support them; and the rights of these settlers must be carefully
safeguarded, and they must be shown that the movement is really in their
interest. The eastern sportsman who fails to recognize these facts can
do little but harm by advocacy of forest reserves.

[Illustration: A SILHOUETTE OF BLACKTAIL.]

It was in the interior of the Park, at the hotels beside the lake, the
falls, and the various geyser basins, that we would have seen the bears
had the season been late enough; but unfortunately the bears were still
for the most part hibernating. We saw two or three tracks, and found one
place where a bear had been feeding on a dead elk, but the animals
themselves had not yet begun to come about the hotels. Nor were the
hotels open. No visitors had previously entered the Park in the winter
or early spring--the scouts and other employees being the only ones who
occasionally traverse it. I was sorry not to see the bears, for the
effect of protection upon bear life in the Yellowstone has been one of
the phenomena of natural history. Not only have they grown to realize
that they are safe, but, being natural scavengers and foul feeders, they
have come to recognize the garbage heaps of the hotels as their special
sources of food supply. Throughout the summer months they come to all
the hotels in numbers, usually appearing in the late afternoon or
evening, and they have become as indifferent to the presence of men as
the deer themselves--some of them very much more indifferent. They have
now taken their place among the recognized sights of the Park, and the
tourists are nearly as much interested in them as in the geysers.

[Illustration: BLACK BEARS AT HOTEL GARBAGE HEAP.]

It was amusing to read the proclamations addressed to the tourists by