of which we are the higher
manifestation, then mountaineering becomes
not a pastime but an inspiration."

(gbtng ©ap at

o spend a day in the rain at the source of
a stream was an experience I had long
desired, for the behavior of the waters in
collecting and hurrying down slopes would
doubtless show some of Nature's interesting
ways. On the Rockies no spot seemed quite so
promising as the watershed on which the St.
Vrain made its start to the sea. This had steep
and moderate slopes, rock ledges, and deep
soil; and about one half of its five thousand
acres was covered with primeval forest, while
the remainder had been burned almost to bar-
renness by a fierce forest fire. Here were varied
and contrasting conditions to give many moods
to the waters, and all this display could easily
be seen during one active day.

June was the month chosen, since in the re-
gion of the St. Vrain that is the rainiest part of
the year. After thoroughly exploring the ground

267

of

I concluded to go down the river a few miles
and make headquarters in a new sawmill. There
I spent delightful days in gathering information
concerning tree-growth and in making bio-
graphical studies of several veteran logs, as
the saw ripped open and revealed their life-
scrolls.

One morning I was awakened by the pelting
and thumping of large, widely scattered rain-
drops on the roof of the mill. Tree stories were
forgotten, and I rushed outdoors. The sky was
filled with the structureless gloom of storm-
cloud, and the heavy, calm air suggested rain.
"We'll get a wetting such as you read of, to-
day!" declared the sawmill foreman, as I made
haste to start for the wilds.

I plunged into the woods and went eagerly
up the dim, steep mountain trail which kept
close company with the river St. Vrain. Any
doubts concerning the strength of the storm
were quickly washed away. My dry-weather
clothes were swiftly soaked, but with notebook
safe under my hat, I hastened to gain the
"forks" as soon as possible, enjoying the gen-

268

eral downpour and the softened noise that it
made through the woods. I had often been out
in rains on the Rockies, but this one was wet-
ting the earth with less effort than any I had
ever experienced. For half an hour no air
stirred; then, while crossing a small irregular
opening in the woods, I was caught in a storm-
centre of wrangling winds and waters, and now
and then their weight would almost knock me
over, until, like a sapling, I bowed, streaming,
in the storm. The air was full of "water-dust,"
and, once across the open, I made haste to hug
a tree, hoping to find a breath of air that was
not saturated to strangulation.

Neither bird nor beast had been seen, nor did
I expect to come upon any, unless by chance
my movements drove one from its refuge; but
while I sat on a sodden log, reveling in elemental
moods and sounds, a water-ouzel came flying
along. He alighted on a boulder which the on-
sweeping stream at my feet seemed determined
to drown or dislodge, and, making his usual
courtesies, he began to sing. His melody is
penetrating; but so sustained was the combined

269

of $*

roar of the stream and the storm that there came
to me only a few notes of his energetic nesting-
time song. His expressive attitudes and gestures
were so harmoniously united with these, how-
ever, that I could not help feeling that he was
singing with all his might/ to the water, the woods,
and me.

Keeping close to the stream, I continued my
climb. My ear now caught the feeble note of a
robin, who was making discouraged and discon-
solate efforts at song, and it seemed to issue from
a throat clogged with wet cotton. Plainly the
world was not beautiful to him, and the attempt
at music was made to kill time or cheer himself
up.

The robin and the ouzel, — how I love them
both, and yet how utterly unlike they are! The
former usually chooses so poor a building-site,
anchors its nest so carelessly, or builds so clum-
sily, that the precious contents are often spilled
or the nest discovered by some enemy. His
mental make-up is such that he is prone to pre-
dict the worst possible outcome of any new
situation. The ouzel, on the other hand, is sweet

270

Ql (Raing

and serene. He builds his nest upon a rock and
tucks it where search and sharp eyes may not
find it. He appears indifferent to the comings
and goings of beast or man, enjoys all weathers,
seems entranced with life, and may sing every
day of the year.

Up in the lower margin of the Engelmann
spruce forest the wind now ceased and the
clouds began to conserve their waters. The ter-
ritory which I was about to explore is on the
eastern summit slopes of the Rockies, between
the altitudes of ninety-five hundred and twelve
thousand feet. Most of these slopes were steep,
and much of the soil had a basis of disintegrated
granite. The forested and the treeless slopes had
approximately equal areas, and were much alike
in regard to soil, inclination, and altitude, while
the verdure of both areas before the forest fire
had been almost identical. The St. Vrain is
formed by two branches flowing northeasterly
and southeasterly, the former draining the tree-
less area and the latter the forested one. Be-
low the junction, the united.waters sweep away
through the woods, but at it, and a short dis-

271

of

tance above, the fire had destroyed every living
thing.

At the forks I found many things of interest.
The branch with dark waters from the barren
slopes was already swollen to many times its
normal volume and was thick with sediment
from the fire-scarred region. The stream with
white waters from the forest had risen just a
trifle, and there was only a slight stain visible.
These noticeable changes were produced by an
hour of rain. I dipped several canfuls from the
deforested drainage fork, and after each had
stood half a minute the water was poured off.
The average quantity of sediment remaining
was one fifth of a canful, while the white water
from the forested slope deposited only a thin
layer on the bottom of the can. It was evident
that the forest was absorbing and delaying the
water clinging to its soil and sediment. In fact,
both streams carried so much suggestive and
alluring news concerning storm effects on the
slopes above that I determined to hasten on in
order to climb over and watch them while they
were dashed and drenched with rain.

272

®

Planning to return and give more attention
to the waters of both branches at this place, I
started to inspect first the forested sides. The
lower of these slopes were tilted with a twenty
to twenty-five per cent grade, and covered with
a primeval Engelmann spruce forest of tall,
crowding trees, the age of which, as I had learned
during previous visits, was only a few years less
than two centuries.

The forest floor was covered with a thick car-
pet of litter, — one which the years had woven
out of the wreckage of limbs and leaves. This,
though loosely, coarsely woven, has a firm feel-
ing when trodden during dry weather. To-day
however, the forest floor seemed recently up-
holstered. It is absorbent; hence the water had
filled the interstices and given elasticity. I
cleared away some of this litter and found that
it had an average depth of fifteen inches. The
upper third lay loosely, but below it the weave
was more compact and much finer than that on
or near the surface. I judged that two inches of
rain had fallen and had soaked to an average
depth of eight inches. It was interesting to

273

of $* (gobies

watch the water ooze from the broken walls of
this litter, or humus, on the upper sides of the
holes which I dug down into it. One of these
was close to a bare, tilted slope of granite. As
I stood watching the water slowly dripping from
the broken humus and rapidly racing down the
rocks, the thought came to me that, with the
same difference in speed, the run-off from the de-
forested land might be breaking through the
levees at New Orleans before the water from
these woods escaped and got down as far as the
sawmill.

The forest might well proclaim: "As long as I
stand, my countless roots shall clutch and clasp
the soil like eagles' claws and hold it on these
slopes. I shall add to this soil by annually cre-
ating more. I shall heave it with my growing
roots, loosen and cover it with litter rugs, and
maintain a porous, sievelike surface that will
catch the rain and so delay and distribute these
waters that at the foot of my slope perennial
springs will ever flow quietly toward the sea.
Destroy me, and on stormy days the waters
may wash away the unanchored soil as they run

274

unresisted down the slopes, to form a black,
destructive flood in the home-dotted valley
below."

The summit of the forested slope was com-
paratively smooth where I gained it, and con-
tained a few small, ragged-edged, grassy spaces
among its spruces and firs. The wind was blow-
ing and the low clouds pressed, hurried along
the ground, whirled through the grassy places,
and were driven and dragged swiftly among the
trees. I was in the lower margin of cloud, and it
was like a wet, gray night. Nothing could be
seen clearly, even at a few feet, and every
breath I took was like swallowing a saturated
sponge.

These conditions did not last long, for a wind-
surge completely rent the clouds and gave me a
glimpse of the blue, sun-filled sky. I hurried
along the ascending trend of the ridge, hoping
to get above the clouds, but they kept rising,
and after I had traveled half a mile or more I
gave it up. Presently I was impressed with the
height of an exceptionally tall spruce that stood
in the centre of a group of its companions. At

275

gyttt of $e (Koc&es

once I decided to climb it and have a look over
the country and cloud from its swaying top.

When half way up, the swift manner in which
the tree was tracing seismographic lines through
the air awakened my interest in the trunk that
was holding me. Was it sound or not? At the
foot appearances gave it good standing. The
exercising action of ordinary winds probably
toughens the wood fibres of young trees, but
this one was no longer young, and the wind was
high. I held an ear against the trunk and heard a
humming whisper which told only of soundness.
A blow with broad side of my belt axe told me
that it rang true and would stand the storm and
myself.

The sound brought a spectator from a spruce
with broken top that stood almost within touch-
ing distance of me. In this tree was a squirrel
home, and my axe had brought the owner from
his hole. What an angry, comic midget he was,
this Fremont squirrel ! With fierce whiskers and
a rattling, choppy, jerky chatter, he came out
on a dead limb that pointed toward me, and
made a rush as though to annihilate me or to

276

cause me to take hurried flight; but as I held
on he found himself more "up in the air" than I
was. He stopped short, shut off his chatter, and
held himself at close range facing me, a picture
of furious study. This scene occurred in a brief
period that was undisturbed by either wind or
rain. We had a good look at each other. He was
every inch alive, but for a second or two both
his place and expression were fixed. He sat with
eyes full of telling wonder and with face that
showed intense curiosity. A dash of wind and
rain ended our interview, for after his explosive
introduction neither of us had uttered a sound.
He fled into his hole, and from this a moment
later thrust forth his head; but presently he
subsided and withdrew. As I began to climb
again, I heard mufHed expletives from within his
tree that sounded plainly like "Fool, fool, fool!"
The wind had tried hard to dislodge me, but,
seated on the small limbs and astride the slender
top, I held on. The tree shook and danced;
splendidly we charged, circled, looped, and an-
gled; such wild, exhilarating joy I have not else-
where experienced. At all times I could feel in

277

of

the trunk a subdued quiver or vibration, and I
half believe that a tree's greatest joys are the
dances it takes with the winds.

