WILDERNESS RESERVES; THE YELLOWSTONE PARK
The most striking and melancholy feature in connection with American big
game is the rapidity with which it has vanished. When, just before the
outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the rifle-bearing hunters of the
backwoods first penetrated the great forests west of the Alleghanies,
deer, elk, black bear, and even buffalo, swarmed in what are now the
States of Kentucky and Tennessee, and the country north of the Ohio was
a great and almost virgin hunting-ground. From that day to this the
shrinkage has gone on, only partially checked here and there, and never
arrested as a whole. As a matter of historical accuracy, however, it is
well to bear in mind that many writers, in lamenting this extinction of
the game, have from time to time anticipated or overstated the facts.
Thus as good an author as Colonel Richard Irving Dodge spoke of the
buffalo as practically extinct, while the great Northern herd still
existed in countless thousands. As early as 1880 sporting authorities
spoke not only of the buffalo, but of the elk, deer, and antelope as no
longer to be found in plenty; and recently one of the greatest of living
hunters has stated that it is no longer possible to find any American
wapiti bearing heads comparable with the red deer of Hungary. As a
matter of fact, in the early eighties there were still large regions
where every species of game that had ever been known within historic
times on our continent was still to be found as plentifully as ever. In
the early nineties there were still big tracts of wilderness in which
this was true of all game except the buffalo; for instance, it was true
of the elk in portions of northwestern Wyoming, of the blacktail in
northwestern Colorado, of the whitetail here and there in the Indian
Territory, and of the antelope in parts of New Mexico. Even at the
present day there are smaller, but still considerable, regions where
these four animals are yet found in abundance; and I have seen antlers
of wapiti shot since 1900 far surpassing any of which there is record
from Hungary. In New England and New York, as well as New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia, the whitetail deer is more plentiful than it was thirty
years ago, and in Maine (and to an even greater extent in New Brunswick)
the moose, and here and there the caribou, have, on the whole, increased
during the same period. There is yet ample opportunity for the big game
hunter in the United States, Canada and Alaska.
While it is necessary to give this word of warning to those who, in
praising time past, always forget the opportunities of the present, it
is a thousandfold more necessary to remember that these opportunities
are, nevertheless, vanishing; and if we are a sensible people, we will
make it our business to see that the process of extinction is arrested.
At the present moment the great herds of caribou are being butchered, as
in the past the great herds of bison and wapiti have been butchered.
Every believer in manliness, and therefore in manly sport, and every
lover of nature, every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the
wilderness and of wild life, should strike hands with the far-sighted
men who wish to preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep
our forests and our game beasts, game birds, and game fish—indeed, all
the living creatures of prairie, and woodland, and seashore—from wanton
destruction.
Above all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is
essentially a democratic movement. It is entirely in our power as a
nation to preserve large tracts of wilderness, which are valueless for
agricultural purposes and unfit for settlement, as playgrounds for rich
and poor alike, and to preserve the game so that it shall continue to
exist for the benefit of all lovers of nature, and to give reasonable
opportunities for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether he is
or is not a man of means. But this end can only be achieved by wise laws
and by a resolute enforcement of the laws. Lack of such legislation and
administration will result in harm to all of us, but most of all in harm
to the nature lover who does not possess vast wealth. Already there have
sprung up here and there through the country, as in New Hampshire and
the Adirondacks, large private preserves. These preserves often serve a
useful purpose, and should be encouraged within reasonable limits; but
it would be a misfortune if they increased beyond a certain extent or if
they took the place of great tracts of wild land, which continue as such
either because of their very nature, or because of the protection of the
State exerted in the form of making them State or national parks or
reserves. It is foolish to regard proper game laws as undemocratic,
unrepublican. On the contrary, they are essentially in the interests of
the people as a whole, because it is only through their enactment and
enforcement that the people as a whole can preserve the game and can
prevent its becoming purely the property of the rich, who are able to
create and maintain extensive private preserves. The wealthy man can get
hunting anyhow, but the man of small means is dependent solely upon wise
and well-executed game laws for his enjoyment of the sturdy pleasure of
the chase. In Maine, in Vermont, in the Adirondacks, even in parts of
Massachusetts and on Long Island, people have waked up to this fact,
particularly so far as the common whitetail deer is concerned, and in
Maine also as regards the moose and caribou. The effect is shown in the
increase in these animals. Such game protection results, in the first
place, in securing to the people who live in the neighborhood permanent
opportunities for hunting; and in the next place, it provides no small
source of wealth to the locality because of the visitors which it
attracts. A deer wild in the woods is worth to the people of the
neighborhood many times the value of its carcass, because of the way it
attracts sportsmen, who give employment and leave money behind them.
