In the Oregon Country / Out-Doors in Oregon, Washington, and California Together with some Legendary Lore, and Glimpses of the Modern West in the Making

CHAPTER VIII

"Well, you'll have to unmake it, then," continued Uncle Sam's representative. "This here isn't for campers; it's reserved for the Service."

And thereafter, with considerable bluntness, he told us to "git," and quickly. Our arguments were in vain. The fact that it was dark, that we were played out, that there was no other horse feed near, availed not at all. With him it was no case for logic. Like a good and faithful servant he always came back to the beginning with the statement, "Them's the rules and I gotter enforce 'em."

But in the meantime the coffee boiled and the horses wandered farther from us. The ranger became exasperated.

"You're trespassing," he expostulated. "This is private property and——"

"Whose property?" My partner hit the nail on the head. But the ranger didn't see the rocks ahead.

"Property of the Forest Service, of course," said he.

"And who is the Forest Service?"

"Why, it's—it's—" the ranger stuttered a bit, seeking adequate explanation. "It's the Government, of course."

The ranger swelled with pride—after all, hadn't he demonstrated himself the representative of our omnipotent nation? But pride precedeth falls.

"And who is the Government?" persisted my partner, as he poured his cup full of coffee from the battered pot.

But before an Armageddon of violence was reached I interrupted and dispelled the threatened storm. For as it happened we were privileged characters, of a sort, and our note from the District Supervisor extending the special courtesies of the Service turned the rising wrath of our ranger into the essence of hospitality. We never again heard of the rules from him.

However, my friend had expressed a monumental conclusion. Our pasture was the property of the Forest Service, the Service was a part of the Government, and the Government is of and for the people—us common people. Therefore that pasture was ours—Q.E.D.! Of course the principle doesn't work out in practice, because the Service, in the proper conduct of its affairs, must have strict property rights like any other organization or individual. But, broadly speaking, that is the truth of the matter. And in justice to the new spirit of the Forest Service, and the aims and methods of its employees of to-day, it is well to state that the ranger in question was of the old school, which regarded its reserves as its own sacred property and operated somewhat on the antedated motto of some railroads of the past, "The public be damned."

For whatever one's feeling regarding the economic phase of national forests, from the casual camper's standpoint there is no doubt that their conduct to-day is admirable. Viewed from this angle they are great playgrounds, and as in Oregon alone the national forests embrace an astounding total of more than sixteen million acres, their importance to the recreationist is evident. On the doors of the ranger stations are signs which read: "Property of the United States. For the use of officers of the Forest Service." Leaving off the trespass warning which concludes the text of the cloth notices, one might change the other sentence thus: "For the use of whomever enjoys out-of-doors"; then you would have the meaning of the Western forest reserves in a nutshell, so far as campers are concerned.

If you are a settler who unsuccessfully seeks "elimination" of a homestead on the ground that it is "more valuable for agricultural purposes than for timber," or a timber speculator, or even a mill owner desirous of cheap logs, your enthusiasm for "conservation" may be a negligible quantity. Certainly if you are a vote-seeker you will damn it whenever opportunity affords, for that is politically fashionable, and always safe—unlike woman suffrage, prohibition, and tariff questions; conservation is an architectural phenomenon, for it is a fence with only one side in a West whose people consider themselves robbed of their heritage of natural wealth, which most of them are all for turning into dollars as fast as logging-roads and band-saws can contrive. "To-day for to-day; let the morrow care for itself," they say. But if you are merely a foolish camper, with a secret dread of the time when the old earth will be divested totally of her timber covering, you may actually be grateful for the manner in which the reserves are administered. Your playground is cared for and guarded and improved. Maps, often accurate, are obtainable. The trails are well blazed and well kept, and new trails and roads are constantly being installed for the double purpose of making the forests more accessible to the public and to simplify fire fighting.

For above all, of course, the great good work is the ceaseless battle against fire—now far more one of prevention than of extinction. Visible and arresting signs of the fire-war are encountered everywhere—notices warning against the risks and losses of forest fires, exhortations on the criminal dangers of leaving camp-fires burning, reminders to the smokers about forgotten cigarettes. These, and a score more, stare the trail follower in the face at intervals upon his way, until hostility to the plundering fire god is so thoroughly drummed home as to become a sort of second nature.