Conditions changed while I rocked there ; the
clouds rose, the wind calmed, and the rain
ceased to fall. Thunder occasionally rumbled,
but I was completely unprepared for the blind-
ing flash and explosive crash of the bolt that
came. The violent concussion, the wave of air
which spread from it like an enormous, invisible
breaker, almost knocked me over. A tall fir that
stood within fifty feet of me was struck, the top
whirled off, and the trunk split in rails to the
ground. I quickly went back to earth, for I was
eager to see the full effect of the lightning's
stroke on that tall, slender evergreen cone.
With one wild, mighty stroke, in a second or
less, the century-old tree tower was wrecked.

Leaving this centenarian, I climbed up the
incline a few hundred feet higher and started
out through the woods to the deforested side.
Though it was the last week in June, it was not
long before I was hampered with snow. Ragged
patches, about six feet deep, covered more than

278

half of the forest floor. This was melting rap-
idly and was "rotten" from the rain, so that I
quickly gave up the difficult task of fording it
and made an abrupt descent until below the
snow-line, where I again headed for the fire-
cleared slopes.

As I was leaving the wood, the storm seemed
to begin all over again. The rain at first fell
steadily, but soon slackened, and the lower
cloud-margins began to drift through the woods.
Just before reaching the barrens I paused to
breathe in a place where the trees were well
spaced, and found myself facing a large one
with deeply furrowed bark and limbs plentifully
covered with short, fat, blunt needles. I was at
first puzzled to know what kind it was, but at
last I recognized it as a Douglas fir or "Oregon
pine." I had never before seen this species at so
great an altitude, — approximately ten thousand
feet. It was a long distance from home, but it
stood so contentedly in the quiet rain that I half
expected to hear it remark, "The traditions
of my family are mostly associated with gray,
growing days of this kind."

279

of

Out on the barren slopes the few widely
scattered, fire-killed, fire-preserved trees with
broken arms stood partly concealed and lonely
in the mists. After zigzagging for a time over the
ruins, I concluded to go at once to the upper-
most side and thence down to the forks. But
the rain was again falling, and the clouds were
so low and heavy that the standing skeleton
trees could not be seen unless one was within
touching distance. There was no wind or light-
ning, only a warm, steady rain. It was, in fact,
so comfortable that I sat down to enjoy it until
a slackening should enable me better to see the
things I most wanted to observe.

There was no snow about, and three weeks
before at the same place I had found only one
small drift which was shielded and half-covered
with shelving rock. The dry Western air is in-
satiable and absorbs enormous quantities of
water, and, as the Indians say, "eats snow."
The snowless area about me was on a similar
slope and at about the same altitude as the
snow-filled woods, so the forest is evidently an
effective check upon the ravenous winds.

28Q

(Rainy

Now the rain almost ceased, and I began to
descend. The upper gentle slopes were com-
pletely covered with a filmy sheet of clear water
which separated into tattered torrents and took
on color. These united and grew in size as they
progressed from the top, and each was separated
from its companions by ridges that widened and
gulches that deepened as down the sides they
went. The waters carried most of the eroded
material away, but here and there, where they
crossed a comparatively level stretch, small de-
posits of gravel were made or sandbars and del-
tas formed.

Occasionally I saw miniature landslides, and,
hoping for a larger one to move, I hurried down-
ward. Knowing that the soil is often deep at the
foot of crags on account of contributions from
above, together with the protection from erosion
which the cliffs gave, I endeavored to find such a
place. While searching, I had occasion to jump
from a lower ledge on a cliff to the deposit below.
The distance to the slope and its real pitch were
minimized by the mists. After shooting through
the air for at least thrice the supposed distance

281

of $t (Rocftto

to the slope, I struck heavily and loosened sev-
eral rods of a landslide. I tumbled off the back
of it, but not before its rock points had made
some impressions.

I sought safety and a place of lookout on a
crag, and picked bits of granite gravel from my
anatomy. Presently I heard a muffled creaking,
and looked up to see a gigantic landslide start-
ing. At first it moved slowly, seemed to hesi-
tate, then slid faster, with its stone-filled front
edge here and there doubling and rolling under ;
finally the entire mass broke into yawning,
ragged fissures as it shot forward and plunged
over a cliff. Waiting until most of the strag-
gling, detached riffraff had followed, I hastened
to examine the place just evacuated. In getting
down I disturbed a ground-hog from his rock
point, and found that he was in the same atti-
tude and position I had seen him holding just
before the slide started, so that the exhibition
had merely caused him to move his eyes a
little.

In the cracks and crevices of the glaciated
rock-slope from which this mass had slid, there

282

(Rainj>

were broken, half -decayed roots and numerous
marks which showed where other roots had held.
It seems probable that if the grove which sus-
tained them had not been destroyed by fire,
they in turn would have anchored and held se-
curely the portion of land which had just slipped
away.

I went over the lower slopes of the burned
area and had a look at numerous new-made
gullies, and near the forks I measured a large
one. It was more than a hundred feet long,
two to four feet wide, and, over the greater
part of its length, more than four feet deep. It
was eroded by the late downpour, and its mis-
placed material, after being deposited by the
waters, would of itself almost call for an in-
crease of the river and harbor appropriations.

Late in the afternoon, with the storm break-
ing, I stopped and watched the largest torrent
from the devastated region pour over a cliff.
This waterfall more nearly represented a lique-
fied landslide, for it was burdened with sedi-
ment and spoils. As it rushed wildly over, it
carried enormous quantities of dirt, gravel, and

283

gyttt of tfy (gocftte*

other earthy wreckage, and some of the stones
were as large as a man's hat. Now and then
there was a slackening, but these momentary
subsidences were followed by explosive out-
pourings with which mingled large pieces of
charred or half-decayed wood, sometimes closely
pursued by a small boulder or some rock-frag-
ments. Surely, these deforested slopes were
heavy contributors to the millions of tons of
undesirable matter that annually went in to
fill the channel and vex the current of the Mis-
sissippi !

These demonstrations brought to mind a re-
mark of an army engineer to the effect that the
"Western forest fires had resulted in filling the
Missouri River channel full of dissolved Rocky
Mountains." The action of the water on this
single burned area suggested that ten thousand
other fireswept heights must be rapidly dimin-
ishing. At all events, it is evident that, unless
this erosion is stopped, boats before long will
hardly find room to enter the Mississippi. It
now became easier to account for the mud-filled
channel of the great river, and also for the in-

284

(Ratnp

numerable bars that display their broad backs
above its shallow, sluggish water. Every smooth
or fluted fill in this great stream tells of a ragged
gulch or a roughened, soilless place somewhere
on a slope at one of its sources.

What a mingling of matter makes up the mud
of the Mississippi, — a soil mixture from twenty
States, the blended richness of ten thousand
slopes! Coming up the "Father of Waters,"
and noting its obstructions of sediment and
sand, its embarrassment of misplaced material,
its dumps and deposits of soil, — monumental
ruins of wasted resources, — one may say,
" Here lies the lineal descendant of Pike's Peak;
here the greater part of an Ohio hill"; or, "A
flood took this from a terraced cotton-field, and
this from a farm in sunny Tennessee." A mud
flat itself might remark, "The thoughtless lum-
berman who caused my downfall is now in Con-
gress urging river improvement"; and the shal-
low waters at the big bend could add, "Our
once deep channel was filled with soil from a
fire-scourged mountain. The minister whose
vacation fire caused this ruin is now a militant

285

of $e (RocSiee

missionary among the heathen of Cherry Blos-
som land."

Wondering if the ouzel's boulder had been
rolled away, or if the deep hole above it, where
the mill men caught trout, had been filled with
wash, I decided to go at once and see, and then
return for a final look about the forks. Yes, the
boulder was missing, apparently buried, for the
hole was earth-filled and the trout gone. So it
was evident that forests were helpful even to the
fish in the streams. I took off my hat to the
trees and started back to the junction. On the
way I resolved to tell the men in the mill that a
tree is the most useful thing that grows, and
that floods may be checked by forests.

The storm was over and the clouds were re-
treating. On a fallen log that lay across the
main stream I lingered and watched the dark
and white waters mingle. The white stream was
slowly rising, while the dark one was rapidly
falling. In a few days the one from the barren
slopes would be hardly alive, while the other
from among the trees would be singing a song
full of strength as it swept on toward the sea.

286

The forest-born stream is the useful and beau-
tiful one. It has a steady flow of clear water,
and fishermen cheerfully come to its green,
mossy banks. The buildings along its course are
safe from floods, and are steadily served with
the power of its reliable flow ; its channel is free
from mud and full of water; it allows the busy
boats of commerce freely to come and go; in
countless ways it serves the activities of man.
It never causes damage, and always enriches
and gladdens the valley through which it flows
on to the sea.

A song roused me from my revery. The sky
was almost clear, and the long, ragged shadows
of the nearest peaks streamed far toward the
east. Not a breath of air stirred. Far away a
hermit thrush was singing, while a thousand
spruces stood and listened. In the midst of this
a solitaire on the top of a pine tree burst out in
marvelous melody.

of A €ttt

of a

HE ripened seeds of trees are sent forth with
many strange devices and at random for
the unoccupied and fertile places of the earth.
There are six hundred kinds of trees in North
America, and each of these equips its seeds in
a peculiar way, that they may take advantage
of wind, gravity, water, birds, or beasts to trans-
port them on their home-seeking journey.

