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A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
BOOKS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN.
Illustrated. 8vo $2.00 _net_
THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS.
Illustrated. Large 8vo $3.50 _net_
LIFE-HISTORIES OF AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS.
With Edmund Heller. Illustrated. 2
vols. Large 8vo $10.00 _net_
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS. An account of the African
Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist.
Illustrated. Large 8vo $4.00 _net_
OUTDOOR PASTIMES OF AN AMERICAN HUNTER.
New Edition. Illustrated. 8vo $3.00 _net_
HISTORY AS LITERATURE and Other Essays.
12mo $1.50 _net_
OLIVER CROMWELL. Illustrated. 8vo $2.00 _net_
THE ROUGH RIDERS. Illustrated. 8vo $1.50 _net_
THE ROOSEVELT BOOK. Selections from the Writings
of Theodore Roosevelt. 16mo 50 cents _net_
AMERICA AND THE WORLD WAR.
12mo 75 cents _net_
* * * * *
THE ELKHORN EDITION. Complete Works of Theodore Roosevelt. 26 volumes.
Illustrated. 8vo. Sold by subscription.
[Illustration: _From a painting by Theodore B. Pitman in possession of
Colonel Roosevelt._
On the brink of the Grand Canyon.]
A BOOK-LOVER'S
HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published March, 1916
[Illustration]
To
ARCHIE AND QUENTIN
FOREWORD
The man should have youth and strength who seeks adventure in the wide,
waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast mountain
masses, in the northern forests, amid the steaming jungles of the
tropics, or on the deserts of sand or of snow. He must long greatly for
the lonely winds that blow across the wilderness, and for sunrise and
sunset over the rim of the empty world. His heart must thrill for the
saddle and not for the hearthstone. He must be helmsman and chief, the
cragsman, the rifleman, the boat steerer. He must be the wielder of axe
and of paddle, the rider of fiery horses, the master of the craft that
leaps through white water. His eye must be true and quick, his hand
steady and strong. His heart must never fail nor his head grow
bewildered, whether he face brute and human foes, or the frowning
strength of hostile nature, or the awful fear that grips those who are
lost in trackless lands. Wearing toil and hardship shall be his; thirst
and famine he shall face, and burning fever. Death shall come to greet
him with poison-fang or poison-arrow, in shape of charging beast or of
scaly things that lurk in lake and river; it shall lie in wait for him
among untrodden forests, in the swirl of wild waters, and in the blast
of snow blizzard or thunder-shattered hurricane.
Not many men can with wisdom make such a life their permanent and
serious occupation. Those whose tasks lie along other lines can lead it
for but a few years. For them it must normally come in the hardy vigor
of their youth, before the beat of the blood has grown sluggish in their
veins.
Nevertheless, older men also can find joy in such a life, although in
their case it must be led only on the outskirts of adventure, and
although the part they play therein must be that of the onlooker rather
than that of the doer. The feats of prowess are for others. It is for
other men to face the peril of unknown lands, to master unbroken horses,
and to hold their own among their fellows with bodies of supple
strength. But much, very much, remains for the man who has "warmed both
hands before the fire of life," and who, although he loves the great
cities, loves even more the fenceless grass-land, and the forest-clad
hills.
The grandest scenery of the world is his to look at if he chooses; and
he can witness the strange ways of tribes who have survived into an
alien age from an immemorial past, tribes whose priests dance in honor
of the serpent and worship the spirits of the wolf and the bear. Far and
wide, all the continents are open to him as they never were to any of
his forefathers; the Nile and the Paraguay are easy of access, and the
borderland between savagery and civilization; and the veil of the past
has been lifted so that he can dimly see how, in time immeasurably
remote, his ancestors--no less remote--led furtive lives among uncouth
and terrible beasts, whose kind has perished utterly from the face of
the earth. He will take books with him as he journeys; for the keenest
enjoyment of the wilderness is reserved for him who enjoys also the
garnered wisdom of the present and the past. He will take pleasure in
the companionship of the men of the open; in South America, the daring
and reckless horsemen who guard the herds of the grazing country, and
the dark-skinned paddlers who guide their clumsy dugouts down the
dangerous equatorial rivers; the white and red and half-breed hunters of
the Rockies, and of the Canadian woodland; and in Africa the faithful
black gun-bearers who have stood steadily at his elbow when the lion
came on with coughing grunts, or when the huge mass of the charging
elephant burst asunder the vine-tangled branches.
