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Then and now, or, Thirty-six years in the Rockies
Then and now or Thirtysix years in the Rockies Author:Robert Vaughn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ON A STAMPEDE TO THE YELLOWSTONE. In September, 1864, James Gibb, Jack Williams, Charles Howard, myself and a man named Wilson, left Alder Gulch on a "stamped... more »e" to the upper Yellowstone country. It.was reported that a rich gold discovery had been made not far from the canyon at the Yellowstone river. Each of us procured a saddle pony, and a pack horse. We undertook to follow the base of the mountains; crossing the headwaters of the Madison, Jefferson, and Gallatin rivers. We were traveling by direction of a map and the use of a compass, but made the mistake of keeping too near the mountains, for we were delayed several times by the dense pines that grew so thick in some places that we had to chop our way through. In one small valley there was a great quantity of petrified wood, and in the bed of the creek nearly all the stones were petrifactions. I remember, that we stopped on the. banks of this creek for dinner. The mountains were very steep. On a cliff about one hundred yards off stood a Rocky mountain goat, At first we thought it a domestic sheep, for it was very white, bleated, and acted as if it was glad to see us. But then, as there were no settlers within several hundred miles, we could not imagine how a sheep could get to such a place. While we were discussing the matter, the animal leaped over cliffs and up the mountain as if it was on level ground, and this satisfied us all that it was a Rocky mountain goat. Not one of us had seen one previously. The next day we came to a small lake on top of a mountain, on approaching which we could gee a big black bear rooting in the edge of the water, but itdisappeared before we had a chance to shoot. After that we were on the watch for bear. Sometimes we would travel for several miles on a well-beaten trail made by wild animals. A...« less