True sportsmen, worthy of the name, men who shoot only in season and in
moderation, do no harm whatever to game. The most objectionable of all
game destroyers is, of course, the kind of game-butcher who simply kills
for the sake of the record of slaughter, who leaves deer and ducks and
prairie-chickens to rot after he has slain them. Such a man is wholly
obnoxious; and, indeed, so is any man who shoots for the purpose of
establishing a record of the amount of game killed. To my mind this is
one very unfortunate feature of what is otherwise the admirably
sportsmanlike English spirit in these matters. The custom of shooting
great bags of deer, grouse, partridges, and pheasants, the keen rivalry
in making such bags, and their publication in sporting journals, are
symptoms of a spirit which is most unhealthy from every standpoint. It
is to be earnestly hoped that every American hunting or fishing club
will strive to inculcate among its own members, and in the minds of the
general public, that anything like an excessive bag, any destruction for
the sake of making a record, is to be severely reprobated.
But after all, this kind of perverted sportsman, unworthy though he be,
is not the chief actor in the destruction of our game. The professional
skin or market hunter is the real offender. Yet he is of all others the
man who would ultimately be most benefited by the preservation of the
game. The frontier settler, in a thoroughly wild country, is certain to
kill game for his own use. As long as he does no more than this, it is
hard to blame him; although if he is awake to his own interests he will
soon realize that to him, too, the live deer is worth far more than the
dead deer, because of the way in which it brings money into the
wilderness. The professional market hunter who kills game for the hide,
or for the feathers, or for the meat, or to sell antlers and other
trophies; the market men who put game in cold storage; and the rich
people, who are content to buy what they have not the skill to get by
their own exertions—these are the men who are the real enemies of game.
Where there is no law which checks the market hunters, the inevitable
result of their butchery is that the game is completely destroyed, and
with it their own means of livelihood. If, on the other hand, they were
willing to preserve it, they could make much more money by acting as
guides. In northwestern Colorado, at the present moment, there are still
blacktail deer in abundance, and some elk are left. Colorado has fairly
good game laws, but they are indifferently enforced. The country in
which the game is found can probably never support any but a very sparse
population, and a large portion of the summer range is practically
useless for settlement. If the people of Colorado generally, and above
all the people of the counties in which the game is located, would
resolutely cooperate with those of their own number who are already
alive to the importance of preserving the game, it could, without
difficulty, be kept always as abundant as it now is, and this beautiful
region would be a permanent health resort and playground for the people
of a large part of the Union. Such action would be a benefit to every
one, but it would be a benefit most of all to the people of the
immediate locality.
The practical common sense of the American people has been in no way
made more evident during the last few years than by the creation and use
of a series of large land reserves—situated for the most part on the
great plains and among the mountains of the West—intended to keep the
forests from destruction, and therefore to conserve the water supply.
These reserves are, and should be, created primarily for economic
purposes. The semi-arid regions can only support a reasonable population
under conditions of the strictest economy and wisdom in the use of the
water supply, and in addition to their other economic uses the forests
are indispensably necessary for the preservation of the water supply and
for rendering possible its useful distribution throughout the proper
seasons. In addition, however, to this economic use of the wilderness,
selected portions of it have been kept here and there in a state of
nature, not merely for the sake of preserving the forests and the water,
but for the sake of preserving all its beauties and wonders unspoiled by
greedy and short-sighted vandalism. What has been actually accomplished
in the Yellowstone Park affords the best possible object-lesson as to
the desirability and practicability of establishing such wilderness
reserves. This reserve is a natural breeding-ground and nursery for
those stately and beautiful haunters of the wilds which have now
vanished from so many of the great forests, the vast lonely plains, and
the high mountain ranges, where they once abounded.
On April 8, 1903, John Burroughs and I reached the Yellowstone Park, and
were met by Major John Pitcher of the Regular Army, the Superintendent
of the Park. The Major and I forthwith took horses; he telling me that
he could show me a good deal of game while riding up to his house at the
Mammoth Hot Springs. Hardly had we left the little town of Gardiner and
gotten within the limits of the Park before we saw prongbuck. There was
a band of at least a hundred feeding some distance from the road. We
rode leisurely toward them. They were tame compared to their kindred in
unprotected places; that is, it was easy to ride within fair rifle range
of them; and though they were not familiar in the sense that we
afterwards found the bighorn and the deer to be familiar, it was
extraordinary to find them showing such familiarity almost literally in
the streets of a frontier town. It spoke volumes for the good sense and
law-abiding spirit of the people of the town. During the two hours
following my entry into the Park we rode around the plains and lower
slopes of the foothills in the neighborhood of the mouth of the Gardiner
and we saw several hundred—probably a thousand all told—of these
antelopes. Major Pitcher informed me that all the pronghorns in the Park
wintered in this neighborhood. Toward the end of April or the first of
May they migrate back to their summering homes in the open valleys along
the Yellowstone and in the plains south of the Golden Gate. While
migrating they go over the mountains and through forests if occasion
demands. Although there are plenty of coyotes in the Park, there are no
big wolves, and save for very infrequent poachers the only enemy of the
antelope, as indeed the only enemy of all the game, is the cougar.
