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Show 36 THROUGH THE BLACK HILLS. would tell me to be patient until we reached the Black Hills and Laramie Plain, where sage hares and jackass rabbits he represented would be almost innumerable. But all my anticipations were doomed to disappointment, as not a rabbit or a grouse was seen. It may have been the country for them, but it certainly was not the season in that country. Here the sage brush upon which the birds feed began to appear, and afterwards we passed over almost interminable fields of it. In the Medicine Bow Mountains, in this vicinity, Elk were reported as very numerous, and I presume they must have been, from the fact that elk meat was sold in this country of exorbitant prices at a few cents per pound, and less than the government paid for beef at the next post* ' There on our journey for the first time, I indulged in a - roast of elk meat for my dinner. It had been hanging in the dry, rarified air of that elevated region, until it was near that condition when it could hang no longer, and had ibecome as tender as a spring chicken and as delicious too. I do not pretend to be a connoisseur of meats, but I can't understand in what condition the gustatory organs of writers could have been, when they refer to elk meat as coarse, dry and unpalatable. My cook was not specially . skilful in his art, nor had I been deprived of fresh meat, so I cannot attribute my relish of the roast of elk to the way It was served, or to a craving appetite, but the merit must fiave been in the meat itself. I was the more convinced of that after eating a broiled tenderloin steak of it for breakfast the next morning. We learned that there had been a fall of snow where we encamped only a day or two before, but at noon- day the weather was then quite warm, though a couple of pairs of blankets were not undesirable articles on our beds at night. Cool nights are characteristic of the plains, whether con tiguous to the mountains as we then were or not. The season for musquitoes in that locality had not arrived, and our sleep was undisturbed and refreshing. |