The whole seed-sowing story is a fascinating
one. Blindly, often thick as snow, the seeds go
forth to seek their fortune, — to find a rooting-
place. All are in danger, many are limited as
to time, and the majority are restricted to a sin-
gle effort. A few, however, have a complex and
novel equipment and with this make a long, ro-
mantic, and sometimes an adventurous journey,
colonizing at last some strange land far from the
place of their birth. Commonly, however, this
journey is brief, and usually after one short fall

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or flight the seed comes to rest where it will
sprout or perish. Generally it dies.

One autumn afternoon in southeastern Mis-
souri, seated upon some driftwood on the shal-
low margin of the Mississippi, I discovered a
primitive craft that was carrying a colony of
adventurous tree seeds down the mighty river.
As I watched and listened, the nuts pattered
upon the fallen leaves and the Father of Waters
purled and whispered as he slipped his broad
yellow-gray current almost silently to the sea.
Here and there a few broad-backed sandbars
showed themselves above the surface, as though
preparing to rise up and inquire what had be-
come of the water.

This primitive craft was a log that drifted
low and heavy, end on with the current. It
was going somewhere with a small cargo of tree
seeds. Upon a broken upraised limb of the log
sat a kingfisher. As it drifted with the current,
breezes upon the wooded hill-tops decorated the
autumn air with deliberately falling leaves and
floating winged seeds. The floating log pointed
straight for a sand-bar upon which other logs

292

fait of

and snags were stranded. I determined, when it
should come aground, to see the character of the
cargo that it carried.

Now and then, as I sat there, the heavy round
nuts like merry boys came bounding and rattling
down the hillside, which rose from the water's
edge. Occasionally as a nut dropped from the
tree- top he struck a limb spring board and from
this made a long leap outward for a roll down
the hillside. These nuts were walnut and hick-
ory ; and like most heavy nuts they traveled by
rolling, floating, and squirrel carriage.

One nut dropped upon a low limb, glanced
far outward, and landed upon a log, from which
it bounced outward and went bouncing down
the hillside aplunk into the river. Slowly it
rolled this way and that in the almost currentless
water. At last it made up its mind, and, with
the almost invisible swells, commenced to float
slowly toward the floating log out in the river.
By and by the current caught it, carried it
toward and round the sand-bar, to float away
with the onsweep toward the sea. This nut may
have been carried a few miles or a few hundred

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of

before it went ashore on the bank of the river or
landed upon some romantic island to sprout and
grow. Seeds often are carried by rivers and then
successfully planted, after many stops and ad-
vances, far from the parent tree.

The log hesitated as it approached the sand-
bar, as if cautiously smelling with its big, rooty
nose; but at last it swung round broadside, and
sleepily allowed the current to put it to bed
upon the sand. As a tree, this log had lived on
the banks of the Mississippi or one of its tribu-
taries, in Minnesota. While standing it had for
a time served as a woodpecker home. In one of
the larger excavations made by these birds, I
found some white pine cones and other seeds
from the north that had been stored by bird or
squirrel. A long voyage these seeds had taken;
they may have continued the journey, landing
at last to grow in sunny Tennessee ; or they may
have sunk to the bottom of the river or even
have perished in the salt waters of the Gulf.

In climbing up the steep hillside above the
river, I found many nests of hickory and walnuts
against the upper side of fallen logs. Upon the

294

of a

level hill-top the ground beneath the tree was
thickly covered with fallen nuts; only a few of
these had got a tree's length away from the par-
ent. Occasionally, however, a wind-gust used a
long, slender limb as a sling, and flung the at-
tached nuts afar.

The squirrels were active, laying up a hoard
of nuts for winter. Many a walnut, hickory, or
butternut tree at some distant place may have
grown from an uneaten or forgotten nut which
the squirrels carried away.

The winged seeds are the ones that are most
widely scattered. These are grown by many
kinds of trees. From May until midwinter trees
of this kind are giving their little atoms of life
to the great seed-sower, the wind. Most winged
seeds have one wing for each seed and commonly
each makes but one flight. Generally the lighter
the seed and the higher the wind, the farther the
seed will fly or be blown.

In May the silver maple starts the flight of
winged seeds. This tree has a seed about the size
of a peanut, provided with a one-sided wing as
large as one's thumb. It sails away from the

295

of

tree, settling rapidly toward the earth with
heavy end downward, whirling round and round
as it falls. Red maple seeds ripen in June, but
not until autumn does the hard maple send its
winged ones forth from amid the painted leaves.

The seed of an ash tree is like a dart. In the
different ashes these are of different lengths, but
all have two-edged wings which in calm weather
dart the seed to the snowy earth ; but in a lively
wind they are tumbled and whirled about while
being unceremoniously carried afar ; this they do
not mind, for at the first lull they right them-
selves and drop in good form to the earth.

Cottonwoods and willows send forth their
seeds inclosed in a dainty puff or ball of silky
cotton that is so light that the wind often car-
ries it long distances. With the willow this de-
vice is so airy and dainty that it is easily en-
tangled on twigs or grass and may never reach
the earth. The willow seed, too, is so feeble that
it will often perish inside twenty-four hours if
it does not find a most favorable germinating-
place. This makes but little difference to the
willows, for they do not depend upon seeds for

296

extension but upon the breaking off of roots or
twigs by various agencies; these pieces of roots
or twigs often are carried miles by streams, and
take root perhaps at the first place where they
go around.

The seeds of the sycamore are in balls attached
to the limbs by a slender twiglet. The winter
winds beat and thump these balls against the
limbs, thus causing the seeds to loosen and to
drop a few at a time to the earth. Each seed is a
light little pencil which at one end is equipped
with a whorl of hairs, — a parachute which
delays its fall and thus enables the wind to carry
it away from the parent tree.

The conifers — the pines, firs, and spruces —
have ingeniously devised and developed their
winged seeds for wind distribution. Most of
these seeds are light, and each is attached to a
dainty feather or wing which is used on its com-
mencement day. These wings are as handsome
as insects' wings, dainty enough for fairies ; they
are purple, plain brown, and spotted, and so
balanced that they revolve or whirl, glinting in
the autumn sun as they go on their adventurous

297

of t$t

wind-blown flight to the earth. A high wind
may carry them miles.

With the pines and spruces the cones open one
or a few scales at a time, so that the seeds from
each cone are distributed through many days.
The firs, however, carry cones that when ripe
often collapse in the wind. The entire filling of
seeds are thus dropped at once and fill the air
with flocks of merry, diving, glinting wings.
A heavy seed-crop in a coniferous forest gives a
touch of poetry to the viewless air.

The lodge-pole pine is one of the most patient
and philosophical seed-sowers in the forest. It
is a prolific seed-producer and has a remarkable
hoarding characteristic, — that of keeping its
cones closed and holding on to them for years.
Commonly a forest fire kills trees without con-
suming them. With the lodge-pole the fire fre-
quently burns off the needles, leaving the tree
standing, but it melts the sealing-wax on the
cones. Thus the fire releases these seeds and
they fall upon a freshly fire-cleaned soil, — a
condition for them most favorable.

Although the cherry is without wings or a
298

of a

flying-machine of its own, it is rich enough to
employ the rarest transportation in the world.
With attractively colored and luscious pulp it
hires many beautiful birds to carry it to new
scenes. On the wings of the mockingbird and
the hermit thrush, — what a happy and roman-
tic way in which to seek the promised land !

Many kinds of pulp-covered seeds that are
attractive and delicious when ripe are unpleas-
ant to the taste while green; this protective
measure guards them against being sown before
they are ready or ripe. The instant persimmons
are ripe, the trees are full of opossums which
disseminate the ready-to-grow seeds; but Mr.
'Possum avoids the green and puckery per-
simmons!

The big tree is one of the most fruitful of seed-
bearers. In a single year one of these may pro-
duce some millions of fertile seeds. These ma-
ture in comparatively small cones and, each
seed being light as air, they are sometimes car-
ried by high winds across ridges and ravines
before being dropped to the earth.

The honey locust uses a peculiar device to
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of

secure wind assistance in pushing afar its long,
purplish pods with their heavy beanlike seeds.
This pod is not only flattened but crooked and
slightly twisted. Dropping from the tree in
midwinter, it often lands upon crusted snow.
Here on windy days it becomes a kind of crude
ice-boat and goes skimming along before the
wind; with its flattened, twisted surface it ever
presents a boosting-surface to the breeze.

The ironwood tree launches its seeds each
seated in the prow of a tiny boat, which floats
or careers away upon the invisible ocean of air,
sinking, after a rudderless voyage, to the earth.
The attachment to some seeds is bladder- or
balloon-like; tied helplessly to this, the seed is
cast forth briefly to wander with the wandering
winds.

The linden, or basswood, tree uses a mono-
plane for buoyancy. The basswood attaches or
suspends a number of seeds by slender threads
to the centre of a leaf; in autumn when this
falls it resists gravity for a time and ofttimes
with its clinging cargo alights far from the tree
which sent it forth.

300

of

Burr- or hook-covered seeds may become
attached to the backs of animals and thus be
transported afar. One day in Colorado I dis-
turbed a black bear in some willows more than a
mile from the woods; as he ran over a grassy
ridge three or four pine cones that had been
hooked and entangled in his hair went spinning
off. Seeds sometimes are internationally dis-
tributed by becoming attached by some sticky
substance — pitch or dried mud — to the legs
or feathers of birds. Cottonwood seed often has
a long ride, though generally a fruitless one, by
alighting in the hair of some animal. Sometimes
a cone or nut becomes wedged between the
hoofs of an animal and is carried about for days;
taken miles before it is dropped, it grows a lone
tree far from the nearest grove.

Though the witch-hazel is no longer invested
with eerie charms, it still has its own peculiar
way of doing things. It chooses to bloom alone
in the autumn, just at the time its seeds are ripe
and scattering. Assisted by the frost and the
sun, it scatters its shotlike seeds with a series of
snappy little explosions which fling them twelve

301

of 10* (Roches

to twenty feet from the capsule in which they
ripen.