The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the
edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of present
travel. He can see the red splendor of desert sunsets, and the unearthly
glory of the afterglow on the battlements of desolate mountains. In
sapphire gulfs of ocean he can visit islets, above which the wings of
myriads of sea-fowl make a kind of shifting cuneiform script in the air.
He can ride along the brink of the stupendous cliff-walled canyon, where
eagles soar below him, and cougars make their lairs on the ledges and
harry the big-horned sheep. He can journey through the northern forests,
the home of the giant moose, the forests of fragrant and murmuring life
in summer, the iron-bound and melancholy forests of winter.
The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL, January 1, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A COUGAR HUNT ON THE RIM OF THE GRAND CANYON 1
II. ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 29
III. THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 63
IV. THE RANCHLAND OF ARGENTINA AND SOUTHERN BRAZIL 98
V. A CHILEAN RONDEO 117
VI. ACROSS THE ANDES AND NORTHERN PATAGONIA 130
VII. WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 152
VIII. PRIMITIVE MAN; AND THE HORSE, THE LION, AND THE ELEPHANT 190
IX. BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN 259
X. BIRD RESERVES AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI 274
XI. A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 318
APPENDICES:
A 359
B 366
ILLUSTRATIONS
On the brink of the Grand Canyon _Frontispiece_
From a painting by Theodore B. Pitman, reproduced in
color.
Colonel Roosevelt and Arthur Lirette with antlers
of moose shot September 19, 1915 _Facing page 348_
From a photograph by Alexander Lambert, M.D.
Antlers of moose shot September 19, 1915, with
Springfield rifle No. 6000, Model 1903 _Page 356_
A BOOK-LOVER'S
HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
Come away! Come away! There's a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black
water;
There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that seeks to send us back to the arms of those that love us.
* * * * *
Come away! come away!--or the roving fiend will hold us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON.
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
CHAPTER I
A COUGAR HUNT ON THE RIM OF THE GRAND CANYON
On July 14, 1913, our party gathered at the comfortable El Tovar Hotel,
on the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and therefore
overlooking the most wonderful scenery in the world. The moon was full.
Dim, vast, mysterious, the canyon lay in the shimmering radiance. To all
else that is strange and beautiful in nature the Canyon stands as Karnak
and Baalbec, seen by moonlight, stand to all other ruined temples and
palaces of the bygone ages.
With me were my two younger sons, Archie and Quentin, aged nineteen and
fifteen respectively, and a cousin of theirs, Nicholas, aged twenty. The
cousin had driven our horses, and what outfit we did not ourselves
carry, from southern Arizona to the north side of the canyon, and had
then crossed the canyon to meet us. The youngest one of the three had
not before been on such a trip as that we intended to take; but the two
elder boys, for their good fortune, had formerly been at the Evans
School in Mesa, Arizona, and among the by-products of their education
was a practical and working familiarity with ranch life, with the
round-up, and with travelling through the desert and on the mountains.
Jesse Cummings, of Mesa, was along to act as cook, packer, and
horse-wrangler, helped in all three branches by the two elder boys; he
was a Kentuckian by birth, and a better man for our trip and a stancher
friend could not have been found.
On the 15th we went down to the bottom of the canyon. There we were to
have been met by our outfit with two men whom we had engaged; but they
never turned up, and we should have been in a bad way had not Mr.
Stevenson, of the Bar Z Cattle Company, come down the trail behind us,
while the foreman of the Bar Z, Mr. Mansfield, appeared to meet him, on
the opposite side of the rushing, muddy torrent of the Colorado.
Mansfield worked us across on the trolley which spans the river; and
then we joined in and worked Stevenson, and some friends he had with
him, across. Among us all we had food enough for dinner and for a light
breakfast, and we had our bedding. With characteristic cattleman's
generosity, our new friends turned over to us two pack-mules, which
could carry our bedding and the like, and two spare saddle-horses--both
the mules and the spare saddle-horses having been brought down by
Mansfield because of a lucky mistake as to the number of men he was to
meet.
Mansfield was a representative of the best type of old-style ranch
foreman. It is a hard climb out of the canyon on the north side, and
Mansfield was bound that we should have an early start. He was up at
half-past one in the morning; we breakfasted on a few spoonfuls of mush;
packed the mules and saddled the horses; and then in the sultry
darkness, which in spite of the moon filled the bottom of the stupendous
gorge, we started up the Bright Angel trail. Cummings and the two elder
boys walked; the rest of us were on horseback. The trail crossed and
recrossed the rapid brook, and for rods at a time went up its
bowlder-filled bed; groping and stumbling, we made our blind way along
it; and over an hour passed before the first grayness of the dawn
faintly lighted our footsteps.
