The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes. We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right. We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve, and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet above the vale a curious semicircle of stones--probably an Indian outlook made by the Nez Perces in their retreat. Sitting with my back against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense of loneliness--never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills, by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred, no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless snow-fields, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east, and were lost in the walls of its canyon like a scimitar half sheathed. On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge ruins of a great town. Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion, but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears, while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.