ot one of them could
say.

There were various other marks, such as a hub surrounded by the spokes of
a wheel (whatever it was intended for), the key to which explained that
from that point a good view was to be obtained.

But what most attracted their attention, all up and down the crest of the
Sierra Nevada as it stretched from North, North-West to South,
South-East, were the wide green areas "of special scenic interest," most
of which was marked "UNEXPLORED!" in great warning red letters.

It was this part of the map that most fascinated the little camping
party. Why should they choose a route that was all cut and dried for
them, as it were,--where each day they would know when they started out
just about where night would find them and what they would meet with on
the way? Who wanted their views labeled anyway? That was all very well,
very thoughtful of the Forest Service, for inexperienced campers, who
would probably never venture into the unknown. But to Ace, the airman, to
Ted, with his experienced wild-craft, and to Pedro the romanticist, no
less than to the young Yale man whose thirst for far places had led him
into the U. S. Geological Survey, the Mystery of the Unexplored called,
with a lure that was not to be denied. Long Lester, they knew, was game
for anything,--for had he not prospected through these mountains all his
life? There was practically no place the sure-footed burros could not go,
and there was no danger they were not secretly and wickedly tingling to
encounter.

It was a wild region, as rough and as little known as anything from
Hawaii to Alaska,--only different. The John Muir Trail, named for the
explorer,--a "way through" rather than a trail,--stretched along the
crest of the range, the roughest kind of going, (absolutely a horseback
trip, it was generally pronounced), and from its glacier-capped peaks,
from 14,500 foot Mt. Whitney, to the even more difficult though less
lofty Lyell, ran the Kings' River, North, Middle, and canyoned South
Forks, the Kern and the Kaweah, the Merced and the San Joaquin,--to name
only the largest.

Unlike the older Eastern ranges, the Sierra is laid out with remarkable
regularity, the one great 12,000- to 14,000-foot divide, with its
scarcely lower passes, giving off ridges on the Western slope like the
teeth of a coarse granite comb. Between ridges, deep, glacier-cut
canyons, "yo-semities," (to employ the Indian name), with their swift,
cascading rivers ma