At last we left the stream bed, and the trail climbed the sheer slopes
and zigzagged upward through the breaks in the cliff walls. At one place
the Bar Z men showed us where one of their pack-animals had lost his
footing and fallen down the mountainside a year previously. It was eight
hours before we topped the rim and came out on the high, wooded, broken
plateau which at this part of its course forms the northern barrier of
the deep-sunk Colorado River. Three or four miles farther on we found
the men who were to have met us; they were two days behindhand, so we
told them we would not need them, and reclaimed what horses, provisions,
and other outfit were ours. With Cummings and the two elder boys we were
quite competent to take care of ourselves under all circumstances, and
extra men, tents, and provisions merely represented a slight, and
dispensable, increase in convenience and comfort.
As it turned out, there was no loss even of comfort. We went straight to
the cabin of the game warden, Uncle Jim Owens; and he instantly accepted
us as his guests, treated us as such, and accompanied us throughout our
fortnight's stay north of the river. A kinder host and better companion
in a wild country could not be found. Through him we hired a very good
fellow, a mining prospector, who stayed with us until we crossed the
Colorado at Lee's Ferry. He was originally a New York State man, who had
grown up in Montana, and had prospected through the mountains from the
Athabaska River to the Mexican boundary. Uncle Jim was a Texan, born at
San Antonio, and raised in the Panhandle, on the Goodnight ranch. In his
youth he had seen the thronging myriads of bison, and taken part in the
rough life of the border, the life of the cow-men, the buffalo-hunters,
and the Indian-fighters. He was by instinct a man of the right kind in
all relations; and he early hailed with delight the growth of the
movement among our people to put a stop to the senseless and wanton
destruction of our wild life. Together with his--and my--friend Buffalo
Jones he had worked for the preservation of the scattered bands of
bison; he was keenly interested not only in the preservation of the
forests but in the preservation of the game. He had been two years
buffalo warden in the Yellowstone National Park. Then he had come to the
Colorado National Forest Reserve and Game Reserve, where he had been
game warden for over six years at the time of our trip. He has given
zealous and efficient service to the people as a whole; for which, by
the way, his salary has been an inadequate return. One important feature
of his work is to keep down the larger beasts and birds of prey, the
arch-enemies of the deer, mountain-sheep, and grouse; and the most
formidable among these foes of the harmless wild life are the cougars.
At the time of our visit he owned five hounds, which he had trained
especially, as far as his manifold duties gave him the time, to the
chase of cougars and bobcats. Coyotes were plentiful, and he shot these
wherever the chance offered; but coyotes are best kept down by poison,
and poison cannot be used where any man is keeping the hounds with which
alone it is possible effectively to handle the cougars.
At this point the Colorado, in its deep gulf, bends south, then west,
then north, and incloses on three sides the high plateau which is the
heart of the forest and game reserve. It was on this plateau, locally
known as Buckskin Mountain, that we spent the next fortnight. The
altitude is from eight thousand to nearly ten thousand feet, and the
climate is that of the far north. Spring does not come until June; the
snow lies deep for seven months. We were there in midsummer, but the
thermometer went down at night to 36, 34, and once to 33 degrees
Fahrenheit; there was hoarfrost in the mornings. Sound was our sleep
under our blankets, in the open, or under a shelf of rock, or beneath a
tent, or most often under a thickly leaved tree. Throughout the day the
air was cool and bracing.