The mangrove trees of Florida germinate their
seeds upon the tree and then drop little plants
off into the water; here winds and currents may
move them hither and yon as they blindly ex-
plore for a rooting-place.

The cocoanut tree covers its nuts with a kind
of "excelsior" which prevents their breaking
upon the rocks. This also facilitates the floating
and transportation of the nut in the sea. When
the breakers have flung it upon rocks or
broken reefs, here its fibrous covering helps it
cling until the young roots grow and anchor it
securely.

Thus endlessly during all the seasons of the
year the trees are sowing their ripened seed and
sending them forth, variously equipped, blindly
to seek a place in which they may live, perpetu-
ate the species, and extend the forest.

It is well that nature sows seeds like a spend-
thrift. So many are the chances against the
seed, so numerous are the destroying agencies,
so few are the places in reach that are unoc-

302

of

cupied, that perhaps not more than one seed in
a million ever germinates, and hardly one tree
in a thousand that starts to grow ever attains
maturity. Through sheer force of numbers and
continuous seed-scattering, the necessarily ran-
dom methods of nature produce results; and
where opportunity opens, trees promptly ex-
tend their holdings or reclaim a territory from
which they have been driven.

Many times I have wandered through the
coniferous forests in the mountains when the
seeds were ripe and fluttering thick as snow-
flakes to the earth. Visiting ridges, slopes, and
canons, I have watched the pines, firs, and
spruces closing a year's busy, invisible activity
by merrily strewing the air and the earth with
their fruits, — seeding for the centuries to come.
One breathless autumn day I looked up into the
blue sky from the bottom of a canon. The golden
air was as thickly filled with winged seeds as a
perfect night with stars. A light local air-cur-
rent made a milky way across this sky. Myriads
of becalmed and suspended seeds were fixed
stars. Some of the seeds, each with a filmy wing,

303

of $*

hurried through elliptical orbits like comets as
they settled to the earth; while innumerable
others, as they came rotating down, were re-
volving through planetary orbits in this seed-
sown field of space. Now and then a number of
cones on a fir tree collapsed and precipitated
into space a meteoric shower of slow-descending
seeds and a hurried zigzag fall of heavier scales.
Occasionally on a ridge-top a few of the lighter
seeds would come floating upward through an
air-chimney as though carried in an invisible
smoke-column.

One windy day I crossed the mountains when
a gale was driving millions of low-flying seeds
before it. Away they swept down the slope, to
whirl widely and flutter over the gulch where the
wind-current dashed against the uprising moun-
tain beyond. Most of the seeds were flung to the
earth along the way or dropped in the bottom of
the gulch; a few, however, were carried by the
swift uprushing current up and across the moun-
tain and at last scattered on the opposite side.

When the last seed of the year has fallen, how
thickly the woodland regions are sown broad-

304

of a

cast with seeds! Only a few of these will have
landed in a hospitable place. The overwhelm-
ingly majority fell in the water to drown or on
rock ledges or other places to starve or wither.
The few fortunate enough to find unoccupied
and fertile places will still have to reckon with
devouring insects and animals. How different
may be the environment of two seedlings sprung
from seeds grown on the selfsame tree ! On their
commencement day two little atoms of life may
be separated by the wind : one finds shelter and
fertile earth ; the other roots in a barely livable
place on the cold, stormbeaten heights of tim-
ber-line. Both use their inherent energy and
effort to the utmost. One becomes a forest mon-
arch ; the other a dwarf, uncouth and ugly.

n a Qtlounfain

3n a QUotmfain

T the close of one of our winter trips, my
collie Scotch and I started across the con-
tinental divide of the Rocky Mountains in face
of weather conditions that indicated a snow-
storm or a blizzard before we could gain the
other side. We had eaten the last of our food
twenty-four hours before and could no longer
wait for fair weather. So off we started to scale
the snowy steeps of the cold, gray heights a thou-
sand feet above. The mountains already were
deeply snow-covered and it would have been
a hard trip even without the discomforts and
dangers of a storm.

I was on snowshoes and for a week we had
been camping and tramping through the snowy
forests and glacier meadows at the source of
Grand River, two miles above the sea. The pri-
meval Rocky Mountain forests are just as near
to Nature's heart in winter as in summer. I had
found so much to study and enjoy that the long

309

of

distance from a food-supply, even when the
last mouthful was eaten, had not aroused me
to the seriousness of the situation. Scotch had
not complained, and appeared to have the
keenest collie interest in the tracks and trails,
the scenes and silences away from the haunts of
man. The snow lay seven feet deep, but by
keeping in my snowshoe tracks Scotch easily
followed me about. Our last camp was in the
depths of an alpine forest at an altitude of ten
thousand feet. Here, though zero weather pre-
vailed, we were easily comfortable beside a fire
under the protection of an overhanging cliff.

After a walk through woods the sun came
blazing in our faces past the snow-piled crags
on Long's Peak, and threw slender blue shadows
of the spiry spruces far out in a white glacier
meadow to meet us. Reentering the tall but
open woods, we saw, down the long aisles and
limb-arched avenues, a forest of tree columns,
entangled in sunlight and shadow, standing on
a snowy marble floor.

We were on the Pacific slope, and our plan was
to cross the summit by the shortest way between

310

ON GRAND RIVER, MIDDLE PARK, IN WINTER

a QUounfoin

timber-line and timber-line on the Atlantic side.
This meant ascending a thousand feet, descend-
ing an equal distance, traveling five miles amid
bleak, rugged environment. Along the treeless,
gradual ascent we started, realizing that the last
steep icy climb would be dangerous and defiant.
Most of the snow had slid from the steeper
places, and much of the remainder had blown
away. Over the unsheltered whole the wind
was howling. For a time the sun shone dimly
through the wind-driven snow-dust that rolled
from the top of the range, but it disappeared
early behind wild, windswept clouds.

After gaining a thousand feet of altitude
through the friendly forest, we climbed out and
up above the trees on a steep slope at timber-
line. This place, the farthest up for trees, .was
a picturesque, desolate place. The dwarfed,
gnarled, storm-shaped trees amid enormous
snow-drifts told of endless, and at times deadly,
struggles of the trees with the elements. Most
of the trees were buried, but here and there a
leaning or a storm-distorted one bent bravely
above the snows.

of

At last we were safely on a ridge and started
merrily off, hoping to cover speedily the three
miles of comparatively level plateau.

How the wind did blow! Up more than eleven
thousand feet above the sea, with not a tree to
steady or break, it had a royal sweep. The wind
appeared to be putting forth its wildest efforts
to blow us off the ridge. There being a broad
way, I kept well from the edges. The wind
came with a dash and heavy rush, first from one
quarter, then from another. I was watchful and
faced each rush firmly braced. Generally, this
preparedness saved me; but several times the
wind apparently expanded or exploded beneath
me, and, with an upward toss, I was flung among
the icy rocks and crusted snows. Finally I took
to dropping and lying flat whenever a violent
gust came ripping among the crags.

There was an arctic barrenness to this alpine
ridge, — not a house within miles, no trail, and
here no tree could live to soften the sternness of
the landscape or to cheer the traveler. The way
was amid snowy piles, icy spaces, and wind-
swept crags.

312

3n a Qttounftun

The wind slackened and snow began to fall
just as we were leaving the smooth plateau for
the broken part of the divide. The next mile
of way was badly cut to pieces with deep gorges
from both sides of the ridge. The inner ends
of several of these broke through the centre of
the ridge and extended beyond the ends of the
gorges from the opposite side. This made the
course a series of sharp, short zigzags.

We went forward in the flying snow. I could
scarcely see, but felt that I could keep the way
on the broken ridge between the numerous rents
and canons. On snowy, icy ledges the wind took
reckless liberties. I wanted to stop but dared
not, for the cold was intense enough to freeze
one in a few minutes.

Fearing that a snow-whirl might separate us,
I fastened one end of my light, strong rope to
Scotch's collar and the other end to my belt.
This proved to be fortunate for both, for while
we were crossing an icy, though moderate, slope,
a gust of wind swept me off my feet and started
us sliding. It was not steep, but was so slippery
I could not stop, nor see where the slope ended,

313

gyttt of tfy (Rocfiies

and I grabbed in vain at the few icy projections.
Scotch also lost his footing and was sliding and
rolling about, and the wind was hurrying us
along, when I threw myself flat and dug at the
ice with fingers and toes. In the midst of my
unsuccessful efforts we were brought to a sudden
stop by the rope between us catching over a
small rock-point that was thrust up through the
ice. Around this in every direction was smooth,
sloping ice; this, with the high wind, made me
wonder for a moment how we were to get safely
off the slope. The belt axe proved the means,
for with it I reached out as far as I could and
chopped a hole in the ice, while with the other
hand I clung to the rock-point. Then, returning
the axe to my belt, I caught hold in the chopped
place and pulled myself forward, repeating this
until on safe footing.

In oncoming darkness and whirling snow I
had safely rounded the ends of two gorges and
was hurrying forward over a comparatively
level stretch, with the wind at my back boosting
along. Scotch was running by my side and evi-
dently was trusting me to guard against all

3n a (Tllounf ain

dangers. This I tried to do. Suddenly, however,
there came a fierce dash of wind and whirl of
snow that hid everything. Instantly I flung
myself flat, trying to stop quickly. Just as I did
this I caught the strange, weird sound made by
high wind as it sweeps across a canon, and at
once realized that we were close to a storm-
hidden gorge. I stopped against a rock, while
Scotch slid in and was hauled back with the
rope.

The gorge had been encountered between
two out-thrusting side gorges, and between
these in the darkness I had a cold time feeling
my way out. At last I came to a cairn of stones
which I recognized. The way had been missed
by only a few yards, but this miss had been
nearly fatal.

