In a moment the camp was a scene of activity and excitement. Tent, bedding, provisions, everything that was absolutely necessary to their journey, were hurriedly packed upon their pack animals; saddles were placed, rifles were slung to the saddles, and leaving all surplus baggage, such as trophies of their hunt, mineral specimens and curios of various kinds, for future comers, they started for the elk trail. They had a slow, tedious, and laborious task, breaking a way through the deep snow to reach it, but by walking and leading their saddle animals ahead, the pack animals were able to follow slowly. Finally they reached the trail of the elk herd, and following this, after nine days of tedious and painful traveling, the party arrived at a ranch on the Stinking Water river, which was kept by a "squaw man" and his wife, where they were enabled to lodge and recruit themselves and their stock, and whence they finally reached their homes in safety. The band of elk passed on down the river, and our tourists never saw them again; but they have doubtless long ere this all fallen a prey to the ruthless war that is constantly being waged against them by hunters white and red.
It is sad to think that such a noble creature as the American elk is doomed to early and absolute extinction, but such is nevertheless the fact. Year by year his mountain habitat is being surrounded and encroached upon by the advancing line of settlements, as the fisherman encircles the struggling mass of fishes in the clear pond with his long and closely-meshed net. The lines are drawn closer and closer each year. These lines are the ranches of cattle and sheep raisers, the cabins and towns of miners, the stations and residences of employés of the railroads. All these places are made the shelters and temporary abiding places of Eastern and foreign sportsmen who go out to the mountains to hunt. Worse than this, they are made the permanent abiding places, and constitute the active and convenient markets of the nefarious and unconscionable skin hunter and meat hunter. Here he can find a ready market for the meats and skins he brings in, and an opportunity to spend the proceeds of such outrageous traffic in ranch whisky and revelry. The ranchmen themselves hunt and lay in their stock of meat for the year when the game comes down into the valleys. The Indians, when they have eaten up their Government rations, lie in wait for the elk in the same manner. So that when the first great snows of the autumn or winter fall in the high ranges, when the elk band together and seek refuge in the valleys, as did the herd that our fortunate tourists followed out, they find a mixed and hungry horde waiting for them at the mouth of every cañon. Before they have reached the valley where the snow-fall is light enough to allow them to live through the winter their skins are drying in the neighboring "shacks."