Although we reached the plateau in mid-July, the spring was but just
coming to an end. Silver-voiced Rocky Mountain hermit-thrushes chanted
divinely from the deep woods. There were multitudes of flowers, of
which, alas! I know only a very few, and these by their vernacular
names; for as yet there is no such handbook for the flowers of the
southern Rocky Mountains as, thanks to Mrs. Frances Dana, we have for
those of the Eastern States, and, thanks to Miss Mary Elizabeth Parsons,
for those of California. The sego lilies, looking like very handsome
Eastern trilliums, were as plentiful as they were beautiful; and there
were the striking Indian paint-brushes, fragrant purple locust blooms,
the blossoms of that strange bush the plumed acacia, delicately
beautiful white columbines, bluebells, great sheets of blue lupin, and
the tall, crowded spikes of the brilliant red bell--and innumerable
others. The rainfall is light and the ground porous; springs are few,
and brooks wanting; but the trees are handsome. In a few places the
forest is dense; in most places it is sufficiently open to allow a
mountain-horse to twist in and out among the tree trunks at a smart
canter. The tall yellow pines are everywhere; the erect spires of the
mountain-spruce and of the blue-tipped Western balsam shoot up around
their taller cousins, and the quaking asps, the aspens with their
ever-quivering leaves and glimmering white boles, are scattered among
and beneath the conifers, or stand in groves by themselves. Blue grouse
were plentiful--having increased greatly, partly because of the war
waged by Uncle Jim against their foes the great horned owls; and among
the numerous birds were long-crested, dark-blue jays, pinyon-jays,
doves, band-tailed pigeons, golden-winged flickers, chickadees, juncos,
mountain-bluebirds, thistle-finches, and Louisiana tanagers. A very
handsome cock tanager, the orange yellow of its plumage dashed with red
on the head and throat, flew familiarly round Uncle Jim's cabin, and
spent most of its time foraging in the grass. Once three birds flew by
which I am convinced were the strange and interesting evening grosbeaks.
Chipmunks and white-footed mice lived in the cabin, the former very bold
and friendly; in fact, the chipmunks, of several species, were
everywhere; and there were gophers or rock-squirrels, and small
tree-squirrels, like the Eastern chickarees, and big tree-squirrels--the
handsomest squirrels I have ever seen--with black bodies and bushy white
tails. These last lived in the pines, were diurnal in their habits, and
often foraged among the fallen cones on the ground; and they were
strikingly conspicuous.
We met, and were most favorably impressed by, the forest supervisor, and
some of his rangers. This forest and game reserve is thrown open to
grazing, as with all similar reserves. Among the real settlers, the
home-makers of sense and farsightedness, there is a growing belief in
the wisdom of the policy of the preservation of the national resources
by the National Government. On small, permanent farms, the owner, if
reasonably intelligent, will himself preserve his own patrimony; but
everywhere the uncontrolled use in common of the public domain has meant
reckless, and usually wanton, destruction. All the public domain that is
used should be used under strictly supervised governmental lease; that
is, the lease system should be applied everywhere substantially as it is
now applied in the forest. In every case the small neighboring settlers,
the actual home-makers, should be given priority of chance to lease the
land in reasonable sized tracts. Continual efforts are made by
demagogues and by unscrupulous agitators to excite hostility to the
forest policy of the government; and needy men who are short-sighted and
unscrupulous join in the cry, and play into the hands of the corrupt
politicians who do the bidding of the big and selfish exploiters of the
public domain. One device of these politicians is through their
representatives in Congress to cut down the appropriation for the forest
service; and in consequence the administrative heads of the service, in
the effort to be economical, are sometimes driven to the expedient of
trying to replace the permanently employed experts by short-term men,
picked up at haphazard, and hired only for the summer season. This is
all wrong: first, because the men thus hired give very inferior service;
and, second, because the government should be a model employer, and
should not set a vicious example in hiring men under conditions that
tend to create a shifting class of laborers who suffer from all the
evils of unsteady employment, varied by long seasons of idleness. At
this time the best and most thoughtful farmers are endeavoring to devise
means for doing away with the system of employing farm-hands in mass for
a few months and then discharging them; and the government should not
itself have recourse to this thoroughly pernicious system.
The preservation of game and of wild life generally--aside from the
noxious species--on these reserves is of incalculable benefit to the
people as a whole. As the game increases in these national refuges and
nurseries it overflows into the surrounding country. Very wealthy men
can have private game-preserves of their own. But the average man of
small or moderate means can enjoy the vigorous pastime of the chase, and
indeed can enjoy wild nature, only if there are good general laws,
properly enforced, for the preservation of the game and wild life, and
if, furthermore, there are big parks or reserves provided for the use of
all our people, like those of the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, and the
Colorado.
A small herd of bison has been brought to the reserve; it is slowly
increasing. It is privately owned, one-third of the ownership being in
Uncle Jim, who handles the herd. The government should immediately buy
this herd. Everything should be done to increase the number of bison on
the public reservations.
The chief game animal of the Colorado Canyon reserve is the Rocky
Mountain blacktail, or mule, deer. The deer have increased greatly in
numbers since the reserve was created, partly because of the stopping of
hunting by men, and even more because of the killing off of the cougars.
