across the ledge we were following. Buddy, afraid to climb its
slippery sides, undertook to leap it. There was one terrible moment when
he failed to make a footing with his hind feet and we hung there over
the gorge. After that, Dan Devore led him.

In spite of our difficulties, we got down to the timber-line rather
quickly. But there trouble seemed to increase rather than diminish.
Trees had fallen across the way, and dangerous detours on uncertain
footing were necessary to get round them. The warm rains of the Pacific
Slope had covered the mountain-sides with thick vegetation also. Our
way, hardly less steep than on the day before, was overgrown with
greenery that was often a trap for the unwary. And even when, at last,
we were down beyond the imminent danger of breaking our necks at every
step, there were more difficulties. The vegetation was rank,
tremendously high. We worked our way through it, lost to each other and
to the world. Wilderness snows had turned the small streams to roaring
rivers and spread them over flats through which we floundered. So long
was it since the trail had been used that it was often difficult to tell
where it took off from the other side of the stream. And our horses were
growing very weary. They had made the entire trip without grain and with
such bits of pasture as they could pick up in the mountains. Now it was
a long time since they had had even grass.

It will never be possible to know how many miles we covered in that
Cascade Pass trip. As Mr. Hilligoss said, mountain miles were measured
with a coonskin, and they threw in the tail. Often to make a mile's
advance we traveled four on the mountain-side.

So when they tell me that it was a trifle of sixteen miles from the top
of Cascade Pass to the camp-site we made that night, I know that it was
nearer thirty. In point of difficulties, it was a thousand.

Yet the last part of the trip, had we not been too weary to enjoy it,
was superbly beautiful. There was a fine rain falling. The undergrowth
was less riotous and had taken on the form of giant ferns, ten feet
high, which overhung the trail. Here were great cypress trees thirty-six
feet in circumference--a forest of them. We rode through green aisles
where even the death of the forest was covered by soft moss. Out of the
green and moss-covered trunks of dead giants, new growth had sprung, new
trees, hanging gardens of ferns.

There had been much talk of Mineral Park. It was our ob