[Illustration:
ANTELOPE IN THE STREETS OF GARDINER
]
Cougars, known in the Park, as elsewhere through the West,as “mountain
lions,” are plentiful, having increased in numbers of recent years.
Except in the neighborhood of the Gardiner River, that is within a few
miles of Mammoth Hot Springs, I found them feeding on elk, which in the
Park far outnumber all other game put together, being so numerous that
the ravages of the cougars are of no real damage to the herds. But in
the neighborhood of the Mammoth Hot Springs the cougars are noxious
because of the antelope, mountain sheep, and deer which they kill; and
the Superintendent has imported some hounds with which to hunt them.
These hounds are managed by Buffalo Jones, a famous old plainsman, who
is now in the Park taking care of the buffalo. On this first day of my
visit to the Park I came across the carcasses of a deer and of an
antelope which the cougars had killed. On the great plains cougars
rarely get antelope, but here the country is broken so that the big cats
can make their stalks under favorable circumstances. To deer and
mountain sheep the cougar is a most dangerous enemy—much more so than
the wolf.
The antelope we saw were usually in bands of from twenty to one hundred
and fifty, and they travelled strung out almost in single file, though
those in the rear would sometimes bunch up. I did not try to stalk them,
but got as near them as I could on horseback. The closest approach I was
able to make was to within about eighty yards of two which were by
themselves—I think a doe and a last year’s fawn. As I was riding up to
them, although they looked suspiciously at me, one actually lay down.
When I was passing them at about eighty yards’ distance the big one
became nervous, gave a sudden jump, and away the two went at full speed.
Why the prongbucks were so comparatively shy I do not know, for right on
the ground with them we came upon deer, and, in the immediate
neighborhood, mountain sheep, which were absurdly tame. The mountain
sheep were nineteen in number, for the most part does and yearlings with
a couple of three-year-old rams, but not a single big fellow—for the big
fellows at this season are off by themselves, singly or in little
bunches, high up in the mountains. The band I saw was tame to a degree
matched by but few domestic animals.
They were feeding on the brink of a steep washout at the upper edge of
one of the benches on the mountain-side just below where the abrupt
slope began. They were alongside a little gully with sheer walls. I rode
my horse to within forty yards of them, one of them occasionally looking
up and at once continuing to feed. Then they moved slowly off and
leisurely crossed the gully to the other side. I dismounted, walked
around the head of the gully, and moving cautiously, but in plain sight,
came closer and closer until I was within twenty yards, when I sat down
on a stone and spent certainly twenty minutes looking at them. They paid
hardly any attention to my presence—certainly no more than well-treated
domestic creatures would pay. One of the rams rose on his hind legs,
leaning his fore-hoofs against a little pine tree, and browsed the ends
of the budding branches. The others grazed on the short grass and
herbage or lay down and rested—two of the yearlings several times
playfully butting at one another. Now and then one would glance in my
direction without the slightest sign of fear—barely even of curiosity. I
have no question whatever but that with a little patience this
particular band could be made to feed out of a man’s hand. Major Pitcher
intends during the coming winter to feed them alfalfa—for game animals
of several kinds have become so plentiful in the neighborhood of the Hot
Springs, and the Major has grown so interested in them, that he wishes
to do something toward feeding them during the severe weather. After I
had looked at the sheep to my heart’s content, I walked back to my
horse, my departure arousing as little interest as my advent.
Soon after leaving them we began to come across blacktail deer, singly,
in twos and threes, and in small bunches of a dozen or so. They were
almost as tame as the mountain sheep, but not quite. That is, they
always looked alertly at me, and though if I stayed still they would
graze, they kept a watch over my movements and usually moved slowly off
when I got within less than forty yards of them. Up to that distance,
whether on foot or on horseback, they paid but little heed to me, and on
several occasions they allowed me to come much closer. Like the bighorn,
the blacktails at this time were grazing, not browsing; but I
occasionally saw them nibble some willow buds. During the winter they
had been browsing. As we got close to the Hot Springs we came across
several whitetail in an open, marshy meadow. They were not quite as tame
as the blacktail, although without any difficulty I walked up to within
fifty yards of them. Handsome though the blacktail is, the whitetail is
the most beautiful of all deer when in motion, because of the springy,
bounding grace of its trot and canter, and the way it carries its head
and white flag aloft.
Before reaching the Mammoth Hot Springs we also saw a number of ducks in
the little pools and on the Gardiner. Some of them were rather shy.
Others—probably those which, as Major Pitcher informed me, had spent the
winter there—were as tame as barn-yard fowls.
Just before reaching the post the Major took me into the big field where
Buffalo Jones had some Texas and Flathead Lake buffalo—bulls and
cows—which he was tending with solicitous care. The original stock of
buffalo in the Park have now been reduced to fifteen or twenty
individuals, and their blood is being recruited by the addition of
buffalo purchased out of the Flathead Lake and Texas Panhandle herds.