The high plateau is their summer range; in the winter the bitter cold
and driving snow send them and the cattle, as well as the bands of wild
horses, to the lower desert country. For some cause, perhaps the
limestone soil, their antlers are unusually stout and large. We found
the deer tame and plentiful, and as we rode or walked through the forest
we continually came across them--now a doe with her fawn, now a party of
does and fawns, or a single buck, or a party of bucks. The antlers were
still in the velvet. Does would stand and watch us go by within fifty or
a hundred yards, their big ears thrown forward; while the fawns stayed
hid near by. Sometimes we roused the pretty spotted fawns, and watched
them dart away, the embodiments of delicate grace. One buck, when a
hound chased it, refused to run and promptly stood at bay; another buck
jumped and capered, and also refused to run, as we passed at but a few
yards' distance. One of the most beautiful sights I ever saw was on this
trip. We were slowly riding through the open pine forest when we came on
a party of seven bucks. Four were yearlings or two-year-olds; but three
were mighty master bucks, and their velvet-clad antlers made them look
as if they had rocking-chairs on their heads. Stately of port and
bearing, they walked a few steps at a time, or stood at gaze on the
carpet of brown needles strewn with cones; on their red coats the
flecked and broken sun-rays played; and as we watched them, down the
aisles of tall tree trunks the odorous breath of the pines blew in our
faces.
The deadly enemies of the deer are the cougars. They had been very
plentiful all over the table-land until Uncle Jim thinned them out,
killing between two and three hundred. Usually their lairs are made in
the well-nigh inaccessible ruggedness of the canyon itself. Those which
dwelt in the open forest were soon killed off. Along the part of the
canyon where we hunted there was usually an upper wall of sheer white
cliffs; then came a very steep slope covered by a thick scrub of dwarf
oak and locust, with an occasional pinyon or pine; and then another and
deeper wall of vermilion cliffs. It was along this intermediate slope
that the cougars usually passed the day. At night they came up through
some gorge or break in the cliff and rambled through the forests and
along the rim after the deer. They are the most successful of all
still-hunters, killing deer much more easily than a wolf can; and those
we killed were very fat.
Cougars are strange and interesting creatures. They are among the most
successful and to their prey the most formidable beasts of rapine in the
world. Yet when themselves attacked they are the least dangerous of all
beasts of prey, except hyenas. Their every movement is so lithe and
stealthy, they move with such sinuous and noiseless caution, and are
such past masters in the art of concealment, that they are hardly ever
seen unless roused by dogs. In the wilds they occasionally kill wapiti,
and often bighorn sheep and white goats; but their favorite prey is the
deer.
Among domestic animals, while they at times kill all, including,
occasionally, horned cattle, they are especially destructive to horses.
Among the first bands of horses brought to this plateau there were some
of which the cougars killed every foal. The big males attacked
full-grown horses. Uncle Jim had killed one big male which had killed a
large draft-horse, and another which had killed two saddle-horses and a
pack-mule, although the mule had a bell on its neck, which it was
mistakenly supposed would keep the cougar away. We saw the skeleton of
one of the saddle-horses. It was killed when snow was on the ground, and
when Uncle Jim first saw the carcass the marks of the struggle were
plain. The cougar sprang on its neck, holding the face with the claws of
one paw, while his fangs tore at the back of the neck, just at the base
of the skull; the other fore paw was on the other side of the neck, and
the hind claws tore the withers and one shoulder and flank. The horse
struggled thirty yards or so before he fell, and never rose again. The
draft-horse was seized in similar fashion. It went but twenty yards
before falling; then in the snow could be seen the marks where it had
struggled madly on its side, plunging in a circle, and the marks of the
hind feet of the cougar in an outside circle, while the fangs and fore
talons of the great cat never ceased tearing the prey. In this case the
fore claws so ripped and tore the neck and throat that it was doubtful
whether they, and not the teeth, had not given the fatal wounds.
We came across the bodies of a number of deer that had been killed by
cougars. Generally the remains were in such condition that we could not
see how the killing had been done. In one or two cases the carcasses
were sufficiently fresh for us to examine them carefully. One doe had
claw marks on her face, but no fang marks on the head or neck;
apparently the neck had been broken by her own plunging fall; then the
cougar had bitten a hole in the flank and eaten part of one haunch; but
it had not disembowelled its prey, as an African lion would have done.
