This was
at the head of one of the northern branches of the Snake River, and,
their scanty stock of provisions being nearly exhausted, the whole
party was compelled to live mostly on bears and dogs; deer, antelope,
and elk, usually abundant, were now scarce because the region had been
closely hunted over by the Indians before their arrival.
Lewis and Clark had killed a number of bears and saved the skins of
the more interesting specimens, and the variations they found in size,
color of the hair, etc., made great difficulty in classification.
Wishing to get the opinion of the Chopumish Indians, near one of whose
villages they were encamped, concerning the various species, the
explorers unpacked their bundles and spread out for examination all
the skins they had taken. The Indian hunters immediately classed the
white, the deep and the pale grizzly red, the grizzly dark-brown - in
short, all those with the extremities of the hair of a white or frosty
color without regard to the color of the ground or foil - under the
name of hoh-host. The Indians assured them that these were all of the
same species as the white bear, that they associated together, had
longer nails than the others, and never climbed trees. On the other
hand, the black skins, those that were black with white hairs
intermixed or with a white breast, the uniform bay, the brown, and the
light reddish-brown, were classed under the name yack-ah, and were
said to resemble each other in being smaller and having shorter nails,
in climbing trees, and being so little vicious that they could be
pursued with safety.
Lewis and Clark came to the conclusion that all those with white-tipped hair found by them in the basin of the Columbia belonged to the
same species as the grizzlies of the upper Missouri; and that the
black and reddish-brown, etc., of the Rocky Mountains belong to a
second species equally distinct from the grizzly and the black bear of
the Pacific Coast and the East, which never vary in color.
As much as possible should be made by the ordinary traveler of these
descriptions, for he will be likely to see very little of any species
for himself; not that bears no longer exist here, but because, being
shy, they keep out of the way. In order to see them and learn their
habits one must go softly and alone, lingering long in the fringing
woods on the banks of the salmon streams, and in the small openings in
the midst of thickets where berries are most abundant.
As for rattlesnakes, the other grand dread of town dwellers when they
leave beaten roads, there are two, or perhaps three, species of them
in Oregon. But they are nowhere to be found in great numbers. In
western Oregon they are hardly known at all. In all my walks in the
Oregon forest I have never met a single specimen, though a few have
been seen at long intervals.
When the country was first settled by the whites, fifty years ago, the
elk roamed through the woods and over the plains to the east of the
Cascades in immense numbers; now they are rarely seen except by
experienced hunters who know their haunts in the deepest and most
inaccessible solitudes to which they have been driven. So majestic an
animal forms a tempting mark for the sportsman's rifle. Countless
thousands have been killed for mere amusement and they already seem to
be nearing extinction as rapidly as the buffalo. The antelope also is
vanishing from the Columbia plains before the farmers and cattlemen.
Whether the moose still lingers in Oregon or Washington I am unable to
say.
On the highest mountains of the Cascade Range the wild goat roams in
comparative security, few of his enemies caring to go so far in
pursuit and to hunt on ground so high and dangerous. He is a brave,
sturdy shaggy mountaineer of an animal, enjoying the freedom and
security of crumbling ridges and overhanging cliffs above the
glaciers, oftentimes beyond the reach of the most daring hunter. They
seem to be as much at home on the ice and snowfields as on the crags,
making their way in flocks from ridge to ridge on the great volcanic
mountains by crossing the glaciers that lie between them, traveling in
single file guided by an old experienced leader, like a party of
climbers on the Alps. On these ice-journeys they pick their way
through networks of crevasses and over bridges of snow with admirable
skill, and the mountaineer may seldom do better in such places than to
follow their trail, if he can. In the rich alpine gardens and meadows
they find abundance of food, venturing sometimes well down in the
prairie openings on the edge of the timberline, but holding themselves
ever alert and watchful, ready to flee to their highland castles at
the faintest alarm. When their summer pastures are buried beneath the
winter snows, they make haste to the lower ridges, seeking the wind-beaten crags and slopes where the snow cannot lie at any great depth,
feeding at times on the leaves and twigs of bushes when grass is
beyond reach.
The wild sheep is another admirable alpine rover, but comparatively
rare in the Oregon mountains, choosing rather the drier ridges to the
southward on the Cascades and to the eastward among the spurs of the
Rocky Mountain chain.
Deer give beautiful animation to the forests, harmonizing finely in
their color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees
and the swaying of the branches as they stand in groups at rest, or
move gracefully and noiselessly over the mossy ground about the edges
of beaver meadows and flowery glades, daintily culling the leaves and
tips of the mints and aromatic bushes on which they feed.
