l
canoeist in the party. We agreed upon signals to give when danger was
seen, or game in sight, and leading off with my big canoe we set sail
again, and went flying down stream.

This rapid rate soon brought us out of the high mountains and into a
narrow valley when the stream became more moderate in its speed and we
floated along easily enough. In a little while after we struck this
slack water, as we were rounding a point, I saw on a sand bar in the
river, five or six elk, standing and looking at us with much curiosity.
I signaled for those behind to go to shore, while I did the same, and
two or three of us took our guns and went carefully down along the bank,
the thick brush hiding us from them, till we were in fair range, then
selecting our game we fired on them. A fine doe fell on the opposite
bank, and a magnificent buck which Rogers and I selected, went below and
crossed the river on our side. We followed him down along the bank which
was here a flat meadow with thick bunches of willows, and soon came
pretty near to Mr. Elk who started off on a high and lofty trot. As he
passed an opening in the bushes I put a ball through his head and he
fell. He was a monster. Rogers, who was a butcher, said it would weigh
five hundred or six hundred pounds. The horns were fully six feet long,
and by placing the horns on the ground, point downwards, one could walk
under the skull between them. We packed the meat to our canoes, and
staid up all night cutting the meat in strips and drying it, to reduce
bulk and preserve it, and it made the finest kind of food, fit for an
epicure.

Starting on again, the river lost more and more of of its rapidity as it
came out into a still wider valley, and became quite sluggish. We picked
red berries that grew on bushes that overhung the water. They were sour
and might have been high cranberries. One day I killed an otter, and
afterward hearing a wild goose on shore, I went for the game and killed
it on a small pond on which there were also some mallard duck. I killed
two of these. When I fired, the ones not killed did not fly away, but
rather swam toward me. I suppose they never before had seen a man or
heard the report of a gun. On the shore around the place I saw a small
bear track, but I did not have time to look for his bearship, and left,
with the game already killed, and passed on down through this beautiful
valley.

We saw one place where a large band of horses had crossed, and as th