Another deer, a buck, was seized in similar manner; but the death-wound
was inflicted with the teeth, in singular fashion, a great hole being
torn into the chest, where the neck joins the shoulder. Evidently there
is no settled and invariable method of killing. We saw no signs of any
cougar being injured in the struggle; the prey was always seized
suddenly and by surprise, and in such fashion that it could make no
counter-attack.
Few African leopards would attack such quarry as the big male cougars
do. Yet the leopard sometimes preys on man, and it is the boldest and
most formidable of fighters when brought to bay. The cougar, on the
contrary, is the least dangerous to man of all the big cats. There are
authentic instances of its attacking man; but they are not merely rare
but so wholly exceptional that in practise they can be entirely
disregarded. There is no more need of being frightened when sleeping in,
or wandering after nightfall through, a forest infested by cougars than
if they were so many tom-cats. Moreover, when itself assailed by either
dogs or men the cougar makes no aggressive fight. It will stay in a tree
for hours, kept there by a single dog which it could kill at once if it
had the heart--and this although if hungry it will itself attack and
kill any dog, and on occasions even a big wolf. If the dogs--or
men--come within a few feet, it will inflict formidable wounds with its
claws and teeth, the former being used to hold the assailant while the
latter inflict the fatal bite. But it fights purely on the defensive,
whereas the leopard readily assumes the offensive and often charges, at
headlong, racing speed, from a distance of fifty or sixty yards. It is
absolutely safe to walk up to within ten yards of a cougar at bay,
whether wounded or unwounded, and to shoot it at leisure.
Cougars are solitary beasts. When full-grown the females outnumber the
males about three to one; and the sexes stay together for only a few
days at mating-time. The female rears her kittens alone, usually in some
cave; the male would be apt to kill them if he could get at them. The
young are playful. Uncle Jim once brought back to his cabin a young
cougar, two or three months old. At the time he had a hound puppy named
Pot--he was an old dog, the most dependable in the pack, when we made
our hunt. Pot had lost his mother; Uncle Jim was raising him on canned
milk, and, as it was winter, kept him at night in a German sock. The
young cougar speedily accepted Pot as a playmate, to be enjoyed and
tyrannized over. The two would lap out of the same dish; but when the
milk was nearly lapped up, the cougar would put one paw on Pot's face,
and hold him firmly while it finished the dish itself. Then it would
seize Pot in its fore paws and toss him up, catching him again; while
Pot would occasionally howl dismally, for the young cougar had sharp
little claws. Finally the cougar would tire of the play, and then it
would take Pot by the back of the neck, carry him off, and put him down
in his box by the German sock.
When we started on our cougar hunt there were seven of us, with six
pack-animals. The latter included one mule, three donkeys--two of them,
Ted and Possum, very wise donkeys--and two horses. The saddle-animals
included two mules and five horses, one of which solemnly carried a
cow-bell. It was a characteristic old-time Western outfit. We met with
the customary misadventures of such a trip, chiefly in connection with
our animals. At night they were turned loose to feed, most of them with
hobbles, some of them with bells. Before dawn, two or three of the
party--usually including one, and sometimes both, of the elder
boys--were off on foot, through the chilly dew, to bring them in.
Usually this was a matter of an hour or two; but once it took a day, and
twice it took a half-day. Both breaking camp and making camp, with a
pack-outfit, take time; and in our case each of the packers, including
the two elder boys, used his own hitch--single-diamond, squaw hitch,
cow-man's hitch, miner's hitch, Navajo hitch, as the case might be. As
for cooking and washing dishes--why, I wish that the average
tourist-sportsman, the city-hunter-with-a-guide, would once in a while
have to cook and wash dishes for himself; it would enable him to grasp
the reality of things. We were sometimes nearly drowned out by heavy
rain-storms. We had good food; but the only fresh meat we had was the
cougar meat. This was delicious; quite as good as venison. Yet men
rarely eat cougar flesh.
Cougars should be hunted when snow is on the ground. It is difficult for
hounds to trail them in hot weather, when there is no water and the
ground is dry and hard. However, we had to do the best we could; and
the frequent rains helped us. On most of the hunting days we rode along
the rim of the canyon and through the woods, hour after hour, until the
dogs grew tired, or their feet sore, so that we deemed it best to turn
toward camp; having either struck no trail or else a trail so old that
the hounds could not puzzle it out. I did not have a rifle, wishing the
boys to do the shooting. The two elder boys had tossed up for the first
shot, Nick winning. In cougar hunting the shot is usually much the least
interesting and important part of the performance. The credit belongs to
the hounds, and to the man who hunts the hounds. Uncle Jim hunted his
hounds excellently. He had neither horn nor whip; instead, he threw
pebbles, with much accuracy of aim, at any recalcitrant dog--and several
showed a tendency to hunt deer or coyote. "They think they know best and
needn't obey me unless I have a nose-bag full of rocks," observed Uncle
Jim.
