The history of the wild game of the Yellowstone Park is blackened by two occurrences, and one existing fact. The fact is: the town of Gardiner is situated on the northern boundary of the Park, in the State of Montana. In Gardiner there are a number of men, armed with rifles, who toward game have the gray-wolf quality of mercy.

The first stain is the massacre of the 270 wild bison for their heads and robes, already noted. The second blot is the equally savage slaughter in the early winter of 1911, by some of the people of Gardiner, reinforced by so-called sportsmen from other parts of the state, of all the park elk they could kill,—bulls, cows and calves,—because a large band wandered across the line into the shambles of Gardiner, on Buffalo Flats.

If the people of Gardiner can not refrain from slaughtering the game of the Park—the very animals annually seen by 20,000 visitors to the Park,—then it is time for the American people to summon the town of Gardiner before the bar of public opinion, to show cause why the town should not be wiped off the map.

The 35,000 elk that summer in the Park are compelled in winter to migrate to lower altitudes in order to find grass that is not under two feet of snow. In the winter of 1911-12, possibly 5,000 went south, into Jackson Hole, and 3,000 went northward into Montana. The sheep-grazing north of the Park, and the general settlement by ranchmen of Jackson Hole, have deprived the elk herds of those regions of their natural food. For several years past, up to and including the winter of 1910-11, some thousands of weak and immature elk have perished in the Jackson Hole country, from starvation and exposure. The ranchmen of that region have had terrible times,—in witnessing the sufferings of thousands of elk tamed by hunger, and begging in piteous dumb show for the small and all-too-few haystacks of the ranchmen.

The people of Jackson Hole, headed by S.N. Leek, the famous photographer and lecturer on those elk herds, have done all that they could do in the premises. The spirit manifested by them has been the exact reverse of that manifested in Gardiner. To their everlasting credit, they have kept domestic sheep out of the Jackson Valley,—by giving the owners of invading herds "hours" in which to get their sheep "all out, and over the western range."

In 1909, the State of Wyoming spent in feeding starving elk $5,000
In 1911, the State of Wyoming spent in feeding starving elk 5,000
In 1911, the U.S. Government appropriated for feeding starving elk, and exporting elk $20,000
In 1912, the Camp-Fire Club of Detroit gave, for feeding hungry elk 100
In 1910-11, about 3,000 elk perished in Jackson Hole
In 1911-12, Mr. Leek's photographs of the elk herds showed an alarming absence of mature bulls, indicating that now the most of the breeding is done by immature males. This means the sure deterioration of the species.

The prompt manner in which Congress responded in the late winter of 1911 to a distress call in behalf of the starving elk, is beyond all ordinary terms of praise. It was magnificent. In fear and trembling, Congress was asked, through Senator Lodge, to appropriate $5,000. Congress and Senator Lodge made it $20,000; and for the first time the legislature of Wyoming appealed for national aid to save the joint-stock herds of Wyoming and the Yellowstone Park.

Glacier Park, Montana. —In the wild and picturesque mountains of northwestern Montana, covering both sides of the great Continental Divide, there is a region that has been splendidly furnished by the hand of Nature. It is a bewildering maze of thundering peaks, plunging valleys, evergreen forests, glistening glaciers, mirror lakes and roaring mountain streams. Its leading citizens are white mountain goats, mountain sheep, moose, mule deer and white-tailed deer, and among those present are black and grizzly bears galore.

Commercially, the 1,400 square miles of Glacier Park, even with its 60 glaciers and 260 lakes, are worth exactly the price of its big trees, and not a penny more. For mining, agriculture, horticulture and stock-raising, it is a cipher. As a transcendant pleasure ground and recreation wilderness for ninety millions of people, it is worth ninety millions of dollars, and not a penny less. It is a pleasure park of which the greatest of the nations of the earth,—whichever that may be,—might well be overbearingly proud; and its accessibility is almost unbelievable until seen.

This park is bounded on the south by the Great Northern Railway, on the east by the Blackfoot Indian Reservation, on the north by Alberta and British Columbia, and on the west by West Fork of the Flathead River. Horizontally, it contains 1,400 square miles; but as the goat climbs, its area is at least double that. Its valleys are filled and its lakes are encircled by grand forests of Douglas fir, hemlock, spruce, white pine, cedar and larch; and if ever they are destroyed by fire, it will be a national calamity, a century long.