DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
| BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR |
| TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" |
| SEA-HOUNDS |
| IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES |
| HELL'S HATCHES |
| DOWN THE COLUMBIA |
© J. E. Haynes, St. Paul |
THE YELLOWSTONE |
DOWN THE
YELLOWSTONE
BY LEWIS R. FREEMAN
Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," "Down theColumbia," etc., etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
"MY FRIENDS ALONG THE YELLOWSTONE,
WHO HAVE KEPT ALIVE ALL THAT IS BEST
IN THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST"
INTRODUCTION
It must have been close to twenty years ago that I first started to boat from the head of the Yellowstone to the Gulf of Mexico. On that occasion I covered something over a hundred miles from the source of the Yellowstone—a good part of it on the ice, on the bank, or floundering in the water. As a start it was not auspicious, nor was it destined to be anything more than a start.
Shrouded in the mists of comparative antiquity, the reason for my embarking on this voyage is only less obscure than my reason for failing to continue it. As nearly as I can figure it today, it was a series of tennis tournaments in Washington and British Columbia that lured me to the North-west in the first place. Then a hunting trip in eastern Washington merged into an enchanting interval of semi-vagabondage through the silver-lead mining camps of the Cœur d'Alene and the copper camps of Montana, at that time in the hey-day of their glory.
From Butte to the Yellowstone was only a step. That it was still winter at those altitudes, and that the Park, under from ten to forty feet of snow, would not be opened to tourists for another two months, were only negligible incidentals. That deep snow, far from being a hindrance, actually facilitated travel over a rough country, I had learned the previous year in Alaska.
I should have known better than to expect that permission would be granted me to