ns, vast stretches of
green aspen slopes, winding parks of all shapes, gray and gold and
green, and jutting peaks, and here and there patches of autumn blaze
in grass and thicket.

We spent the afternoon pitching camp on an aspen knoll, with water,
grass, and wood near at hand, and the splendid view of mountains and
valleys below.

We spent many full days under the shadow of Whitley's Peak. After the
middle of September the aspens colored and blazed to the touch of
frost, and the mountain slopes were exceedingly beautiful. Against
a background of gray sage the gold and red and purple aspen groves
showed too much like exquisite paintings to seem real. In the mornings
the frost glistened thick and white on the grass; and after the
gorgeous sunsets of gold over the violet-hazed ranges the air grew
stingingly cold.

Bear-chasing with a pack of hounds has been severely criticised by
many writers and I was among them. I believed it a cowardly business,
and that was why, if I chased bears with dogs, I wanted to chase the
kind that could not be treed. But like many another I did not know
what I was writing about. I did not shoot a bear out of a tree and I
would not do so, except in a case of hunger. All the same, leaving the
tree out of consideration, bear-chasing with hounds is a tremendously
exciting and hazardous game. But my ideas about sport are changing.
Hunting, in the sportsman's sense, is a cruel and degenerate business.

[Illustration: WHITE ASPEN TREE, SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS]

The more I hunt the more I become convinced of something wrong about
the game. I am a different man when I get a gun in my hands. All is
exciting, hot-pressed, red. Hunting is magnificent up to the moment
the shot is fired. After that it is another matter. It is useless for
sportsmen to tell me that they, in particular, hunt right, conserve
the game, do not go beyond the limit, and all that sort of thing. I do
not believe them and I never met the guide who did. A rifle is made
for killing. When a man goes out with one he means to kill. He may
keep within the law, but that is not the question. It is a question of
spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life
is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to
the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a
man stops all strife, all fight, then he will ret