In his youth Selous, like other boys of similar tastes, had devoured the works of Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, Catlin, and Kingston, relating to fact and fiction, and had always desired to visit America as one of his lands of dreams. But it was not civilized America that appealed to him. Cities are the same all the world over. It was the land of vast plains and trackless forests swarming with game that appealed to him; and if he could not, alas, now find such a hunter's paradise, he could at least see something of the little that was truly wild which was left and perhaps obtain a few fair specimens for his collection. Once, it is true, he had actually taken his passage to America. That happened in 1893, but the outbreak of the Matabele war in that year had caused him to alter his plans and he went back to South Africa instead. Selous had a good friend, W. Moncrieff, who owned a small cattle ranch in the heart of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. Here in the adjoining forests and mountains still lived a remnant of the bears, wapiti, mule-deer and sheep that had formerly been so abundant, and the local knowledge enjoyed by Moncrieff enabled him to furnish Selous with the best information. Accordingly he left England accompanied by his wife, and, passing through Canada, reached the ranch on the last day of August. Next day the party on horses, accompanied by a waggon with one Bob Graham as a guide, struck into the mountains and, after passing over the main range of the Big Horns, descended into the Big Horn basin. This is covered with sage brush, and is still the home of a few prong-horned antelopes, two of which, one a good male, Selous succeeded in shooting. The hunters then proceeded up the south fork of Stinking Water, and established a main camp in the forests, where a few very shy wapiti males were still to be found. For twenty days Selous toiled in a mass of dense and fallen timber before he carried his first wapiti head back to camp. Wapiti are in fact now both shy and scarce, and a man must persevere and work continuously, at least early in the season, before even one fair specimen can be found, but Selous greatly enjoyed the grandeur and wildness of the scenery, and being still in the prime of life the exertion of daily toil did not in any way affect his energy. On September 29th he shot his first mule-deer buck. A little snow came and helped to make tracking easier. Then Selous had some luck, and he killed four wapiti, two in one day, and a fifth near Davies' ranch on October 28th. Near the same place too he killed one of the few remaining white-tailed deer-bucks in Wyoming, but its head was rather a poor one, that of an old male "going-back." Selous wrote an account of this trip to Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary to the American Navy, and received (November 30th, 1897) the following reply:--