The more frequented trails, as I have said, are plastered with fire warning signs. Once one of them all but broke up a contented camping trip, in this wise:

After a two days' ride in a driving rain storm and a night in wet blankets, we came to a deserted ranger station, and in it found a welcome refuge. Our blankets spread in a dry corner, we set to work upon a fire, just beyond the overhang of what had once been a porch roof.

That fire was a task! If we were soaked, the woods were wetter still, and everything normally inflammable seemed as water-logged as a dishrag. However, Mac fared forth with his double-bitted axe, and in due course secured some near-dry chips from the sheltered side of a dead tree. However, the chips showed no overweening desire to ignite, despite Mac's most tender efforts. The rain beat on his face, mud plastered his knees, water from the shake roof trickled down his neck, and matches and temper approached exhaustion while he struggled coaxingly with the stubborn fire god.

On a tree just behind the would-be fire maker was a Forest Service sign, whose large letters read: "Beware of Setting Fires!" Glancing up from Mac at his sodden task to that sign a latent sense of humor somewhere within my damp person overbalanced discretion, and I burst into uproarious laughter.

Somehow Mac took my levity quite to heart.

"Well," said he—or something with the same number of letters—"if you think you can make this dodgasted fire burn better'n I can, come out and try—the water's fine."

There were embellishments, too, not fit to print in a modest book, regarding a loafer who would hang back in the dry places while the only intelligent member of the party, etc. But when he saw the sign even irate Mac had to laugh, too.

"Whoever posted that warning," said he, "ought to be compelled to come in September and try to set a fire hereabout! He'll get a medal for incendiarism if he succeeds!"

At all events the National Forests occupy an all-important place in the Pacific Playland, if mountains and woods figure at all in your itinerary. The Californian Sierras are in the "reserves," as are the Cascades and much of the coast mountains of Oregon and Washington. There are countless other outing places in the three States, of course, for many prefer the automobile to the pack-horse, and the beach to the highlands, and for such, the road maps of the automobile associations and the shore line of the Pacific open an endless field of pleasure.

In hunting and fishing, too, the sportsman need not confine himself to the mountain regions, and whether the hunter use gun or camera there are regions throughout the three States where his rewards for patient diligence will be ample. Ducks and geese abound, from the Sacramento marshes to the sloughs of the Columbia and the myriad shooting grounds of Puget Sound, and there are deer and bear and occasionally a cougar or cat scattered through the hills. Coyotes roam the sagebrush plains, devastating neighbors to the sage hens and rabbits, grouse lurk in the timbered foothills, and gay Chinese pheasants are prospering—where they have been "planted" by the State game authorities.

With all the rivers, and all the lakes, of the three States to choose from, it would be folly to list any special ones of marked piscatorial virtue, even if one were able where superlatives are appropriate in describing so many. Suffice to say that from actual experience I know that there are streams in the Sierras, in the Oregon Cascades, and in the Olympics of Washington whose very contemplation would make Izaak Walton long for reincarnation. Back East—in New Brunswick and Cape Breton, for instance—one often catches as many and as large trout, and sometimes more and larger, than in the Western streams. But after all, the fish are a small part of the fishing. The tame sameness of the surroundings of the down-east waters compares ill with the theatrical bigness and infinite variety of setting of most of the Western rivers, where half the delight is the recurring glimpses of snowy peaks and the majestic companionship of colossal trees.

Beside a little lake not far from the summit of the Cascades is a small cabin. It is squatty in appearance and strongly constructed, but has neither the earmarks of a ranger's station nor of a trapper's winter home. A few yards away, where a little creek enters the lake, a rather elaborate dam adds to the mystery.

"It's a fish station," explained Mac cryptically.

Later I heard arrangements made for the transportation of half a ton of grub to the cabin—a matter of fifty miles of wagon haul, twelve by pack-horse, and five by boat. The supplies were to be brought in before the snows came in the Fall, and buried beside the cabin so that the canned stuff and the potatoes would not freeze. Then the occupants who were to eat the rations would put in their appearance about April 1st, when the trails were hidden beneath many feet of snow and packing would be nearly an impossibility.

