ubtedly accurate ideas as to points
of the compass, and faultless proficiency in depicting bird's-eye
views, but he neglects entirely the putting in of various ups and down,
slants and windings of the country, which apparently twist the north
pole around to the east-south-east. You start due west on a bee line,
according to directions; after about ten feet you scramble over a
fallen tree, skirt a boulder, dip into a ravine, and climb a ledge.
Your starting point is out of sight behind you; your destination is,
Heaven knows where, in front. By the time you have walked six thousand
actual feet, which is as near as you can guess to fifteen hundred
theoretical level ones, your little blazed stake in a pile of stones is
likely to be almost anywhere within a liberal quarter of a mile. Then
it is guess-work. If the hill is pretty thickly staked out, the chase
becomes exciting. In the middle distance you see a post. You clamber
eagerly to it, only to find that it marks your neighbour's claim. You
have lost your standpoint of a moment ago, and must start afresh. In an
hour's time you have discovered every stake on the hill but the one you
want. In two hours' time you are staggering homeward a gibbering idiot.
Then you are brought back to profane sanity by falling at full length
over the very object of your search.

Bennington was treated to full measure of this experience. He found the
John Logan lode without much difficulty, and followed its length with
less, for the simple reason that its course lay over the round brow of
a hill bare of trees. He also discovered the "Northeast Corner of the
Crazy Horse Lode" plainly marked on the white surface of a pine stake
braced upright in a pile of rocks. Thence he confidently paced south,
and found nothing. Next trip he came across pencilled directions
concerning the "Miner's Dream Lode." The time after he ran against the
"Golden Ball" and the "Golden Chain Lodes." Bennington reflected; his
mind was becoming a little heated.

"It's because I went around those ledges and boulders," he said to
himself; "I got off the straight line. This time I'll take the straight
line and keep it."

So he addressed himself to the surmounting of obstructions. Work of
that sort is not easy. At one point he lost his hold on a broad, steep
rock, and slid ungracefully to the foot of it, his elbows digging
frantically into the moss, and his legs straddled apart. As he struck
bottom, he imagined he heard a mo