Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/625



VOLUME X

NE of the wildest and most picturesque regions of the West is the mountain district of the Lower Rogue, Southern Oregon. It is an uninhabited, primeval wilderness. For the real sportsman, this district affords the ideal hunting grounds. Here the big game is found. In the deep gulches, the boundless forests of pine, and over the endless ranges, whose limit is the horizon; where the Rogue and the Illinois froth angrily between sheer walls of stone, roam the elk and the deer, the bear and the panther, the lynx and the bob-cat. The few sportsmen who hunt in this region must leave their autos behind and saddle tough Indian ponies; other cayuses, well packed, will carry ammunition and grub kit.

Thus we equipped ourselves and followed a road leading down the Rogue from Grant's Pass. For some fifteen miles and more we followed the river and passed through an American Switzerland. The route winds here and there between canyon walls and leads out again over steep declivities. There are places where the trail rounds a point and hangs on the mountain wall. Here the traveler can see the water flowing serenely one thousand feet below, while not more than a stone's throw across is the opposite wall of the canyon. It seems but a deep slit in the earth through which flows the river.

Well up on the mountains at the lower end of Rogue River Valley, we be-

A 300-POUND BEAR.—Killed in the Southern Oregon Mountain Country.