Page 362 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

340 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
price,andtakethem. Wearenotsufferingforthem;andourdutyisto save them inviolate, and hand them down as a heritage that we proudly transmit unimpaired.
The friends of wild life are particularly interested in Glacier Park as a national game reservoir, and refuge for wild life. On the north, in Alberta, it is soon to be extended by Waterton Lakes Park.
When I visited Glacier Park, in 1909, with Frederick H. Kennard and Charles H. Conrad, I procured from three intelligent guides their best estimates of the amount of big game then in the Park. The guides were Thomas H. Scott, Josiah Rogers and Walter S. Gibb.*
They compared notes, and finally agreed upon these figures:
Elk
Moose Mountain Sheep Mountain Goats Grizzly Bears Black Bears
•
200 2,500 700 10,500 1,000 to 1,500 2,500 to 3,000
As previously stated, one of the surprising features of this new wonder land is its accessibility. The Great Northern lands you at Belton. A ride of three miles over a good road through a beautiful forest brings you to the foot of Lake McDonald, and in one hour more by boat you are at the hotels at the head of the lake. At that point you are within three hours' horse-back ride of Sperry Glacier and the marvelous panorama that unrolls before you from the top of Lincoln Peak. At the foot of that Peak we saw a big, wild white mountain goat : and another one watched us climb up to the Sperry Glacier.
Mt. Olympus National Monument.—For at least six years the advocates of the preservation of American wild life and forests vainly desired that the grand mountain territory around Mount Olympus, in northwestern Washington, should be established as a national forest and game preserve. In addition to the preservation of the forests, it was greatly desired that the remnant bands of Olympic wapiti (described as Cervus roosevelti) should be perpetuated. It now contains 1,975 speci- mensofthatvariety. InCongress,twodeterminedeffortsweremadein behalf of the region referred to, but both were defeated by the enemies of forests and wild life.
In an auspicious moment, Dr. T. S. Palmer, Assistant Chief of the Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture, thought of a law under which it would be both proper and right to bring the desired preserve into existence. The law referred to expressly clothes the President of the United States with power to preserve any monumental feature of nature which it clearly is the duty of the state to preserve for all time from the hands of the spoilers.
With the enthusiastic approval and assistance of Representative William E. Humphrey, of Seattle, Dr. Palmer set in motion the machinery
*See Recreation Magazine, May, 1910, p. 213