It is fortunate that all goat hunters do not meet with such disasters as did poor Westlake and his young friend, or the noble sport would have still fewer votaries than it now has.
In September, 1884, I joined a party of genial sportsmen at Fort Missoula, Mont., for a month's outing in the Bitter Root Mountains. Our special mission was to hunt large game; but while perfecting arrangements for the trip, which occupied two days, and during the mornings and evenings of the several days occupied in traveling up and down the river to and from the hunting grounds, those of us who had our fishing tackle with us turned what would otherwise have been long hours of impatient waiting into merrily-fleeing moments, by luring the grand mountain trout (_Salmo purpuratus_) with which this river abounds from their crystalline retreats and transferring them to our creels and our camp table.
The Bitter Root is a typical mountain stream, rising among the snow-clad peaks in the vicinity of the Big Hole basin and flowing with the mighty rush imparted to it by a fall of 200 to 300 feet per mile, fed by the scores of ice-cold brooks that tumble out of the high ranges on either side from its source to its mouth. After traversing a distance of perhaps 200 miles, it empties its pure waters into the Hellgate river, just west of Missoula.
Its valley is two to four miles wide, and the lower portion of this is occupied by numerous ranches. The soil is tilled by well-to-do farmers or "ranchmen," to speak in the vernacular of the country, so that the angler, while within a mile or two of rugged mountain peaks, is still in the midst of civilization, where his larder may daily be replenished with nearly all the varieties of good things that grow on any New England farm. The banks of the stream are fringed with stately pines and cottonwoods, and in places with thickets of underbrush.
From a tiny brook at its source the stream grows rapidly to a veritable river of thirty to fifty yards in width as it passes on toward its destination. It sweeps and whirls in its course, here running straight and placidly for a hundred yards, then turning abruptly to right or left and returning almost parallel to itself, forming "horse-shoe bends," "ox-bow bends," compound S's, right angles, etc.