Produced by Geetu Melwani, C. St. Charleskindt and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file made using scans of public domain works at the University of Georgia.) Wild Life on the Rockies [Illustration: LONG'S PEAK FROM THE EAST] Wild Life on the Rockies By Enos A. Mills With Illustrations from Photographs [Illustration: Publisher's Device] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ENOS A. MILLS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1909_ To John Muir PREFACE This book contains the record of a few of the many happy days and novel experiences which I have had in the wilds. For more than twenty years it has been my good fortune to live most of the time with nature, on the mountains of the West. I have made scores of long exploring rambles over the mountains in every season of the year, a nature-lover charmed with the birds and the trees. On my later excursions I have gone alone and without firearms. During three succeeding winters, in which I was a Government Experiment Officer and called the "State Snow Observer," I scaled many of the higher peaks of the Rockies and made many studies on the upper slopes of these mountains. "Colorado Snow Observer" was printed in part in _The Youth's Companion_ for May 18, 1905, under the title of "In the Mountain Snows"; "The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine" appeared in _The World's Work_ for August, 1908; and "The Beaver and his Works" is reprinted from _The World To-Day_ for December, 1908. E. A. M. Contents Colorado Snow Observer 1 The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine 29 The Beaver and his Works 51 The Wilds without Firearms 69 A Watcher on the Heights 81 Climbing Long's Peak 97 Midget, the Return Horse 113 Faithful Scotch 129 Bob and Some Other Birds 149 Kinnikinick 169 The Lodge-Pole Pine 181 Rocky Mountain Forests 197 Besieged by Bears 215 Mountain Parks and Camp-Fires 231 Index 259 Illustrations _Long's Peak from the East_ _Frontispiece_ _A Man with a History_ 6 _The Crest of the Continent in Winter, 13,000 Feet above Sea-Level_ 16 _A Snow-Slide Track_ 20 _A Veteran Western Yellow Pine_ 32 _A Beaver-House_ 58 _A Beaver-Dam in Winter_ 63 _Lake Odessa_ 76 _On the Heights_ 84 _A Storm on the Rockies_ 94 _Long's Peak from the Summit of Mt. Meeker_ 100