We boarded this lubberly old hulk and pulled out up the north shore of the lake just as the morning sun gave the first golden tints to the mountain tops. Our progress was slow despite our united strength applied to the oars, but it gave us more time to scan the mountain sides for game. I did not find it so plentiful as I had been promised, for I had been told by the Indians that we should see a dozen goats in the first hour, but we had been out more than that length of time before we saw any. Finally, however, after we had gone a mile or more up the lake shore, I saw a large buck goat browsing among the crags about four hundred feet above us. He had not seen us, and dropping the oar I caught up my rifle. The men backed water, and as the raft came to a standstill, I sent a bullet into him. He sprang forward, lost his footing, came bounding and crashing to the foot of the mountain, and stopped, stone dead, in the brush at the water's edge not more than twenty feet from the raft. We pushed ashore and took him on board, when I found, to my disappointment, that both horns had been broken off in the fall, so that his head was worthless for mounting.
We cruised clear around the lake that day and could not find another goat. In the afternoon it clouded up and set in to rain heavily again in the cañon, while snow fell on the mountains a few hundred feet above us. The next morning I went up a narrow cañon to the north, and ascending a high peak hunted until nearly noon, when I found two more goats, a female and her kid (nearly full grown), both of which I killed, and taking the skins and one ham of the kid, I returned to camp. It continued to rain at frequent intervals, which robbed camp life and hunting of much of their charm, so I decided to start for home the following morning. In the afternoon I rigged a hook and line, cut an alder pole, and caught five fine trout, the largest seventeen and a half inches long. Seymour speared three more salmon and roasted one of them, so that we had another feast of fish that night. We also roasted a leg of goat for use on our way home, and spent the evening cleaning and drying the three skins as best we could by the camp-fire, to lighten their weight as much as possible.