Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/363

 surface. Continuing due west we clambered over another ridge of about the same elevation, and as deep with snow and ice, and then saw in the distance the Wind River range, one hundred and thirty miles to the west. With some difficulty a way was made down the flank of the range, through the asperous declivities of the cañon of "No Wood" Creek, and, after being sated with the monotonous beauties of precipices, milky cascades, gloomy forests, and glassy springs, the welcome command was given to bivouac.

We had climbed and slipped fifteen miles at an altitude of 12,000 feet, getting far above the timber line and into the region of perpetual snow. Still, at that elevation, a few pleasant-faced little blue and white flowers, principally forget-me-nots, kept us company to the very edge of snow-banks. I sat upon a snowbank, and with one hand wrote my notes and with the other plucked forget-me-nots or fought off the mosquitoes. We followed down the cañon of the creek until we had reached the timber, and there, in a dense growth of spruce and fir, went into bivouac in a most charming retreat. Buffalo tracks were seen all day, the animal having crossed the range by the same trail we had used. Besides buffalo tracks we saw the trails of mountain sheep, of which General Crook and Lieutenant Schuyler killed two. The only other life was tit-larks, butterflies, grasshoppers, flies, and the mosquitoes already spoken of. The snow in one place was sixty to seventy feet deep and had not been disturbed for years, because there were five or six strata of grasshoppers frozen stiff, each representing one season. In all cases where the snow had drifted into sheltered ravines and was not exposed to direct solar action, it never melted from year's end to year's end. Our supper of mountain mutton and of sheep and elk heart boiled in salt water was eaten by the light of the fire, and was followed by a restful sleep upon couches of spruce boughs.

We returned to our main camp on the 4th of July, guided by General Crook over a new trail, which proved to be a great improvement upon the other. Mr. John F. Finerty killed his first buffalo, which appeared to be a very good specimen at the time, but after perusing the description given by Finerty in the columns of the Times, several weeks later, we saw that it must have been at least eleven feet high and weighed not much less than nine thousand pounds. We made chase after a herd of sixteen elk drinking at one of the lakes, but on account of the noise in getting