Twice we had lucky days. On the first occasion we all seven left camp by
sunrise with the hounds. We began with an hour's chase after a bobcat,
which dodged back and forth over and under the rim rock, and finally
escaped along a ledge in the cliff wall. At about eleven we struck a
cougar trail of the night before. It was a fine sight to see the hounds
running it through the woods in full cry, while we loped after them.
After one or two checks, they finally roused the cougar, a big male,
from a grove of aspens at the head of a great gorge which broke through
the cliffs into the canyon. Down the gorge went the cougar, and then
along the slope between the white cliffs and the red; and after some
delay in taking the wrong trail, the hounds followed him. The gorge was
impassable for horses, and we rode along the rim, looking down into the
depths, from which rose the chiming of the hounds. At last a change in
the sound showed that they had him treed; and after a while we saw them
far below under a pine, across the gorge, and on the upper edge of the
vermilion cliff wall. Down we went to them, scrambling and sliding; down
a break in the cliffs, round the head of the gorge just before it broke
off into a side-canyon, through the thorny scrub which tore our hands
and faces, along the slope where, if a man started rolling, he never
would stop until life had left his body. Before we reached him the
cougar leaped from the tree and tore off, with his big tail stretched
straight as a bar behind him; but a cougar is a short-winded beast, and
a couple of hundred yards on, the hounds put him up another tree.
Thither we went.
It was a wild sight. The maddened hounds bayed at the foot of the pine.
Above them, in the lower branches, stood the big horse-killing cat, the
destroyer of the deer, the lord of stealthy murder, facing his doom with
a heart both craven and cruel. Almost beneath him the vermilion cliffs
fell sheer a thousand feet without a break. Behind him lay the Grand
Canyon in its awful and desolate majesty.
Nicholas shot true. With his neck broken, the cougar fell from the tree,
and the body was clutched by Uncle Jim and Archie before it could roll
over the cliff--while I experienced a moment's lively doubt as to
whether all three might not waltz into the abyss together. Cautiously we
dragged him along the rim to another tree, where we skinned him. Then,
after a hard pull out of the canyon, we rejoined the horses; rain came
on; and, while the storm pelted against our slickers and down-drawn
slouch-hats, we rode back to our water-drenched camp.
On our second day of success only three of us went out--Uncle Jim,
Archie, and I. Unfortunately, Quentin's horse went lame, that morning,
and he had to stay with the pack-train. For two or three hours we rode
through the woods and along the rim of the canyon. Then the hounds
struck a cold trail and began to puzzle it out. They went slowly along
to one of the deep, precipice-hemmed gorges which from time to time
break the upper cliff wall of the canyon; and after some busy nose-work
they plunged into its depths. We led our horses to the bottom, slipping,
sliding, and pitching, and clambered, panting and gasping, up the other
side. Then we galloped along the rim. Far below us we could at times
hear the hounds. One of them was a bitch, with a squealing voice. The
other dogs were under the first cliffs, working out a trail, which was
evidently growing fresher. Much farther down we could hear the squealing
of the bitch, apparently on another trail. However, the trails came
together, and the shrill yelps of the bitch were drowned in the
deeper-toned chorus of the other hounds, as the fierce intensity of the
cry told that the game was at last roused. Soon they had the cougar
treed. Like the first, it was in a pine at the foot of the steep slope,
just above the vermilion cliff wall. We scrambled down to the beast, a
big male, and Archie broke its neck; in such a position it was advisable
to kill it outright, as, if it struggled at all, it was likely to slide
over the edge of the cliff and fall a thousand feet sheer.
It was a long way down the slope, with its jungle of dwarf oak and
locust, and the climb back, with the skin and flesh of the cougar, would
be heart-breaking. So, as there was a break in the cliff line above,
Uncle Jim suggested to Archie to try to lead down our riding animals
while he, Uncle Jim, skinned the cougar. By the time the skin was off,
Archie turned up with our two horses and Uncle Jim's mule--an animal
which galloped as freely as a horse. Then the skin and flesh were packed
behind his and Uncle Jim's saddles, and we started to lead the three
animals up the steep, nearly sheer mountainside. We had our hands full.