For the cabin represented the first link in the work of trout propagation, as conducted by the State Fish and Game Commission. Two experts go to it when the first spring thaws attack the drifts and the little creek grows restless beneath its winter quilt of snow and ice. The first year they waited too long, and when they came and built their dam the female fish already had gone up the creek to lay their eggs. But this year they dared the rear-guard of winter, and arrived in time to trap hundreds of trout fat with roe. For six weeks they labor collecting the eggs which later are sent to the State hatchery at Bonneville to be hatched. Later the fingerlings are distributed where most needed throughout Oregon.

The fisherman who pays his license fee often enough knows next to nothing of the good work that is being done for him by those who aim not only to keep the streams from being "fished out," but also to improve the fishing. This cabin by the lakeside represents the start of the work, and bitter hard work some of it is, too.

The fish car, "Rainbow," with its load of cans filled with trout fry, reaches the railroad point selected for distribution. There the local warden has gathered a legion of volunteer automobiles in which the cans are rushed to the streams and lakes near by and their contents planted. That is the easy simple "planting." The difficulties come when the streams or lakes are scores of miles from a railway or even a road, and the carrying must be done by pack-train. In 1912 and 1913, for instance, one hundred and sixteen lakes scattered throughout the Cascade Mountains were stocked; that is, waters suitable for trout culture but hitherto without fish were prepared for the fisherman of next summer, and an ever-increasing number of desirable fishing places provided. And in the cases numbered here, every can of fry used was carried many miles on pack-horses; one trip occupied eight days, and even then, thanks to many changes of water, out of ten thousand fry only fifty died!

Hunting is an out-of-door pursuit all to itself. The man who at home would lift a beetle from his garden walk rather than crush it becomes an ardent murderer when he camps. Probably there are no adequate apologies. And yet we all get the fever at some time or another, and taste the fascination of pitting our wits and woodcraft against the native cunning of the wild thing we stalk. Your ethical friend—who probably is a vegetarian to boot!—here at once objects. He says the contest is cruelly uneven; that the odds of a high-powered rifle spoil the argument. Which, in a way, is quite true. But Heaven knows we would never taste venison or have bear rugs before our den fires if their capture was left to our naked hands!

However, this is dangerous ground, and most of us brush past it when vacation time comes, and take out our hunting license as automatically as we make up our order for corn-meal and bacon. From our rods we expect full creels, and hope for game from the guns.

"Any luck?"

That is the first question when you get home, and a negative answer implies defeat. Unless you get something, be prepared for the I-thought-as-much expression when your friend sympathizes with you. An incentive and a temptation it is—some of the worst of us and some of the best of us have nearly fallen (nearly, I say) and offered gold to a small boy with the basket which was full of fish when ours was empty. And the game laws—there, in truth, is where sportsmanship at times is forced into tight corners!

We had hunted deer for two solid, leg-wearying days. But the woods were very dry, and the deer heard us long before we saw them, except for a doe or two, uncannily aware of the safety of their sex. On the morrow we hit the homeward trail, and were disconsolate at the prospect of a venisonless return.

Crackle!

Something moved in the thicket below me. Another stir and the "something" resolved itself into a deer. Up came the light carbine—the weapon par excellence for saddle trips—while I sighted across seventy yards of sunshine at the brown beast moving gracefully about, nipping at hanging moss and oblivious of danger.

But the carbine did not speak. Conscience and familiarity with the game laws battled for some thirty seconds with inclination and desire for venison. Then conscience won, and the doe continued her dainty feeding, undisturbed.

In days gone by, our copy-book mottoes told us that "Virtue is its own reward." As a general thing such automatic recompense is unsatisfactory, so when really first-class examples of more tangible returns for virtue arise, they deserve recording. And this was one of them. For no sooner had I formed the good resolve, and acted on it, venison or no venison, than there came another soft crack-crackle of dry twigs, and a second brown animal appeared.

Bang!

The first shot hit just abaft the shoulder and the fine buck lay dead before he knew his plight.

