Rocky Mountain Sam — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘ oe q * : ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. 13 ple for any of his tribe who might thereafter dream of de- fying the wrath of the Booglebooby, or Wind-Specter. CHAPTER II. THE WHITE HERMIT. These black-scarred crags are the panthers’ homes, Where the grizzly, too, in his glory roams, And the red deer are thick in the dingles below, In the wild brook that brawls in the canons deep, The speckled trout and the sunfish leap; And up there, by the lone peaks, white with snow, The eagle harries rock, chasm, and wood For the clamorous maws of her hungry brood. The balloon had shot upward with frightful rapidity upon being relieved of the Indians’ weight. Slowly the scene below grew wider and more chess-board-like and miniature in character. Streams became silver threads of gossamer fineness, vast forests were irregular plots you cover with the palm of your hand, and broad lakes but little wells of sparkling water. It was a sublime, never to-be-forgotten spectacle, and though Sam had made more than one ascent ere this with his eccentric friend, it seemed to him that he would never tire in gazing down upon it. The voice of the aeronaut aroused him. «“Come,” said he; “‘it is growing colder every minute, and we must mount still higher to catch the western flowing current that is to waft me back to my otherwise inaccessible home in the mountains. Wrap yourself in some of these blankets. Are you not cold?” Sam, who had already felt the change of temperature, gladly availed himself of one of the blankets, a number of which were gathered in one corner of the car, while the aeronaut did likewise. He was a remarkable-looking man, was Mad Max, the balloonist, as he was known among the few hunters, trap- pers and cattle-raisers, who had made their home in that art of the territory of Montana—the ‘‘White Hermit,” or the “Devil of the Wind-Specter,” as the Blackfeet Indians described him in their guttural dialect. He was very tall and very gaunt, and was clad in garments Gomicbooks (ele)