The horses and mule could barely make it. Finally the saddles of both
the laden animals slipped, and Archie's horse in his fright nearly went
over the cliff--it was a favorite horse of his, a black horse from the
plains below, with good blood in it, but less at home climbing cliffs
than were the mountain horses. On that slope anything that started
rolling never stopped unless it went against one of the rare pine or
pinyon trees. The horse plunged and reared; Archie clung to its head for
dear life, trying to prevent it from turning down-hill, while Uncle Jim
sought to undo the saddle and I clutched the bridle of his mule and of
my horse and kept them quiet. Finally the frightened black horse sank on
his knees with his head on Archie's lap; the saddle was taken off--and
promptly rolled down-hill fifty or sixty yards before it fetched up
against a pinyon; we repacked, and finally reached the top of the rim.
Meanwhile the hounds had again started, and we concluded that the bitch
must have been on the trail of a different animal, after all. By the
time we were ready to proceed they were out of hearing, and we
completely lost track of them. So Uncle Jim started in the direction he
deemed it probable they would take, and after a while we were joined by
Pot. Evidently the dogs were tired and thirsty and had scattered. In
about an hour, as we rode through the open pine forest across hills and
valleys, Archie and I caught, very faintly, a far-off baying note. Uncle
Jim could not hear it, but we rode toward the spot, and after a time
caught the note again. Soon Pot heard it and trotted toward the sound.
Then we came over a low hill crest, and when half-way down we saw a
cougar crouched in a pine on the opposite slope, while one of the
hounds, named Ranger, uttered at short intervals a husky bay as he kept
his solitary vigil at the foot of the tree. Archie insisted that I
should shoot, and thrust the rifle into my hand as we galloped down the
incline. The cougar, a young and active female, leaped out of the tree
and rushed off at a gait that for a moment left both dogs behind; and
after her we tore at full speed through the woods and over rocks and
logs. A few hundred yards farther on her bolt was shot, and the dogs,
and we also, were at her heels. She went up a pine which had no branches
for the lower thirty or forty feet. It was interesting to see her climb.
Her two fore paws were placed on each side of the stem, and her hind
paws against it, all the claws digging into the wood; her body was held
as clear of the tree as if she had been walking on the ground, the legs
being straight, and she walked or ran up the perpendicular stem with as
much daylight between her body and the trunk as there was between her
body and the earth when she was on the ground. As she faced us among the
branches I could only get a clear shot into her chest where the neck
joins the shoulder; down she came, but on the ground she jumped to her
feet, ran fifty yards with the dogs at her heels, turned to bay in some
fallen timber, and dropped dead.
The last days before we left this beautiful holiday region we spent on
the table-land called Greenland, which projects into the canyon east of
Bright Angel. We were camped by the Dripping Springs, in singular and
striking surroundings. A long valley leads south through the table-land;
and just as it breaks into a sheer walled chasm which opens into one of
the side loops of the great canyon, the trail turns into a natural
gallery along the face of the cliff. For a couple of hundred yards a
rock shelf a dozen feet wide runs under a rock overhang which often
projects beyond it. The gallery is in some places twenty feet high; in
other places a man on horseback must stoop his head as he rides. Then,
at a point where the shelf broadens, the clear spring pools of living
water, fed by constant dripping from above, lie on the inner side next
to and under the rock wall. A little beyond these pools, with the chasm
at our feet, and its opposite wall towering immediately in front of us,
we threw down our bedding and made camp. Darkness fell; the stars were
brilliant overhead; the fire of pitchy pine stumps flared; and in the
light of the wavering flames the cliff walls and jutting rocks
momentarily shone with ghastly clearness, and as instantly vanished in
utter gloom.
From the southernmost point of this table-land the view of the canyon
left the beholder solemn with the sense of awe. At high noon, under the
unveiled sun, every tremendous detail leaped in glory to the sight; yet
in hue and shape the change was unceasing from moment to moment. When
clouds swept the heavens, vast shadows were cast; but so vast was the
canyon that these shadows seemed but patches of gray and purple and
umber. The dawn and the evening twilight were brooding mysteries over
the dusk of the abyss; night shrouded its immensity, but did not hide
it; and to none of the sons of men is it given to tell of the wonder and
splendor of sunrise and sunset in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.