And if that was not immediate reward for virtue, I defy explanation!

CHAPTER IX

The Columbia is, of course, a continental stream whose very mightiness prevents any adequate comprehension of its entity; it must be enjoyed by sections, in small potions. The Willamette is almost pastoral, a sterner Western edition of the English Thames, with a score of rollicking tributaries, rough as the mountains that breed them. The Sacramento, like linked sweetness, is long drawn out, and the boisterous brooks of the Sierras seem rather upland freshets than substantial rivers. Superlatives are risky tools on the Pacific Slope where they appear appropriate so often, but even so, with no apologies to the Pitt, the Snake, the Williamson, the Rogue, and other neighbors, greater and lesser, the Deschutes appeals to me as the richest of them all in scenery and pleasurable attractions. From the snow banks of its birth to the Columbia I have played companion to its waters on horseback, in canoe, in automobile, driving, afoot, and on a train, and with familiarity has come no contempt, but ever-increasing admiration.

The Deschutes is a river of many rôles: it roars and rushes in white-watered cascades, it sparkles gently in a myriad rippling rapids, it is sedate as a mill pond; sometimes its banks are fields flanked with flowers, sometimes steep slopes with black pools below and great trees above, sometimes lined with alders or with the needle-carpeted forest marching out to the very water's edge. Such it is for the first hundred miles. Below, leaving the land of trees and meadows, it plunges for a second century of miles through a spectacular canyon, walled in by cliffs and abrupt hillsides, often rising almost sheer a thousand feet. "The Grand Canyon of the Northwest," those who know it call this stretch of the Deschutes. Above, billowing back from the rim, is a great golden-brown land of wheat fields, with a marvelous mountain westerly skyline.

On the river's western flank, between it and the Cascade Range, is a playland of beautiful pine timber, crystal lakes, and mountained meadows, bounded on one hand by snow-capped peaks and on the other by the broad plains that sweep eastward to Idaho.

One August we foregathered in this happy hunting ground with our canoe and our grub, near the headwaters of the Deschutes, in the heart of a region of sunshine, mountain prairie, glorious trees, and laughing water. One hundred miles of liquid highway lay before us, and we envied no one.

Crane Prairie is a broad mountain meadow, hemmed in by timbered foothills that climb to the snow mountains, glimpsed here and there from the prairie land. The Deschutes divides into three streams, each meandering down from little lakes tucked away in the timber at the base of the snow slopes that feed them. All around the prairie is a delightful region intersected by trails, dotted with lakes and meadows; altogether a pleasant place for ramblings, either on foot or horseback, with fishing, hunting, and mountain climbing as tangible objectives.

The first stage of our outing was a stationary one, so far as the canoe was concerned, for a week was devoted to expeditioning here and there upon and around Crane Prairie. There was excellent fishing, and we saw just enough of the trails and the mountains to realize something of their possibilities.

Then one morning, before the sunlight had filtered over the hills and down through the pine boughs, we launched the Long Green, our canoe which had made the transcontinental trip from Oldtown, Maine, and started it upon a more venturesome, if less lengthy trip. Ours, by the way, was an equal suffrage outing. Its feminine better-half paddled as strenuously, cast a fly as optimistically, and "flipped" hot cakes as diligently as did the male member. Altogether, she demonstrated beyond a doubt that the enjoyment of an Oregon canoe trip need not depend upon one's sex or previous condition of servitude.

Comfortable canoeing is the most entirely satisfying method of travel extant. It is noiseless, it is easy, and there is enough uncertainty and risk about it to lend a special charm. Just as the best of fishing is the unknown possibility of the next cast—your biggest trout may rise to the fly!—so it is when you drift down stream in a canoe, for every turn discloses a fresh vista and behind every bend lurks some rare surprise. It may be an unsuspected rapid, requiring prompt action; perhaps a tree has fallen across the river, necessitating a flanking portage or a hazardous scurry beneath it; mayhap a particularly inviting pool will appear, when one must "put on the brakes" and "full speed astern" ever so hastily before a fatal shadow spoils the fishing chances. There are other possibilities without number, some of them realities for us, as when we came face to face with a deer, to our vast mutual astonishment, or, quietly drifting down upon a madam duck and her fluffy feathered family, gave them all violent hysterics. The little birds were unable to fly, and the mother, who would not desert them and lacked courage to hide along the bank, herded her family down stream for many miles with heartbreaking squawks and much splashing of wings.