The buffalo were at first put within a wire fence, which, when it was
built, was found to have included both blacktail and whitetail deer. A
bull elk was also put in with them at one time, he having met with some
accident which made the Major and Buffalo Jones bring him in to doctor
him. When he recovered his health he became very cross. Not only would
he attack men, but also buffalo, even the old and surly master bull,
thumping them savagely with his antlers if they did anything to which he
objected. The buffalo are now breeding well.
[Illustration:
BLACKTAIL DEER ON PARADE-GROUND
]
When I reached the post and dismounted at the Major’s house, I supposed
my experiences with wild beasts were ended for the day; but this was an
error. The quarters of the officers and men and the various hotel
buildings, stables, residences of the civilian officials, etc., almost
completely surround the big parade-ground at the post, near the middle
of which stands the flag-pole, while the gun used for morning and
evening salutes is well off to one side. There are large gaps between
some of the buildings, and Major Pitcher informed me that throughout the
winter he had been leaving alfalfa on the parade-grounds, and that
numbers of blacktail deer had been in the habit of visiting it every
day, sometimes as many as seventy being on the parade-ground at once. As
spring-time came on the numbers diminished. However, in mid-afternoon,
while I was writing in my room in Major Pitcher’s house, on looking out
of the window I saw five deer on the parade-ground. They were as tame as
so many Alderney cows, and when I walked out I got within twenty yards
of them without any difficulty. It was most amusing to see them as the
time approached for the sunset gun to be fired. The notes of the
trumpeter attracted their attention at once. They all looked at him
eagerly. One of them resumed feeding, and paid no attention whatever
either to the bugle, the gun or the flag. The other four, however,
watched the preparations for firing the gun with an intent gaze, and at
the sound of the report gave two or three jumps; then instantly
wheeling, looked up at the flag as it came down. This they seemed to
regard as something rather more suspicious than the gun, and they
remained very much on the alert until the ceremony was over. Once it was
finished, they resumed feeding as if nothing had happened. Before it was
dark they trotted away from the parade-ground back to the mountains.
The next day we rode off to the Yellowstone River, camping some miles
below Cottonwood Creek. It was a very pleasant camp. Major Pitcher, an
old friend, had a first-class pack-train, so that we were as comfortable
as possible, and on such a trip there could be no pleasanter or more
interesting companion than John Burroughs—“Oom John,” as we soon grew to
call him. Where our tents were pitched the bottom of the valley was
narrow, the mountains rising steep and cliff-broken on either side.
There were quite a number of blacktail in the valley, which were tame
and unsuspicious, although not nearly as much so as those in the
immediate neighborhood of the Mammoth Hot Springs. One mid-afternoon
three of them swam across the river a hundred yards above our camp. But
the characteristic animals of the region were the elk—the wapiti. They
were certainly more numerous than when I was last through the Park
twelve years before.
In the summer the elk spread all over the interior of the Park. As
winter approaches they divide, some going north and others south. The
southern bands, which, at a guess, may possibly include ten thousand
individuals, winter out of the Park, for the most part in Jackson’s
Hole—though of course here and there within the limits of the Park a few
elk may spend both winter and summer in an unusually favorable location.
It was the members of the northern band that I met. During the winter
time they are nearly stationary, each band staying within a very few
miles of the same place, and from their size and the open nature of
their habitat it is almost as easy to count them as if they were cattle.
From a spur of Bison Peak one day, Major Pitcher, the guide Elwood
Hofer, John Burroughs and I spent about four hours with the glasses
counting and estimating the different herds within sight. After most
careful work and cautious reduction of estimates in each case to the
minimum the truth would permit, we reckoned three thousand head of elk,
all lying or feeding and all in sight at the same time. An estimate of
some fifteen thousand for the number of elk in these Northern bands
cannot be far wrong. These bands do not go out of the Park at all, but
winter just within its northern boundary. At the time when we saw them,
the snow had vanished from the bottoms of the valleys and the lower
slopes of the mountains, but remained as continuous sheets farther up
their sides. The elk were for the most part found up on the snow slopes,
occasionally singly or in small gangs—more often in bands of from fifty
to a couple of hundred. The larger bulls were highest up the mountains
and generally in small troops by themselves, although occasionally one
or two would be found associating with a big herd of cows, yearlings,
and two-year-olds. Many of the bulls had shed their antlers; many had
not. During the winter the elk had evidently done much browsing, but at
this time they were grazing almost exclusively, and seemed by preference
to seek out the patches of old grass which were last left bare by the
retreating snow. The bands moved about very little, and if one were seen
one day it was generally possible to find it within a few hundred yards
of the same spot the next day, and certainly not more than a mile or two
off. There were severe frosts at night, and occasionally light flurries
of snow; but the hardy beasts evidently cared nothing for any but heavy
storms, and seemed to prefer to lie in the snow rather than upon the
open ground. They fed at irregular hours throughout the day, just like
cattle; one band might be lying down while another was feeding. While
travelling they usually went almost in single file. Evidently the winter
had weakened them, and they were not in condition for running; for on
the one or two occasions when I wanted to see them close up I ran right
into them on horseback, both on level plains and going up hill along the
sides of rather steep mountains. One band in particular I practically
rounded up for John Burroughs, finally getting them to stand in a huddle
while he and I sat on our horses less than fifty yards off. After they
had run a little distance they opened their mouths wide and showed
evident signs of distress.
