s
West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we
pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of
the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the
encomiums that have been pronounced upon it.

At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain
woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue
grouse,--a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we
would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the
bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch
the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them
without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of
the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had
probably died a natural death.

[Illustration: THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON.

From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New
York.]

THE "SINGING GOPHER"

In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President
and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack
train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep
grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume,
"Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was
attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the
grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the
President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of
grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this
sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a
species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific
name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher.

Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell
Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad,
open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to
our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the
plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our
party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell
Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some
unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way part
of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and
bearing. After conversing a few moments with the Pr