Not daring to hurry in the darkness in order
to get warm, I was becoming colder every mo-
ment. I still had a stiff climb between me and
the summit, with timber-line three rough miles
beyond. To attempt to make it would probably
result in freezing or tumbling into a gorge. At
last I realized that I must stop and spend the

315

of

night in a snow-drift. Quickly kicking and
trampling a trench in a loose drift, I placed
my elk-skin sleeping-bag therein, thrust Scotch
into the bag, and then squeezed into it myself.

I was almost congealed with cold. My first
thought after warming up was to wonder why I
had not earlier remembered the bag. Two in a
bag would guarantee warmth, and with warmth
a snow-drift on the crest of the continent would
not be a bad place in which to lodge for the
night.

The sounds of wind and snow beating upon
the bag grew fainter and fainter as we were
drifted and piled over with the latter. At the
same time our temperature rose, and before
long it was necessary to open the flap of the bag
slightly for ventilation.

At last the sounds of the storm could barely
be heard. Was the storm quieting down, or was
its roar muffled and lost in the deepening cover
of snow, was the unimportant question occupy-
ing my thoughts when I fell asleep.

Scotch awakened me in trying to get out of
the bag. It was morning. Out we crawled, and,

316

3n a QUounfain

standing with only my head above the drift, I
found the air still and saw a snowy mountain
world all serene in the morning sun. I hastily
adjusted sleeping-bag and snowshoes, and we
set off for the final climb to the summit.

The final one hundred feet or so rose steep,
jagged, and ice-covered before me. There was
nothing to lay hold of; every point of vantage
was plated and coated with non-prehensible ice.
There appeared only one way to surmount this
icy barrier and that was to chop toe and hand
holes from the bottom to the top of this icy wall,
which in places was close to vertical. Such a
climb would not be especially difficult or danger-
ous for me, but could Scotch do it? He could
hardly know how to place his feet in the holes
or on the steps properly; nor could he realize that
a slip or a misstep would mean a slide and a roll

to death.

t

Leaving sleeping-bag and snowshoes with
Scotch, I grasped my axe and chopped my way
to the top and then went down and carried bag
and snowshoes up. Returning for Scotch, I
started him climbing just ahead of me, so that I

317

of

could boost and encourage him. We had gained
only a few feet when it became plain that sooner
or later he would slip and bring disaster to both.
We stopped and descended to the bottom for a
new start.

Though the wind was again blowing a gale, I
determined to carry him. His weight was forty
pounds, and he would make a top-heavy load
and give the wind a good chance to upset my
balance and tip me off the wall. But, as there
appeared no other way, I threw him over my
shoulder and started up.

Many times Scotch and I had been in ticklish
places together, and more than once I had
pulled him up rocky cliffs on which he could not
find footing. Several times I had carried him
over gulches on fallen logs that were too slippery
for him. He was so trusting and so trained that
he relaxed and never moved while in my arms or
on my shoulder.

Arriving at the place least steep, I stopped to
transfer Scotch from one shoulder to the other.
The wind was at its worst; its direction fre-
quently changed and it alternately calmed and

318

SNOW AND SHADOW

3n a Qtlounfoin

then came on like an explosion. For several
seconds it had been roaring down the slope;
bracing myself to withstand its force from this
direction, I was about moving Scotch, when it
suddenly shifted to one side and came with the
force of a breaker. It threw me off my balance
and tumbled me heavily against the icy slope.

Though my head struck solidly, Scotch came
down beneath me and took most of the shock.
Instantly we glanced off and began to slide
swiftly. Fortunately I managed to get two
fingers into one of the chopped holes and held
fast. I clung to Scotch with one arm; we came
to a stop, both saved. Scotch gave a yelp of
pain when he fell beneath me, but he did not
move. Had he made a jump or attempted to
help himself, it is likely that both of us would
have gone to the bottom of the slope.

Gripping Scotch with one hand and clinging
to the icy hold with the other, I shuffled about
until I got my feet into two holes in the icy wall.
Standing in these and leaning against the ice,
with the wind butting and dashing, I attempted
the ticklish task of lifting Scotch again to my

319

of

shoulder — and succeeded. A minute later we
paused to breathe on the summit's icy ridge,
between two oceans and amid seas of snowy
peaks.

(5

n

HE Fremont squirrel is the most audacious
and wide-awake of wild folk among whom I
have lived. He appears to be ever up and doing,
is intensely in earnest at all times and strongly
inclined to take a serious view of things. Both
the looks and manners of Mr. Fremont, Sciurus
fremonti, proclaim for him a close relationship
with the Douglas squirrel of California and the
Pacific coast, the squirrel immortalized by John
Muir.

His most popular name is "Pine Squirrel,"
and he is found through the pine and spruce
forests of the Rocky Mountains and its spur
ranges, between the foothills and timber-line; a
vertical, or altitudinal, range of more than a mile.
He assumes and asserts ownership of the region
occupied. If you invade his forests he will see
you first and watch you closely. Often he does
this with simple curiosity, but more often he is
irritated by your presence and issues a chatter-

323

of

ing protest while you are still at long range. If
you continue to approach after this proclama-
tion, he may come down on a low limb near by
and give you as torrential and as abusive a
"cussing" as trespasser ever received from irate
owner.

Yet he is most ridiculously small to do all
that he threatens to do. Of course he brags and
bluffs, but these become admirable qualities in
this little fellow who will ably, desperately de-
fend his domain against heavy odds of size or
numbers. Among the squirrels of the world he is
one of the smallest. He is clad in gray and his
coat perceptibly darkens in winter. His plumy
tail, with a fringe of white hairs, is as airy as
thistledown. He always appears clean and
well-groomed.

Though in many ways a grizzly in miniature
and apparently as untamable as a tiger, the Fre-
mont quickly responds to kind advances. Near
my cabin a number became so tame that they
took peanuts from my hand, sometimes even
following me to the cabin door for this purpose.

These squirrels occasionally eat mushrooms,
324

n

berries, and the inner bark of pine twigs, but
they depend almost entirely upon conifer nuts
or seeds, the greater part of these coming from
the cones of pines and spruces. They start
harvesting the cones in early autumn, so as to
harvest all needed food for winter before the dry,
ripened cones open and empty their tiny seeds.
Deftly they dart through the tree-tops almost as
swiftly as a hummingbird and as utterly indif-
ferent to the dangers of falling. With polished
blades of ivory they clip off the clinging, fruited
cones. Happy, hopeful, harvest-home sounds
the cones make as they drop and bounce on the
dry floor of the autumn woods. Often a pair
work together, one reaping the cones with his
ivory cutters and the other carrying them home,
each being a sheaf of grain of Nature's bundling.
When harvesting alone, Mr. Fremont is often
annoyed by the chipmunks. These little rascals
will persist in stealing the fallen cones, despite
glaring eyes, irate looks, and deadly threats from
the angry harvester above. When finally he
comes tearing down to carry his terrible ultima-
tums into effect, the frightened chipmunks make

325

of

haste to be off, but usually some one is overtaken
and knocked sprawling with an accompanying
rapid fire of denunciation.

One day I watched a single harvester who was
busily, happily working. He cut off a number of
cones before descending to gather them. These
scattered widely like children playing hide-and-
seek. One hid behind a log; another bounced
into some brush and stuck two feet above the
ground, while two others scampered far from the
tree. The squirrel went to each in turn without
the least hesitation or search and as though he
had been to each spot a dozen times before.

A squirrel often displays oddities both in the
place selected for storing the cones and the man-
ner of their arrangement. Usually the cones are
wisely hoarded both for curing and for preserva-
tion, by being stored a few in a place. This may
be beneath a living tree or in an open space,
placed one layer deep in the loose forest litter
scarcely below the general level of the surface.
They are also stowed both in and upon old logs
and stumps. Sometimes they are placed in little
nests with a half-dozen or so cones each ; often

326

n

there are a dozen of these in a square yard.
This scattering of the sap-filled cones, together
with the bringing of each into contact with dry
foreign substances, secures ventilation and as-
sists the sappy cones to dry and cure ; if closely
piled, many of these moist cones would be lost
through mould and decay.

The numbers of cones hoarded for winter by
each squirrel varies with different winters and
also with individuals. I have many times counted
upwards of two hundred per squirrel. During
years of scanty cone-crop the squirrels claim
the entire crop. The outcry raised against the
squirrel for preventing far extension, by con-
suming all the seeds, is I think in the same class
as the cry against the woodpecker; it appears a
cry raised by those who see only the harm with-
out the accompanying good. The fact is that
many of the cones are never eaten; more are
stored than are wanted; some are forgotten,
while others are left by the death of the squirrel.
Thus many are stored and left uneaten in places
where they are likely to germinate and produce
trees. John Muir too believes that the Doug-

327

las and Fremont squirrels are beneficial to
forest-extension .

Commonly the cones are stored in the same
place year after year. In dining, also, the squir-
rel uses a log, limb, or stump year after year.
Thus bushels of the slowly decaying scales and
cobs accumulate in one place. It is not uncom-
mon for these accumulations to cover a square
rod to the depth of two feet.

I know of a few instances in which squirrels
stowed cones in the edge of a brook beneath the
water. One of these places being near my cabin,
I kept track of it until the cones were used, which
was in the spring. In early autumn the cones
were frozen in, and there they remained, unvis-
ited I think, until the break-up of the ice in
April. Then a squirrel appeared, to drag them
from their cold storage. He carried each by
to his regular dining-place. Clasping the cone
vertically, base up, in his fore paws, he snipped
off the scales and ate the seeds beneath in regu-
lar order, turning the cone as he proceeded as
though it were an ear of corn and he were eating
the kernels.

328

n

I have often waited to see a squirrel go for
something to eat after a snowstorm. This he did
in a matter-of-fact way. Without hunting or
hesitation he went hopping across the snow to a
spot immediately above his supplies, where he
at once pawed his way down into the snow and
came up with a cone.