We came across a good many carcasses. Two, a bull and a cow, had died
from scab. Over half the remainder had evidently perished from cold or
starvation. The others, including a bull, three cows and a score of
yearlings, had been killed by cougars. In the Park the cougar is at
present their only animal foe. The cougars were preying on nothing but
elk in the Yellowstone Valley, and kept hanging about the neighborhood
of the big bands. Evidently they usually selected some outlying
yearling, stalked it as it lay or as it fed, and seized it by the head
and throat. The bull which they killed was in a little open valley by
himself, many miles from any other elk. The cougar which killed it,
judging from its tracks, was a big male. As the elk were evidently
rather too numerous for the feed, I do not think the cougars were doing
any damage.
Coyotes are plentiful, but the elk evidently have no dread of them. One
day I crawled up to within fifty yards of a band of elk lying down. A
coyote was walking about among them, and beyond an occasional look they
paid no heed to him. He did not venture to go within fifteen or twenty
paces of any one of them. In fact, except the cougar, I saw but one
living thing attempt to molest the elk. This was a golden eagle. We saw
several of these great birds. On one occasion we had ridden out to the
foot of a sloping mountain-side, dotted over with bands and strings of
elk amounting in the aggregate probably to a thousand head. Most of the
bands were above the snow-line—some appearing away back toward the ridge
crests, and looking as small as mice. There was one band well below the
snow-line, and toward this we rode. While the elk were not shy or wary,
in the sense that a hunter would use the words, they were by no means as
familiar as the deer; and this particular band of elk, some twenty or
thirty in all, watched us with interest as we approached. When we were
still half a mile off they suddenly started to run toward us, evidently
frightened by something. They ran quartering, and when about four
hundred yards away we saw that an eagle was after them. Soon it swooped,
and a yearling in the rear, weakly, and probably frightened by the
swoop, turned a complete somersault, and when it recovered its feet
stood still. The great bird followed the rest of the band across a
little ridge, beyond which they disappeared. Then it returned, soaring
high in the heavens, and after two or three wide circles, swooped down
at the solitary yearling, its legs hanging down. We halted at two
hundred yards to see the end. But the eagle could not quite make up its
mind to attack. Twice it hovered within a foot or two of the yearling’s
head, again flew off and again returned. Finally the yearling trotted
off after the rest of the band, and the eagle returned to the upper air.
Later we found the carcass of a yearling, with two eagles, not to
mention ravens and magpies, feeding on it; but I could not tell whether
they had themselves killed the yearling or not.
Here and there in the region where the elk were abundant we came upon
horses, which for some reason had been left out through the winter. They
were much wilder than the elk. Evidently the Yellowstone Park is a
natural nursery and breeding-ground of the elk, which here, as said
above, far outnumber all the other game put together. In the winter, if
they cannot get to open water, they eat snow; but in several places
where there had been springs which kept open all winter, we could see by
the tracks that they had been regularly used by bands of elk. The men
working at the new road along the face of the cliffs beside the
Yellowstone River near Tower Falls informed me that in October enormous
droves of elk coming from the interior of the Park and travelling
northward to the lower lands had crossed the Yellowstone just above
Tower Falls. Judging by their description, the elk had crossed by
thousands in an uninterrupted stream, the passage taking many hours. In
fact nowadays these Yellowstone elk are, with the exception of the
Arctic caribou, the only American game which at times travel in immense
droves like the buffalo of the old days.
[Illustration:
ELK IN SNOW
]
A couple of days after leaving Cottonwood Creek—where we had spent
several days—we camped at the Yellowstone Canyon below Tower Falls. Here
we saw a second band of mountain sheep, numbering only eight—none of
them old rams. We were camped on the west side of the canyon; the sheep
had their abode on the opposite side, where they had spent the winter.
It has recently been customary among some authorities, especially the
English hunters and naturalists who have written of the Asiatic sheep,
to speak as if sheep were naturally creatures of the plains rather than
mountain climbers. I know nothing of the Old World sheep, but the Rocky
Mountain bighorn is to the full as characteristic a mountain animal, in
every sense of the word, as the chamois, and, I think, as the ibex.
