Antelope are nearly exterminated in southern California, and there is but a single little bunch of elk—­those in the San Joaquin Valley, sole survivors of the vast herds which ranged throughout those lowlands when Fremont came to the country in 1845.  These elk are smaller than those of the mountains, and bear a striking resemblance to the Scotch red deer, so familiar to us in Landseer’s pictures.  For years they have been protected by the generosity and wisdom of one man, now no longer young, an altogether public-spirited and generous act.  I was taken by the manager of this ranch to see these elk as they came at night to feed in the alfalfa fields, and again in the morning we followed their trail into the foothills and had a capital view of seven superb bulls in their wild estate, as pretty a sight as one might see in California.  Who can feel ought save commiseration for a man who, standing on London bridge, could say, “Earth has not anything to show more fair”?

Twice during the summer was I told of the presence in the mountains, by men who thought they had seen them, of the mythical ibex.  My informant, in each instance a ranger, assured me that he had had a good look at the animal, and was sure that it was not a mountain ram.  The back-curving horns he said were “as long as his forearm,” one added instance of the fact that a fish in the brook is worth two on the string—­if a good story be at stake!  What my informant had seen, of course, was a ewe, or young mountain ram before he had arrived at the age when the horns begin to form their characteristic spiral.  As for the great size of the horns, the animal was running away, and every hunter is aware of the enormous proportions which the antlers attain of an escaping elk or deer.  How they suddenly shrink when the beast is shot is another story.

Incidentally, the refuges of southern California will include the breeding places of the trout in the upper reaches of the streams, and will afford protection to grouse, quail, and other birds, but primarily their purpose is to prevent the extermination of big game.  In California this has gone as far as it is safe to go if we are to save the remnant.  Even the California grizzly has been killed off so relentlessly that it was a question, when I was there, whether a single pair survived which might possibly in that State preserve the species.  The ranger who knew the most about this was of the opinion that two or three were still left alive.  He had seen their tracks within a year.[11] There are, I have been assured, others in Oregon.

[Footnote 11:  I have been informed since the above was written that he saw the tracks of a single grizzly after I was there, toward the end of July.]