In rambling the woods I have often heard
these squirrels barking and " chickareeing " with
wild hilarity, apparently from the pure joy of
living. Then again they proclaimed my dis-
tant approach, or presence, with unnecessary
vigor. The energetic protest they make against
the trespasser in their woods, is often, if not al-
ways, taken by big game as a warning. Gener-
ally on hearing this the game will be all alert for
some seconds, and occasionally will move off to
a more commanding position. Sometimes birds
will stop and listen when this tree-top sentinel
shouts warnings which have often saved big
game from being shot. Most hunters hate this
squirrel.

There are brief periods in winter when these
squirrels disappear for days at a time. The kind

329

of

of weather does not appear to be a determining
factor in this. During this disappearance they
probably take a hibernating sleep; anyway, I
have in a few cases seen them so soundly asleep
that the fall and fracture of their tree did not
awaken them. They sometimes live, temporarily
at least, in holes in the ground, but the home is
usually in a hollow limb or a cavern in a tree-
trunk well toward the top of the tree. Com-
monly four young ones are brought forth at a
birth. Cunning, happy midgets they are when
first beginning their acquaintance with the
wooded world, and taking sun baths on a high
limb of their house tree.

Just how long they live no one appears to
know. As pets they have been kept for ten
years. A pair lived near my cabin for eight
years, then disappeared. Whether they mi-
grated or met a violent death, I never knew.
There was another pair in the grove that I kept
track of through eleven years. This grove was a
wedge-shaped one of about ten acres that stood
between two brooks. With but few exceptions,
the trees were lodge-pole pine. My acquaintance

330

in Jut

with the pair began one day in early autumn.
Both set up such a wild chatter as I approached
the grove that I first thought that something
was attacking them. Seated upon a log close to
the tree which they occupied, I watched them
for three or four hours. They in turn watched
me. Failing to dislodge me by vehement de-
nunciation, they quieted down and eyed me
with intense curiosity. I sat perfectly still.
Evidently they were greatly puzzled and unable
to make out what I was and what of all things
on earth it could be that I wanted. With beady
eyes they stared at me from a number of posi-
tions in several trees. Occasionally in the midst
of this silent, eager eying one would break out in
a half-repressed and drawling bark that was un-
consciously, nervously repeated at brief inter-
vals.

The next day they silently allowed me to take
a seat. After a brief stare they grew bold with
curiosity and descended to the earth for a closer
investigation. Pausing for a sharp look, both sud-
denly exploded with wild chatter and fled with a
retchy barking to the tree-tops. In less than a

of $e (Kocfites

month they took peanuts from my fingers.
They were easily terrified by a loud noise or
sudden movement. One day an acquaintance
came to see me while I was in the grove with the
squirrels. By way of heralding his approach, he
flung a club which fell with a crash upon a brush
pile alongside these most nervous fellows. They
fled in terror, and it was two or three days be-
fore they would come near me again.

One year the grove cone-crop was a total fail-
ure. As a result, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont tem-
porarily abandoned their old home and moved
to new quarters on a mountainside about half
a mile distant. The day they moved I was by
the brook, watching a water-ouzel, when they
chanced to cross on a fallen log near-by. In
passing, one paused to give a hasty, half-glad,
half-frightened, chattery bark of recognition.
They hastened across the grassy open beyond as
though they felt themselves in danger when out
of the woods.

They made a home in an old snag, using places
that were, I think, formerly used by wood-
peckers. The afternoon of their arrival they

332

in f\w

commenced to harvest cones, which were abund-
ant on the spruce trees around them. I often
wondered if they made a preliminary trip and
located a food-supply before moving, or if they
simply started forth and stopped at the first
favorable place.

The following summer they returned to their
old quarters in the grove. The first time that I
saw them they were sitting upon a log daintily
making a breakfast of fresh mushrooms. They
often ate the inner bark of pine twigs, and once I
saw one of them eating wild raspberries. I never
saw these, or any Fremont squirrel, robbing or
trying to rob a bird's nest, and as I have never
noticed a bird disturbed by their presence, I
believe they are not guilty of this serious offense,
as are most kinds of squirrels.

Through eleven years I occasionally fed them.
Apparently full-grown at the time of our first
meeting, they were active and agile to the last.
After eleven years they showed but few and
minor signs of aging.

One was shot by a gun-carrying visitor.
While I was dismissing the gunner, my atten-

333

of

tion was attracted by the wailing of her mate
when he found her lifeless body. His grief was
most pitiful; among wild birds and animals I
have never seen anything so pathetic. Almost
humanly he stared at his mate; he fondled her
and tried to coax her back to life, at times al-
most pleading and wailing. When I carried her
off for burial he sat moveless and dazed. The
following day I searched the grove, whistling
and calling, but I never saw him again.

E Estes Park region became famous for its
scenery during the height of the Rocky
Mountain gold-fever half a century ago. While
Colorado was still a Territory, its scenes were
visited by Helen Hunt, Anna Dickinson, and
Isabella Bird, all of whom sang the praises of
this great hanging wild garden.

The park is a natural one, — a mingling of
meadows, headlands, groves, winding streams
deeply set in high mountains whose forested
steeps and snowy, broken tops stand high and
bold above its romantic loveliness. It is a mar-
velous grouping of gentleness and grandeur; an
eloquent, wordless hymn, that is sung in silent,
poetic pictures; a sublime garden miles in extent
and all arranged with infinite care.

Grace Greenwood once declared that the sky-
line of this region, when seen from out in the
Great Plains, loomed up like the Alps from the
plains of Lombardy.

337

of

Long's Peak, " King of the Rocky Mountains,"
dominates these scenes. Around this peak,
within a radius of fifteen miles, is a striking and
composite grouping of the best features of the
Rocky Mountain scenery. Again and again I
have explored every nook and height of this
scenic mountain wilderness, enjoying its for-
ests, lakes, and canons during every month of
the year.

Frost and fire have had much to do with its
lines and landscapes. Ice has wrought bold
sculptures, while fire made the graceful open
gardens, forest-framed and flower-filled in the
sun. The region was occupied by the Ice King
during the last glacial period. Many rounded
peaks, U-shaped, polished gorges, enormous
morainal embankments, upwards of fifty lakes
and tarns — almost the entire present striking
landscape — were shaped through the ages by
the slow sculpturing of the ice. Forest fires have
made marked changes, and many of the wide
poetic places — the grassy parks — in the woods
are largely due to severe and repeated burn-
ings.

338

LONG'S PEAK AND ESTES PARK

(Region

This locality has been swept by fire again and
again. Most of the forest is less than two hun-
dred years of age. During the past two hundred
years, beginning with 1707, there have been no
less than seven forest fires, two of which appear
to have swept over most of the region. There
probably were other fires, the records of which
have vanished. The dates of these scourges and
in many cases the extent of their ravages were
burned into the annual rings of a number of
trees which escaped with their lives and lived on,
carrying these fire-records down to us. These
fires, together with the erosion which followed,
had something to do with the topography and
the scenery of this section. There are a few
ugly scars from recent fires, but most of the
burned areas were reforested with reasonable
promptness. Some crags, however, may have
lost for centuries their trees and vegetation.
Other areas, though losing trees, gained in mead-
ows. I am strongly inclined to ascribe much of
the openness — the existence even — of Estes,
Allen's, and Middle Parks to repeated fires,
some of which probably were severe. Thus we

339

of

may look down from the heights and enjoy the
mingling beauty and grandeur of forest and
meadow and still realize that fire, with all its
destructiveness, may help to make the gardens
of the earth.

A dozen species of trees form the forests of
this section. These forests, delightfully inviting,
cover the mountains below the altitude of
eleven thousand feet. This rich robe, draping
from the shoulders to the feet of the mountains,
appears a dark purple from a distance. A great
robe it hangs over every steep and slope, smooth,
wrinkled, and torn; pierced with pinnacles and
spires, gathered on terraces and headlands, up-
lifted on the swells, and torn by canons. Here
and there this forest is beautified with a ragged-
edged grass-plot, a lake, or a stream that flows,
ever singing, on.

The trees which brave the heights and main-
tain the forest frontier among the storms, are
the Engelmann spruce, sub-alpine fir, arctic
willow, black birch, quaking aspen, and limber
pine. For the most part, timber-line is a trifle
above eleven thousand feet, but in a few places

340

the trees climb up almost to twelve thousand.
Most of the trees at timber-line are distorted
and stunted by the hard conditions. Snow
covers and crushes them; cold chains their ac-
tivity through the greater part of the year; the
high winds drain their sap, persecute them with
relentless sand-blasts, and break their limbs
and roots.

Among glacier-records in the Rocky Moun-
tains those on the slopes of Long's Peak are pre-
eminent for magnitude and interest. On the
western slope of this peak the ice stream de-
scended into the upper end of Glacier Gorge,
where it united with streams from Mt. Barrat
and McHenry Peak. Here it flowed northward
for two miles through the now wonderfully ice-
carved Glacier Gorge. Beyond the gorge heavy
ice rivers flooded down to this ice stream from
Thatch-Top, Taylor, Otis, and Hallett Peaks.
A mile beyond the gorge it was deflected to the
east by the solid slopes of Flat-Top and Mt.
Hallett. It descended to about the altitude of
eight thousand feet. Along its lower course, the
lateral moraine on the south side dammed up a

of tfc

number of small water channels that drained
the northern slope of Battle Mountain.

On the northern slope of the Peak a boulder
field begins at the altitude of thirteen thousand
feet and descends over a wide field, then over a
terraced slope. Though probably not of great
depth, it will average a mile wide and extends
four miles down the slope. It contains an im-
mense amount of material, enough to form a
great mountain-peak. Probably the greatest
array of glacial debris is the Mills Moraine on
the east side of the Peak. This covers several
thousand acres, consists of boulders, rock-frag-
ments, and rock-flour, and in places is several
hundred feet deep.

