This country, with its splendid glaciers and mountains covered with snow, presents quite the most beautiful scenery to be found within the limits of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, and, before many years, is destined to become a place of general resort for travelers.  For this to be accomplished, all that is needed is greater facility of travel.  It would be a thousand pities if we should tolerate the extermination of the elk, which would afford delight to every one who visited the Olympics, if only the herd might be preserved.  One can hardly blame the hunters for taking advantage of the laxity of public sentiment.  The State has it within its power easily to protect these animals by the employment of two or three game detectives of the right sort—­keen, energetic men.  These would soon break up the illicit traffic and bring the offenders to justice.  The people of the whole Pacific seaboard, who are justly proud of their region, and of every trait peculiarly its own, would bitterly lament the final disappearance of elk from this whole countryside, yet the fact remains that hardly a voice there, outside of the organization of the “Elks,” is raised to protest against these flagrant acts of vandalism which are taking place beneath their very eyes.

This visit to the northern forest was full of varied and commanding interest, but the chief occupation of my summer, when all is said, was with California.

Deer are practically the only game to be considered in these southern California reserves.  There are mountain sheep to the east, in the mountains of the Mojave and Colorado deserts, but they are almost unmolested by the hunters of the seaboard country, and, except in rare instances, are no longer found in the reserves.  Occasionally odd ones are seen, venturesome, determined individuals, on their travels, in the energy of youthful maturity, tempted by curiosity, but these soon realize that they are not secure where so many humans abound, and scurry back to their desert fastnesses.  As refuges are created and breeding grounds established, sheep will return, and, it is hoped, make their permanent home in the reserves.  There are still enough of them in scattered places for this purpose.  I was told of one method of hunting in the desert hills, sometimes resorted to by Indians and white men of the baser sort, that seems hateful and unsportsmanlike.  The springs at which they drink are long distances apart.  In some instances the alleged sportsmen camp by these and watch them without intermission for three days and nights, at the end of which period, when the sheep are exhausted by thirst, the hunter has them at his mercy.  This has nearly as much to commend it to the self-respecting sportsman as the practice of imitating the cry of the female moose to lure the bull to mad recklessness and his undoing, a challenge hard for a courageous animal to resist, a treacherous snare set before his feet.  It would seem as if a right-minded man would hesitate to take so base an advantage as by either of these two methods of hunting.