These sheep were well known to the road builders, who had spent the
winter in the locality. They told me they never went back on the plains,
but throughout the winter had spent their days and nights on the top of
the cliff and along its face. This cliff was an alternation of sheer
precipices and very steep inclines. When coated with ice it would be
difficult to imagine an uglier bit of climbing; but throughout the
winter, and even in the wildest storms, the sheep had habitually gone
down it to drink at the water below. When we first saw them they were
lying sunning themselves on the edge of the canyon, where the rolling
grassy country behind it broke off into the sheer descent. It was
mid-afternoon and they were under some pines. After a while they got up
and began to graze, and soon hopped unconcernedly down the side of the
cliff until they were half-way to the bottom. They then grazed along the
sides, and spent some time licking at a place where there was evidently
a mineral deposit. Before dark they all lay down again on a steeply
inclined jutting spur midway between the top and bottom of the canyon.
Next morning I thought I would like to see them close up, so I walked
down three or four miles below where the canyon ended, crossed the
stream, and came up the other side until I got on what was literally the
stamping-ground of the sheep. Their tracks showed that they had spent
their time for many weeks, and probably for all the winter, within a
very narrow radius. For perhaps a mile and a half, or two miles at the
very outside, they had wandered to and fro on the summit of the canyon,
making what was almost a well-beaten path; always very near and usually
on the edge of the cliff, and hardly ever going more than a few yards
back into the grassy plain-and-hill country. Their tracks and dung
covered the ground. They had also evidently descended into the depths of
the canyon wherever there was the slightest break or even lowering in
the upper line of the basalt cliffs. Although mountain sheep often
browse in winter, I saw but few traces of browsing here; probably on the
sheer cliff side they always get some grazing.
When I spied the band they were lying not far from the spot in which
they had lain the day before, and in the same position on the brink of
the canyon. They saw me and watched me with interest when I was two
hundred yards off, but they let me get up within forty yards and sit
down on a large stone to look at them, without running off. Most of them
were lying down, but a couple were feeding steadily throughout the time
I watched them. Suddenly one took the alarm and dashed straight over the
cliff, the others all following at once. I ran after them to the edge in
time to see the last yearling drop off the edge of the basalt cliff and
stop short on the sheer slope below, while the stones dislodged by his
hoofs rattled down the canyon. They all looked up at me with great
interest, and then strolled off to the edge of a jutting spur and lay
down almost directly underneath me and some fifty yards off. That
evening on my return to camp we watched the band make its way right down
to the river bed, going over places where it did not seem possible a
four-footed creature could pass. They halted to graze here and there,
and down the worst places they went very fast with great bounds. It was
a marvellous exhibition of climbing.
After we had finished this horseback trip we went on sleds and skis to
the upper Geyser Basin and the Falls of the Yellowstone. Although it was
the third week in April, the snow was still several feet deep, and only
thoroughly trained snow horses could have taken the sleighs along, while
around the Yellowstone Falls it was possible to move only on snowshoes.
There was little life in those woods. In the upper basin I caught a
meadow mouse on the snow; I afterwards sent it to Hart Merriam, who told
me it was of a species he had described from Idaho, _Microtus nanus_; it
had not been previously found in the Yellowstone region. We saw an
occasional pine squirrel, snowshoe rabbit or marten; and in the open
meadows around the hot waters there were Canada geese and ducks of
several species, and now and then a coyote. Around camp Clark’s crows
and Stellar’s jays, and occasionally magpies, came to pick at the
refuse; and of course they were accompanied by the whiskey jacks, which
behaved with their usual astounding familiarity. At Norris Geyser Basin
there was a perfect chorus of bird music from robins, western purple
finches, juncos and mountain bluebirds. In the woods there were mountain
chickadees and pygmy nuthatches, together with an occasional woodpecker.
In the northern country we had come across a very few blue grouse and
ruffed grouse, both as tame as possible. We had seen a pygmy owl no
larger than a robin sitting on the top of a pine in broad daylight, and
uttering at short intervals a queer un-owl-like cry.
[Illustration:
OOM JOHN
]
The birds that interested us most were the solitaires, and especially
the dippers or water-ousels. We were fortunate enough to hear the
solitaires sing not only when perched on trees, but on the wing, soaring
over a great canyon. They are striking birds in every way, and their
habit of singing while soaring, and their song, are alike noteworthy.
Once I heard a solitaire singing at the top of a canyon, and an ousel
also singing but a thousand feet below him; and in this case I thought
the ousel sang better than his unconscious rival. The ousels are to my
mind well-nigh the most attractive of all our birds, because of their
song, their extraordinary habits, their whole personality. They stay
through the winter in the Yellowstone because the waters are in many
places open. We heard them singing cheerfully, their ringing melody
having a certain suggestion of the winter wren’s. Usually they sang
while perched on some rock on the edge or in the middle of the stream;
but sometimes on the wing; and often just before dipping under the
torrent, or just after slipping out from it onto some ledge of rock or
ice. In the open places the Western meadow lark was uttering its
beautiful song; a real song as compared to the plaintive notes of its
Eastern brother, and though short, yet with continuity and tune as well
as melody. I love to hear the Eastern meadow lark in the early spring;
but I love still more the song of the Western meadow lark. No bird
escaped John Burroughs’ eye; no bird note escaped his ear.