Where has all this wreckage come from?
Some geologists have expressed the opinion that
ages ago Long's Peak was two thousand or so
feet higher. At the time of its great height,
Long's Peak was united with the near surround-
ing peaks, — Meeker, Washington, and Storm,
— and all stood together as one peak. The
present shattered condition of these peaks, their
crumbling nature, the mountain masses of de-

342

bris on the slopes below, all of which must have
come from heights above, suggest this explana-
tion. But to take it as it now is, to stand on this
crumbling peak to-day and look down upon the
lakes, moraines, polished gorges, — all the vast
and varied glacial works and ruins, — is for the
geological student startling and profoundly elo-
quent.

Above the altitude of thirteen thousand feet
are many fields of "eternal snow," and a dozen
miles to the south of Long's Peak is the Arapa-
hoe Glacier ; while northward are the Andrews,
Sprague, and Hallett Glaciers within ten miles.
Though all these are small, each exhibits in a
striking manner the Ice Age in a nutshell. On
the east side of Long's Peak, too, is a moving
ice-field that might well be classed as a glacier.
By this ice begins the upper extent of the Mills
Moraine, and in the gorge just below — one of
the most utterly wild places on the earth — is
Chasm Lake.

Most of the glacier lakes are in gorges or on
terraces between the altitudes of eleven thou-
sand and twelve thousand feet. Almost all have

343

of

a slope or steep rising above them, down which
the ice descended while gouging out their basins.

Grand Lake, one of the largest reservoirs
constructed by the Ice King in the Rocky Moun-
tains, is three miles in length and one in width,
cut into bed-rock. This lake is less than nine
thousand feet above the sea. It is in the east-
ern extremity of Middle Park, a few miles to the
west of Long's Peak. Great peaks rising from
it, a great moraine sweeping along its northerly
and westerly shores, it peacefully shows the ti-
tanic beautifying landscape labors of the ice.

The glacial winter is over. The present snow-
fall over this section is about one half that of the
Alps. Here snow-line is thirteen thousand feet
above the sea, while in the Alps it is four thou-
sand feet lower. Down from the heights of all
the high peaks pour many white streams ever
singing the song of the sea.

In these mountains there are many deep
gorges and canons. Most of these are short and
ice-polished. The Thompson Canon is one of
the longest and finest. Its twenty miles of
walled length is full of scenic contrasts and pict-

344

uresque varieties. The lovely mingles with the
wild. In places its walls stand two thousand feet
above the river and the daisies. The walls are
many-formed, rugged, polished, perpendicular,
terraced, and statuesque, and are adorned with
panels of rusty veneer, with decorative lichen
tracery or with vertical meadows of velvet moss.
Blossoms fill many niches with poetry, while
shrubbery, concealing in its clinging the cracks
in the wall, forms many a charming festoon.

In some stretches the parallel walls go straight
away, well separated ; then they curve, or crowd
so closely that there is barely room for the river
and the road. At intervals the walls sweep out-
ward in short, grand semicircles and inclose
ideal wild gardens of pines, grass, flowers, and
the winding river. The river is ever varying its
speed, its surface, and its song. Here it is a
boulder-framed mirror reflecting the aspens and
the sky, there a stretch of foam-flow; now it
rests in a wild pool pierced with sharp rocks,
now it hurries on to plunge and roar over a ter-
race of rocks, then on, always on, toward the
sea.

34S

of

Speckled and rainbow trout dart in the
streams. Mountain sheep climb and pose on the
crags; bear, deer, and mountain lions are still
occasionally seen prowling the woods or hurry-
ing across the meadows. The wise coyote is also
occasionally seen darting under cover, and he is
frequently heard during the night. Here among
the evergreens is found that wee and audacious
bit of intensely interesting and animated life, the
Fremont squirrel, and also, one of the dearest of
all small animals, the merry chipmunk. Within
this territory are a number of beaver colonies,
whose ways I have described in earlier chapters.

The entire region is a wild-flower garden.
Bloom-time lasts all summer long. The scores
of streams which splash down from the snows
are fringed with ferns and blossoms. There are
many areas petalled with red, blue, purple, and
gold. Difference of altitude, topography, and
moisture-distribution induce nearly a thousand
varieties to bloom in and to color this glad wild
garden. July is white with Mariposa lilies. Wild
roses, sweet peas, daisies, tiger lilies, violets,
orchids, primroses, fringed blue gentians give

346

(Beaton

their color and their perfume to the friendly air.
Here flourishes the Rocky Mountain columbine.

The region is gladdened with many kinds of
birds. On the heights lives the serene, self-con-
tained ptarmigan; the "camp-bird" resides in
the upland forests; hummingbirds flit here and
there ; the robin sings and re-sings its song over
the lowlands ; blackbirds swing on the willows by
the brooks ; the wise magpie spreads his spotted
wings and explores every corner. Along the
cascading streams is the darling bird of the
Rockies, the cheerful water-ouzel. Here, too,
the hermit thrush charms the air with a wonder-
ful wealth of melody, and here the solitaire,
perhaps the most inspiring of all songsters,
pours his divine melody amid pines, crags, and
the sounds of winds and falling waters.

Numerous trails wind through this region,
and over these one may visit Specimen Mount-
ain, an old volcano, Fern and Odessa Lakes,
— splendid tree-bordered alpine tarns, — Wild
Basin, Locke Vale, Wind River, Glacier Gorge,
and the summit of Long's Peak. The Flat-Top
trail is the greatest one; this touches a variety

347

of

of scenes, crosses the continental divide at
twelve thousand feet, and connects Grand Lake
and Estes Park.

This splendid natural recreation - ground
might well "be held for the use of the people."
It is close to the geographical centre of the
country, is easily accessible, has an excellent
climate, and as a National Park it would become
a scenic resource of enormous and exhaustless
richness.

THE END

Allen's Park, 339.
Andrews Glacier, 343.
Arapahoe Glacier, 251, 255, 260,

261, 343.

Arapahoe Peak, 260.
Ash, seeds, 296.
Aspen, after a fire, 160.
Aspen Gulch, 13-15.
Avalanches. See Rock avalanche,

Snowslides.

Basswood, seeds, 300.

Bears, escaping from a forest
fire, 143, 144; a mother and
cubs, 240.

Bears, black, two cubs and a
forest fire, 144; attacked by
wasps, 1 80; carrying pine
cones, 301.

Bears, grizzly, and a forest fire,
144; and roasted deer after
the fire, 149, 150; two pet
cubs, 207-209; the further
history of Johnny, 209-219;
curiosity, 214; agility, 215.

Beaver, the Moraine Colony,
19-46; characteristics and use-
fulness, 19, 40, 41, 46, 47;
dams, 21, 31-34, 45, 53, 54;
houses, 21, 22, 31, 42, 44, 54;
felling trees, 21, 24, 25, 58-65;
harvest piles, 22, 41, 42, 56, 57,

65, 66; cooperation, 22-24, 43»
44; working by daylight, 23,
62; play, 23; transporting logs
and branches, 23, 24, 54-62;
village destroyed by fire, 26,
27; attacked by mountain
lion, 28, 29, 35, 36; attacked
by coyote, 29, 30, 36; journey-
ing by water and by land, 30,
31 ; migration from ruined vil-
lage, 29-31 ; raided by trappers,
31; need of ponds, 34, 35;
house dynamited, 35; young,
36, 37; a migration witnessed,
381 39: aged beaver, 38, 39,
51, 52, 63-65; explorations
of old males, 39, 40; the first
conservationist, 40, 41 ; making
a new pond, 44, 45; pitchy
wood and dead wood avoided,
45, 46 ; canals, 45, 56; ford,
45, 52, 66; the Spruce Tree
Colony, 51-67; tunnels, 53; log
slides, 54-56 ; the Island Colony,
6l, 62; ready for winter, 66.

Beetles, depredations in forests,
174-181, 195.

Big Thompson River, 345.

Big tree, immune from insects,
173; seeds, 299.

Bighorn. See Sheep, mountain.

Birds, of Estes Park, 347.

351

"Blizzard, 311-316.
Borers, depredations in forests,
182, 195.

Camp-bird. See Jay, Rocky
Mountain.

Camp-fires, as origins of forest
fires, 152, 153, 155, 156.

Carpenter, Prof. L. G., on for-
ests, 127.

Chapman, Frank M., 200.

Chasm Lake, 343.

Cher.y, seed-sowing, 298, 299.

Chipmunk, 325.

Cimarron, 242.

Clouds, of mountain-tops, 80, 81 ;
a snow-cloud, 81-84.

Cocoanut, 302.

Conifers, seed-distribution, 297,
298.

Cottonwood, seeds, 296, 301.

Couple, elderly, in a log house,

IIO-II2.

Court-House Rock, 242, 243.

Coyote, attacking beaver, 29,
30,36; fleeing from a forest-fire,
143; after the fire, 149.

Deer, in a forest fire, 142, 143.

Dendroctonus, 196.

Dogs, story of a tramp dog, 93-
105; Scotch and the bear
Johnny, 2 13; Scotch in a moun-
tain blizzard, 309-320.

Electrical storms, 85-88. \
Elk, in a forest fire, 142.

Erosion, after forest fires, 165,
1 66; by glaciers, 251; a study
of, 271, 272, 281-286.

Estes Park, glaciers in, 260, 338,
341-343; attractions, 337, 338,
348; forest fires, 339; forests,
340, 341; Long's Peak, 341-
343; lakes, 343, 344; streams
and canons, 344, 345; animal
life, 346; flowers, 346, 347;
birds, 347; trails, 347.

Fern Lake, 347.

Fir, Douglas, 279.

Fires. See Forest Fires.

Flat-Top, 341, 347.

Flowers, of Estes Park, 346, 347.