A portage is either one of the interesting events of a canoe trip or its most despised hardship, according to the disposition of those concerned—not to mention the length, breadth, and thickness of the portage itself! Regarded in its most pessimistic light, a portage is a necessary evil, and, like a burned bannock, is swallowed with good grace by the initiated. In Eastern Canada, the land of patois French, a portage is a portage. In Maine, and elsewhere, it is apt to be a "carry." West of the Rockies, one neither "portages" nor "carries," but "packs" the canoe, for on the Pacific Slope everything borne by man or beast is "packed," just as it is "toted" south of the Mason and Dixon line. But portage, carry, or pack, the results are the same. Reduced to their lowest equation, it usually means a sore back and a prodigious appetite—there should be a superlative for prodigious, as all camping appetites are that; dare one say "prodigiouser"?

Our hundred miles of river included but two portages of consequence, both around falls. Fortunately in each instance the packing was across a comparatively level stretch, free from underbrush, as is almost all of this great belt of yellow pine that follows the eastern slopes of the Cascades from the Columbia to California. There were minor carries, once over a low bridge, where the bands of sheep cross to the mountain summer ranges of the forest reserves, and several times an easy haul, with canoe loaded, around the end of a fallen tree or crude forest ranger's bridge made of floating logs held together for the most part with baling wire.

Now and again the river was bordered by nature-made fields, knee-deep with flowers; there were purple lupin everywhere and vermilion Indian paint-brush, and a score of other gay blossoms. Often for the pleasure of tramping through this pretty outdoor garden, we would let the canoe follow its own sweet will at the end of a rope, while we walked down the bank, perhaps intimately investigating the households of beavers or casting a royal coachman along the shadowed water close beside the edge.

The special delight of camping, as anyone knows who has tried it, is that life all at once becomes so simple away from the high-pressure world of telephones, time-tables, dinner engagements, and other necessary evils. That is the essence of outing pleasure. The fishing, the canoeing, the hunting, climbing, or what-not are really relegated to obscurity in comparison with this one great boon. When our physical system runs down, we take medicine; when our mental system gets out of gear, we crave a dose of the open, which means of simplicity.

A canoe trip is simplicity personified. In the first place, you are launched into the wide world of out-of-doors with your entire household, from dining table to bed, concentrated in a couple of bundles that repose amidships in the craft which is the beginning and the end of your transportation possibilities. The rest is "up to you." If you would get somewhere, it is necessary to paddle, always exercising due diligence to keep the craft right side up and escape fatal collisions with vexatious rocks and snags. In that department—locomotion—there is just enough active responsibility to keep it thoroughly worth while, and more than enough relaxation, as the current carries the canoe along with only now and then a guiding dip of the paddle, to make it all a most pleasurable loaf.

Every stopping place was a new experience, and, it should be said, each seemed even more beautiful than its predecessor.

"There's a bully place. See—there under the big pine."

With a stroke or two of the paddles the Long Green arrived gently at the bank beneath that pine, and out would come the box of grub, the gunny sack of pots and frying pans, and the rolls of bedding. Then the canoe was drawn from the water, and, inverted, pressed into double service as a table and a rain shelter, in case of need. Our waterproof sleeping-bags were supposed to do as much for us, and on two occasions showers dampened our slumbers, if not our spirits.

The important work of camping, which is not work at all, but play, is in the commissary department. It has four stages: lighting the fire, cooking, eating, and cleaning up; the third is, by all odds, the most popular.

Concerning fire making, volumes have been written. It is quite possible to learn from these incendiary publications exactly how to prepare the proper, perfect kind of a fire under any and all circumstances. Study alone is required to master the art—on paper! But in reality, making a quick and satisfactory camp-fire, like creating frying-pan bread, is a subtle attainment that can be mastered only by practice. No two people agree; it is easier to start a dispute over the details of a camp-fire than about anything imaginable, not even excepting the "best trout fly made"—and that, every fisherman knows, is a matter of piscatorial preference that has disrupted humanity since the days of Izaak Walton.