I cannot understand why the Old World ousel should have received such
comparatively scant attention in the books, whether from nature writers
or poets; whereas our ousel has greatly impressed all who know him. John
Muir’s description comes nearest doing him justice. To me he seems a
more striking bird than for instance the skylark; though of course I not
only admire but am very fond of the skylark. There are various pipits
and larks in our own country which sing in highest air, as does the
skylark, and their songs, though not as loud, are almost as sustained;
and though they lack the finer kind of melody, so does his. The ousel,
on the contrary, is a really brilliant singer, and in his habits he is
even farther removed from the commonplace and the uninteresting than the
lark himself. Some birds, such as the ousel, the mocking-bird, the
solitaire, show marked originality, marked distinction; others do not;
the chipping sparrow, for instance, while in no way objectionable (like
the imported house sparrow), is yet a hopelessly commonplace little bird
alike in looks, habits and voice.
[Illustration:
BEARS AND TOURISTS
]
On the last day of my stay it was arranged that I should ride down from
Mammoth Hot Springs to the town of Gardiner, just outside the Park
limits, and there make an address at the laying of the corner-stone of
the arch by which the main road is to enter the Park. Some three
thousand people had gathered to attend the ceremonies. A little over a
mile from Gardiner we came down out of the hills to the flat plain; from
the hills we could see the crowd gathered around the arch waiting for me
to come. We put spurs to our horses and cantered rapidly toward the
appointed place, and on the way we passed within forty yards of a score
of blacktails, which merely moved to one side and looked at us, and
within almost as short a distance of half a dozen antelope. To any lover
of nature it could not help being a delightful thing to see the wild and
timid creatures of the wilderness rendered so tame; and their tameness
in the immediate neighborhood of Gardiner, on the very edge of the Park,
spoke volumes for the patriotic good sense of the citizens of Montana.
At times the antelope actually cross the Park line to Gardiner, which is
just outside, and feed unmolested in the very streets of the town; a
fact which shows how very far advanced the citizens of Gardiner are in
right feeling on this subject; for of course the Federal laws cease to
protect the antelope as soon as they are out of the Park. Major Pitcher
informed me that both the Montana and Wyoming people were cooperating
with him in zealous fashion to preserve the game and put a stop to
poaching. For their attitude in this regard they deserve the cordial
thanks of all Americans interested in these great popular playgrounds,
where bits of the old wilderness scenery and the old wilderness life are
to be kept unspoiled for the benefit of our children’s children. Eastern
people, and especially Eastern sportsmen, need to keep steadily in mind
the fact that the westerners who live in the neighborhood of the forest
preserves are the men who in the last resort will determine whether or
not these preserves are to be permanent. They cannot in the long run be
kept as forest and game reservations unless the settlers roundabout
believe in them and heartily support them; and the rights of these
settlers must be carefully safeguarded, and they must be shown that the
movement is really in their interest. The Eastern sportsman who fails to
recognize these facts can do little but harm by advocacy of forest
reserves.
It was in the interior of the Park, at the hotels beside the lake, the
falls, and the various geyser basins, that we would have seen the bears
had the season been late enough; but unfortunately the bears were still
for the most part hibernating. We saw two or three tracks, but the
animals themselves had not yet begun to come about the hotels. Nor were
the hotels open. No visitors had previously entered the Park in the
winter or early spring, the scouts and other employees being the only
ones who occasionally traverse it. I was sorry not to see the bears, for
the effect of protection upon bear life in the Yellowstone has been one
of the phenomena of natural history. Not only have they grown to realize
that they are safe, but, being natural scavengers and foul feeders, they
have come to recognize the garbage heaps of the hotels as their special
sources of food supply. Throughout the summer months they come to all
the hotels in numbers, usually appearing in the late afternoon or
evening, and they have become as indifferent to the presence of men as
the deer themselves—some of them very much more indifferent. They have
now taken their place among the recognized sights of the Park, and the
tourists are nearly as much interested in them as in the geysers. In
mussing over the garbage heaps they sometimes get tin cans stuck on
their paws, and the result is painful. Buffalo Jones and some of the
other scouts in extreme cases rope the bear, tie him up, cut the tin can
off his paw, and let him go again. It is not an easy feat, but the
astonishing thing is that it should be performed at all.
It was amusing to read the proclamations addressed to the tourists by
the Park management, in which they were solemnly warned that the bears
were really wild animals, and that they must on no account be either fed
or teased. It is curious to think that the descendants of the great
grizzlies which were the dread of the early explorers and hunters should
now be semi-domesticated creatures, boldly hanging around crowded hotels
for the sake of what they can pick up, and quite harmless so long as any
reasonable precaution is exercised. They are much safer, for instance,
than any ordinary bull or stallion, or even ram, and, in fact, there is
no danger from them at all unless they are encouraged to grow too
familiar or are in some way molested. Of course among the thousands of
tourists there is a percentage of fools; and when fools go out in the
afternoon to look at the bears feeding they occasionally bring
themselves into jeopardy by some senseless act. The black bears and the
cubs of the bigger bears can readily be driven up trees, and some of the
tourists occasionally do this. Most of the animals never think of
resenting it; but now and then one is run across which has its feelings
ruffled by the performance. In the summer of 1902 the result proved
disastrous to a too inquisitive tourist. He was travelling with his
wife, and at one of the hotels they went out toward the garbage pile to
see the bears feeding. The only bear in sight was a large she, which, as
it turned out, was in a bad temper because another party of tourists a
few minutes before had been chasing her cubs up a tree. The man left his
wife and walked toward the bear to see how close he could get. When he
was some distance off she charged him, whereupon he bolted back toward
his wife. The bear overtook him, knocked him down and bit him severely.