Foot, an injured, 233, 234, 241-

243-

Forest fires, watching, 139-170;
varying speed of, 141, 142, 167;
wild animals in, 142-145;
rarely make aclean sweep, 145,
146; dead trees burning after,
146, 147; extent, 147; destroy
humus, 148, 149; loss of ani-
mal life in, 149; storm of ashes
after a fire, 150, 151; upbuild-
ing after, 152; origins of, 152,

153. 155. 156, 162, 163, 176;
methods of fighting, 152, 153,
163-165; trees standing after,

154, 158; geysers of flame, 158,
!59> *69; duration of, 1 61, 162;
protection against, 163-165;
erosion after, 165, 166; explo-
sions of rock caused by, 169,

352

170; interrelation with destruc-
tive insects, 173, 174, 186;
wood preserved by, 187.

Forests, as wood-producers, 124;
as water-distributors, 124, 125;
other uses, 125; as moderators
of climate, 125, 126; as wind-
breaks, 126; delaying evapo-
ration, 126-129; necessary to
agriculture, 127, 128; as reser-
voirs, 128-130; as regulators of
stream-flow, 130; as makers of
soil, 131, 132; as bird-shelters,
I32» 133; as sanitary agents,
133; evils following destruction
of, 134; preeminent in pro-
moting the general welfare,
!34» r35l insect enemies of,
173-189; observations of a for-
ested and a deforested region
during a rain, 267-287; the
forest floor, 273, 274.

Fort Garland, 112, 113, 118, 119.

Fungi, enemies of trees, 183, 184.

Fungus, false- tinder, 184.

Glacier Gorge, 341, 347.

Glaciers, work of, 247-250;
Muir and Henderson on, 250;
rate of movement, 251; Ara-
pahoe, 251, 255, 260, 261;
grinding and excavating pow-
ers, 251-253; moraines, 253-
255; lakes made by, 253, 343;
strange freight, 255, 256; min-
eral wealth, 256; making soil,
257; formation, 258, 259; in

the Rocky Mountains, 258,
260-263, 338, 341-343; berg-
schlunds and crevasses, 260,
261 ; pleasures of investigation,
263.

Grand Lake, 348.

Grand River, '309; forest fires
on, 140-153.

Granite Pass, wind in, 75-77.

Greenwood, Grace, 337.

Ground-hog, 282.

Grouse, fleeing from a forest fire,
144.

Hallett Glacier, 343.
Hallett Peak, 341.
Henderson, Junius, quoted, 250.
Home's Peak, 102.

Ice, climbing with a dog over,
310, 314, 317-320.

Insects, in the forest, 173-189;
interrelation with forest-fires,
173. 174. 1 86; beetles, 174-181 ;
weevils, 182; borers, 182; serial
attacks, 182, 183; interrelation
with parasitic plants, 183, 184;
seriousness of their ravages,
185, 1 86, 189; control of de-
predations, 187-189; wood-
peckers the enemies of, 193-
204.

Ironwood, seeds, 300.

Jay, crested, 149.
Jay, Rocky Mountain, or gray
jay, or camp-bird, 149, 180,223.

353

Lake City, 223.

Landslides, a night and a day of,
232-239; on a deforested slope,
281, 282; a liquefied landslide,
283, 284. See Rock avalanche.

Leadville, 98-100.

Lightning, 85, 86; trees struck
by, 175, 176, 278.

Linden, seeds, 300.

Lion, mountain, attacking bea-
ver, 28, 29, 35, 36; an adven-
ture, 102; fleeing from a forest
fire, 143.

Little Cimarron River, 228, 234,
240-242.

Locke Vale, 347.

Locust, honey, seeds and pods,
299, 300.

Log, with a cargo of seeds, 292-294.

Long's Peak, 310, 338; wind on,
75-78; area of summit, 78;
altitude, 85; thunder-storms
on, 85; forest fires seen from,
140; Mills Moraine, 263, 342;
glaciers, 341 ; boulder field, 342;
geological history, 342, 343.

McHenry Peak, 341.
Magpie, 149, 347.
Mangrove, seeding, 302.
Maple, red, seeds, 296.
Maple, silver, seeds, 295.
Middle Park, 339, 344.
Mills Moraine, 263, 342, 343.
Mississippi River, origin of its

mud, 285; a seed-laden log on,

292-294.

Missouri River, its channel full
of dissolved Rocky Moun-
tains, 284.

Mt. Barrat, 341.

Mt. Coxcomb, crumbling char-
acter of, 228-230; a night
climb in the rain, 228-240.

Mt. Hallett, 341.

Mt. Meeker, 207, 342.

Mt. Teller, 88.

Muir, John, quoted, 128,250,327.

Night, mountain-climbing by,

226-232.

Nuthatch, 199, 200.
Nuts, 293-295.

Orton, Edward, Jr., quoted, 263.

Otis Peak, 341.

Ouzel. See Water-ouzel.

Parks, mountain, openness
caused by forest fires, 339.

Persimmons, 299.

Pine, lodge-pole, 153, 157, 160;
spectacular death of, 158, 159;
destroyed by beetles, 178;
seeding, 298.

Pine, Western yellow, as a fire-
fighter, 1 60, 161; killed by
beetles, 174-176.

Poisoning, from a spring, 109-1 1 1.

Poudre River, 95.

Ptarmigan, 347.

Rabbit-Ear Range, 140.
Rain, effects on forested and de-
forested slopes, 267-287.

354

Ridgway, 226, 233, 243.

Robin, 270.

Rock avalanche, 113-115.

St. Vrain River, a rainy day at
the source, 267-287; the two
branches, 271.

San Juan Mountains, snow-
slides in, 3-15.

San Luis Valley, 117.

Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 101 ,
109.

Scotch, the collie, and the bear
cub Johnny, 213; in a moun-
tain blizzard, 309-320.

Seeds of trees, many devices for
sowing, 291 ; log cargo of, 292-
294; nuts, 293-295; winged,
295-298; pulp-covered, 298,
299; other wind-carried seeds,
299, 300; hooked, 301; car-
ried by animals, 301; cata-
pulted, 301 ; water-carried,
302; prodigality of nature in
regard to, 302-305.

Sheep, mountain, or bighorn, in
a whirlwind, 72, 73; in a forest
fire, 143.

Sierra Blanca, no; climbing,
112-117.

Snow slides, studying, 3; an
adventure with a slide, 4-15.

Snow-storm, climbing above a,
81-83; a mountain blizzard,
3H-3I6.

Solitaire, 287, 347.

Specimen Mountain, 347.

Spring, a poisonous, 109.
Spruce, Engelmann, 153, 155,

273-

Squirrel, Fremont, an [interview,
276, 277; character and man-
ners, 323, 324; food and har-
vesting, 324-329, 333; hiber-
nation, 329, 330; homes, 330;
young, 330; longevity, 330,
333; story of a pair, 330-334.

Sycamore, seeds, 297.

Taylor Peak, 341.
Thatch-Top, 341.
Thompson Canon, 344, 345.
Thrush, Audubon's hermit, 287,

347-

Trees, relations to mankind, 123,
134> *35; as sanitary agents,
133; medicines and foods pro-
duced by, 133, 134; uprooted
and transported by a land-
slide, 236-239; up a tree in a
storm, 276-278; seeds and
seeding, 291-305. See also
Forests.

Turret-Top, 243.

Uncompahgre Mountains, trip

through, 223-243.
Uncompahgre Peak, 224.

Wasps, feeding on grubs, 179;

and bear, 180.
Water-ouzel, 269-271, 347.
Weather, of alpine zone of

Rocky Mountains, 71-89.

355

Weevils, in forest-trees, 182, 191.

Wet Mountain valley, 101.

Wild Basin, 347.

Willows, seeds, 296.

Wind River, 347.

Winds, on mountain-tops, 72-

80; drying powers of, 126, 127;

a mountain blizzard, 311-316.
Witch-hazel, flowers and seeds,

301.

Woodpecker, Batchelder, 197.

Woodpecker, downy, the most
useful bird citizen, 193, 200;
a downy at work, 201-204.

Woodpecker, hairy, 197, 198.

Woodpeckers, value as destroy-
ers of noxious insects, 193-198;
holes, 198, 199; winter lodg-
ings, 199; nesting-holes, 199,
200.

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

THE

LAND OF LITTLE RAIN

By MARY AUSTIN

THIS is a book of unique interest about out-door
life in the arid region of Southeastern Califor-
nia. It describes the marvels of the desert, the In-
dian, the Greaser, and the gold-hunter, the strange
birds and beasts and flowers of that region, with
extraordinary fidelity.

" What John Muir has done for the western slopes of
the Sierras, with their solemn forests and their mys-
terious silences, Mrs. Austin does in a more tender
and intimate fashion for the eastern slopes."

Brooklyn Eagle.

With full-page and marginal illustrations by
E. BOYD SMITH. 8vo, $2.00, net. Postpaid, $2.24

HOUGHTON /N§b?> BOSTON

MIFFLIN /^W AND

COMPANY rara NEW YORK

BOOKS BY ANDY ADAMS

WELLS BROTHERS

" It carries the true spirit of the plains." — Chicago Eve-
ning Post. Illustrated. $1.20 net. Postage n cents.

REED ANTHONY, COWMAN

The autobiography of a cowboy, giving an interesting
insight into the old-time cattle business.

THE LOG OF A COWBOY

" Breezy, natural, entertaining and racy of the soil."

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Illustrated by E. BOYD SMITH.

A TEXAS MATCHMAKER

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of-doors." San Francisco Argonaut.
Illustrated by E. BOYD SMITH.

THE OUTLET

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well written." New York Life.

Illustrated by E. BOYD SMITH.

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" Clever, original and highly amusing tales."

Boston Transcript.
Each of the above, except "Wells Brothers," $1.50.

HOUGHTON /N§^ BOSTON

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4JL

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