Camp cooking is another art. There, again, place not all thy faith in books, for they are deceivers when it comes to a bit of bacon, a frying pan, some corn-meal and flour, and a pinch of baking powder. The only satisfactory rule is to have as few ingredients as possible and to have plenty of them. Flour, corn-meal, bacon, dried apples, butter, hardtack, sugar, salt, coffee, baking powder, beans—those form the essential foundation. There is an endless list of edibles that may be added, which run the gastronomic gamut from molasses to canned corn. But the way to learn real camp cooking, and by all odds the best procedure for happiness in transportation, is to take a small variety and keep each article in a cloth bag, which insures few troublesome packages and no disastrous leaks.

"Cleanin' up" is no trick at all, when there is a river full of water a dozen feet from the fire, and it is simply a matter of two pots and two tin plates. There, indeed, the joys of camp life come home to the feminine member of the expedition most forcibly of all.

"Isn't it heavenly! Only two plates to wash!" expressed the essence of her satisfaction.

Two plates to wash, two paddles to manipulate, two healthful, happy weeks of out-of-doors, all as enjoyable for a woman as for a man—that was our Deschutes River canoe trip. And there are a score or more of other Oregon outings as delightful.

CHAPTER X

The room and its contents smacked of the regions that lie about the Arctic circle, and thence, indeed, they had just come. For Mine Host was barely back from Mt. McKinley and many months of venturesome exploration in Alaska.

Next to watching the other fellow prepare his camping kit and discuss plans for the Big Trip, when you yourself are to stay at home, I think the most exasperating experience is to hear the good tales told by the man fresh returned from some thrilling expedition. As you listen to the story of the big untrodden places, the routine of your everyday life seems woefully petty, and you are all at once distracted with a mad resolve to go and do likewise. It is a dangerous symptom, and should be prescribed for immediately—though the only real remedy I know is to close one's eyes and ears and flee from the place of temptation. For this is the Wanderlust, the joyful plague of the sinner who has lost all count of time and ties in following some wilderness trail, and desires nothing more than to lose them again.

If McKinley and Alaska were out of reach, across Puget Sound lay a closer land of mountains and little-trodden trails. "Why not try Olympus?"

The suggestion was no sooner made than accepted. Before I entered the room six months of stay-at-home was my unquestioned outlook, but all at once a hike to Olympus appeared the most reasonable thing in the world.

Mine Host, upon whom the blame rests, was out of the running, for he started East the next day. But his companion, the Mountain Climber, although scarcely yet with a taste of civilization after months in the wilderness, was in a receptive frame of mind. It took us two minutes to decide definitely upon the excursion. Twenty minutes more and we had picked outfits from the wealth of paraphernalia all about us, and at midnight we saw the lights of Seattle's water front vanish astern as a Sound steamer bore us toward Port Angeles on the Olympic peninsula.

At times on our journey the Mountain Climber reminded me that on his inland voyaging Stevenson traveled with a donkey. Inasmuch as our pack animal was a horse, that rather hurt my feelings; the inference was so obvious. However, that horse was more than half mule, so far as disposition is concerned. We hired him at Port Angeles and Billy was his name.

"And when I walk, I always walk with Billy,
For Billy knows just how to walk,"

chanted the Mountain Climber as we started out blithely. But long ere we crossed the divide separating the town from the valley of the Elwha River we realized that if Billy knew how to walk he emphatically refused to put his knowledge into practice. For Billy was a stubborn loafer until it came to night time, when he bent his pent-up energy to getting as far from camp as possible between dusk and sun-up.

There are three distinct methods of travel on the trail. You may ride horses and carry your supplies on a pack-horse. You may walk and let the pack animal do the burden bearing. Or you may be a host unto yourself and bear your entire household on your back, with your own legs supplying locomotion. On this trip we chose the middle course, and walked, while Billy was our common carrier. Back packing is a strenuous undertaking where many miles are to be covered, and yet a superfluity of horses is a nuisance if the going is rough and instead of gaining speed with many animals you actually lose it. So it seemed to us the best way was to go afoot, with a single pack-horse.