But the man’s wife, without hesitation, attacked the bear with that
thoroughly feminine weapon, an umbrella, and frightened her off. The man
spent several weeks in the Park hospital before he recovered. Perhaps
the following telegram sent by the manager of the Lake Hotel to Major
Pitcher illustrates with sufficient clearness the mutual relations of
the bears, the tourists, and the guardians of the public weal in the
Park. The original was sent me by Major Pitcher. It runs:
“Lake. 7–27–’03. Major Pitcher, Yellowstone: As many as seventeen bears
in an evening appear on my garbage dump. To-night eight or ten. Campers
and people not of my hotel throw things at them to make them run away. I
cannot, unless there personally, control this. Do you think you could
detail a trooper to be there every evening from say six o’clock until
dark and make people remain behind danger line laid out by Warden Jones?
Otherwise I fear some accident. The arrest of one or two of these
campers might help. My own guests do pretty well as they are told. James
Barton Key. 9 A. M.”
Major Pitcher issued the order as requested.
At times the bears get so bold that they take to making inroads on the
kitchen. One completely terrorized a Chinese cook. It would drive him
off and then feast upon whatever was left behind. When a bear begins to
act in this way or to show surliness it is sometimes necessary to shoot
it. Other bears are tamed until they will feed out of the hand, and will
come at once if called. Not only have some of the soldiers and scouts
tamed bears in this fashion, but occasionally a chambermaid or waiter
girl at one of the hotels has thus developed a bear as a pet.
[Illustration:
GRIZZLY BEAR AND COOK
]
The accompanying photographs not only show bears very close up, with men
standing by within a few yards of them, but they also show one bear
being fed from the piazza by a cook, and another standing beside a
particular friend, a chambermaid in one of the hotels. In these
photographs it will be seen that some are grizzlies and some black
bears.
This whole episode of bear life in the Yellowstone is so extraordinary
that it will be well worth while for any man who has the right powers
and enough time, to make a complete study of the life and history of the
Yellowstone bears. Indeed, nothing better could be done by some of our
outdoor faunal naturalists than to spend at least a year in the
Yellowstone, and to study the life habits of all the wild creatures
therein. A man able to do this, and to write down accurately and
interestingly what he had seen, would make a contribution of permanent
value to our nature literature.
In May, after leaving the Yellowstone, I visited the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, and then went through the Yosemite Park with John Muir—the
companion above all others for such a trip. It is hard to make
comparisons among different kinds of scenery, all of them very grand and
very beautiful; but nothing that I have ever seen has impressed me quite
as much as the desolate and awful sublimity of the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado. I earnestly wish that Congress would make it a national park,
and I am sure that such course would meet the approbation of the people
of Arizona. The people of California with wise and generous forethought
have given the Yosemite Valley to the National Government to be kept as
a national park, just as the surrounding country, including some of the
groves of giant trees, has been kept. The flower-clad slopes of the
Sierras—golden with the blazing poppy, brilliant with lilies and tulips
and red-stemmed Manzinita bush—are unlike anything else in this country.
As for the giant trees, no words can describe their majesty and beauty.
John Muir and I, with two packers and three pack mules, spent a
delightful three days in the Yosemite. The first night was clear, and we
lay in the open, on beds of soft fir boughs, among the huge,
cinnamon-colored trunks of the sequoias. It was like lying in a great
solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by hand
of man. Just at nightfall I heard, among other birds, thrushes which I
think were Rocky Mountain hermits—the appropriate choir for such a place
of worship. Next day we went by trail through the woods, seeing some
deer—which were not wild—as well as mountain quail and blue grouse.
Among the birds which we saw was a white-headed woodpecker; the
interesting carpenter woodpeckers were less numerous than lower down. In
the afternoon we struck snow, and had considerable difficulty in
breaking our trails. A snow-storm came on toward evening, but we kept
warm and comfortable in a grove of splendid silver firs—rightly named
“magnificent”—near the brink of the wonderful Yosemite Valley. Next day
we clambered down into it and at nightfall camped in its bottom, facing
the giant cliffs over which the waterfalls thundered.
[Illustration:
THE BEAR AND THE CHAMBERMAID
]
Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is
theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the
Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the
Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our
people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and
their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all
unmarred.