Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/87

Rh Breakfast eaten, and the camp mail secured, my genial geological friend advises me to prepare to take the trail to the camp several miles away, which I do by putting on canvas leggings and stout hobnailed shoes. We try to dicker with the Indians (familiarly known as the 'Siwashes') to take our heavy luggage to the camp by canoe, but they are lazy and rapacious, and refuse to do so unless we pay several times the usual price, which we in turn refuse to do. So we take what we need most and start out over the trail. And such a trail! It begins fair enough, looking quite like an ordinary trail, but soon it changes into a mere path, and then abruptly drops down the slippery sides of a canyon, crosses a stream, and runs straight up

the other side. The geologist leads the way, carefully planting his feet in the notches in the canyon side, and I follow, thankful for the big hob-nails in my shoes. He jumps the stream, and so do I, and then he scrambles up the steep wall on the other side, and I follow, puffing and panting. At the next canyon the trail literally takes to the trees, crossing by a fallen tree whose trunk is slippery with damp mosses and lichens. Those blessed hob-nailed shoes do their duty, and I reach the other side safely, only to find my companion far ahead crawling under some fallen trees under which the trail runs.

But all things come to an end, and so does this wonderful trail.