The brawling Elwha was our guide to Olympus, for its headwaters spring almost from the base of the mountain, and our trail wandered up the bank of the stream until, perhaps a dozen miles beyond our departure point from the highroad, we came to an appetizing meadow, and the pleasantest mountain home imaginable.

It was the log house of the "Humes Boys," who seem as much of an institution in the Olympics as the mountains themselves. Bred in the Adirondacks the Humes migrated westward and hit upon this isolated homestead in the corner of Washington, where a growing influx of hunters and fishermen finds them out and they are kept busy during the summer months as guides and packers to the many vacationists who know them and their knowledge of the surrounding regions. In the winter they trap and—I imagine from the evident tastes of Grant Humes—read good books on out-of-door subjects, close to the glowing stove, while the winds whistle up and down the valley and the snow piles high. Gardeners, too, they are in a modest way, raising all their vegetables. And cooks! What cooks! In years gone by some pioneer settler had planted plum trees, and when we first saw Grant Humes no housewife was busier with jelly-making than he.

"It's a bother now, and I don't suppose I enjoy it more than any other man likes such work," said he. "But when we're here in January and February, pretty well shut off from the world, and there's a great sameness about the food, I tell you a hundred glasses of plum jelly look almighty good—not to mention tasting!"

I can vouch for the taste of it in September; if the midwinter season improves the flavor I'm in a most receptive mood for a Christmas invitation to the cabin on the Elwha!

For those who have the right sort of taste, existence such as the Humes's must seem quite Utopian. Their garden and their rifles, supplemented by importations from the store "down below," feed them; their meadows supply hay for their stock; fuel of course is everywhere, and a little captivated stream brought to the house in a hand-hewed flume supplies an icy approximation of "running water." Hemming in the meadowland oasis are giant hills, their neighboring flanks hidden by mighty timber, their summits gray and brown beneath mantles of brush and berry, closing in the valley so resolutely that its hours of sunlight are almost as meager as in the cavernous fjord lands of Norway.

After Humes's the trail wound through abysmal forest depths, skirting fir and pine and cedar of unbelievable girth, or making irksome detours where some fallen monarch blocked the way. Needles and ferns there were underfoot, a drapery of moss overhead, and everywhere a penetrating silence. The most silent woods imaginable are those of the wet coast country, where the trees are enormous and set close together, thickets and ferns clutter the ground beneath them, and moss clings to the lower limbs; sunlight, if not a total stranger, at best is but an itinerant acquaintance.

When the whim seized it the fickle trail deserted one bank of the Elwha for the other, one of us leading Billy across while his companion, in vain effort to keep dry-shod, essayed perilous crossings on logs, often as not resulting in disaster.

Toward evening of the fourth day we dragged Billy up a final hill. Except for scattered and weather-beaten blazes, all vestiges of the trail had vanished, and, in fact, Grant Humes had told us that no one had been that way for two years, a fact testified by fallen trees and the unrepaired destruction of spring freshets. Hidden at the base of giant Douglas firs was all that remained of the Elwha, now scarcely more than a brook, its waters opaquely white with the silt of glaciers close at hand. Suddenly we emerged upon a hillock and below us lay Elwha Basin, where the river has its birth.

A cup, carpeted with grass, walled with crags; an amphitheater studded with trees, hemmed in by banks of snow, and roofed by blue sky—such is the basin of the Elwha. At the far end is a wall of rock, over which tumbles the jolly little infant river in a silvery cascade, and beyond is a snow bank jutting into the greenery of an upper meadow. From a dark cave at the glacial snowbank's base the river seemed to have its start, though beyond the snow, from still loftier cliffs, fluttered another ribbon of water coming from unseen heights beyond. Westerly a few jagged snow peaks peered down upon us over the nearer cliffs, and great shadows reached across the pleasant valley to the very base of our little hill of vantage.

At the near end of the basin we found a wonderful camp place all prepared by our thoughtful nature hostess. It was a cave at the foot of a cliff, whose ceiling of overhanging rock protected admirably against the vagaries of the elements, while wood and water were close at hand, and ferns and flowers made Elysian setting. We turned Billy loose in the knee-high grass, where he spent a week of loafing, unable, for once, to escape, thanks to the cliffs and a back trail easily blocked by felling a few small trees. Happily, then, we sprawled upon our blankets, with the sweet-smelling spruce boughs beneath us and the warm light of the fire playing odd pranks with the dancing shadows in our rock-roofed resting place. Beyond the ghostly circle of the firelight were the jet outlines of trees, and, farther, reaching up to a million stars, the mountains. And beyond those mountains lay Olympus, for whom we had come so far and now must go still farther.

The few unessentials of our commissary we left at the cave, and with grub for five days and bedding on our backs, and the ice axes in our hands, like the bear of the song, we started over the mountain to see what we could see.

A steep snow chute called the Dodwell and Rickson Pass was our way of passage over the divide to the Queets Basin, where the river of that name commenced its journey to the Pacific, while behind us the melting snows that formed the Elwha found outlet eastward in Puget Sound. As we trudged up the steep slopes of the Pass it was soon apparent that other travelers beside ourselves used the snowy route, for broad tracks showed where bruin on his own broad bottom had coasted down the incline but a few hours previously, a recreation youthful bears seem to enjoy about as thoroughly as men cubs. There was indeed a goodly population of bear in the upper regions of the Queets, and the hide of one of them is at my fireside now. It would have been no trick at all to kill several, for we saw them daily foraging among the blueberry uplands, with their pink tongues snaking out first on one side, then on the other, garnering in the fruit from the low bushes. But we could pack only one skin, so we left the others warming their owners, where they most properly belonged.

Queets Basin is a rough mountain valley, covered for the most part only with berry bushes, and with rocky gorges cutting its surface where the river's several branches had worn away deep courses. Overshadowing the basin were the outposts of Olympus itself, with the snout of Humes's glacier thrusting its icy seracs almost into the berry land, and the pinnacled peaks behind rising majestically against the northern skyline. Westward, the roaring Queets vanished down a canyon, through a country of the roughest kind, and, we were told, one hitherto unexplored. A journey to the sea following the white-watered Queets would be a worth-while experience, we thought, seeing the first mile of it; but like many another, the Mountain Climber and I, unless we live to the age of Methuselah and devote all our years to outings, will never be able to take one half the trips we have planned and secretly long for; exclusive of our cherished ramble down the Queets!

The packs slipped from our backs at the base of a giant fir, and we called it camp. Next to the bear who almost thrust his nose into my bed next morning, my most vivid recollection of that camp was the blueberry bread we concocted in the frying-pan, which was fit for the very gods of old Olympus.

Then we climbed Olympus.

Coming on the heels of Mt. McKinley, it was no great feat of mountaineering for the Mountain Climber, but nevertheless it combined happily all the varied attractions of climbing. The ascent of Olympus does, indeed, entail almost every sort of mountaineering, and some of it reasonably difficult and dangerous. In the first place, the approach to the mountain is perhaps its crowning feature; it is a man's sized trip to get within striking distance, and to its inaccessibility is due the fact that up to 1907 it was unscaled. When once reached, there are goodly glaciers to be conquered, vast snow fields to be negotiated, some hard ice work, and a lot of stiff climbing, all at long range from the nearest practical base camp.

By daybreak we were under way. Through bushes, across a ravine, up a narrow tongue of snow in a "chimney," and then over a shoulder of rock débris, an outshoot of the lower lateral moraine of the Humes's glacier, and we found ourselves on the seracs of the glacier's snout, with no choice but to take to them. By the time we had found a way over the broken green ice, with its sudden chasms, the sun was warm at our backs and the chill of the dawn was forgotten. Then we emerged from the ice hummocks which mightily resembled a storm-tossed sea suddenly petrified, and commenced the leg-wearying ascent of the long snow field above, which clothed the glacier and stretched toward a rim of dark cliffs, the summit of the divide between us and Olympus proper. Toward the lowest saddle in this rocky wall we set our course.