TRAVEL IN THE MOUNTAINS 41 



ter the agile lynx, the sinister wolverine, the too-confiding 

 marten, the prosy porcupine, the busy red squirrel, and 

 an occasional wolf. The grizzly and the black bear are 

 transient guests, but in times of real trouble, no wild 

 creatures value green timber more than they. The elk 

 and deer also find it a welcome retreat. 



One of the most impressive features of those moun- 

 tains is the sharpness with which everything is deline- 

 ated. The different elements which make up the face of 

 Nature are not always softly and artistically blended 

 together, as a skilful artist blends the color boundaries 

 on his canvas. Each patch of green timber is as sharply 

 defined at its edges as the grounds of a county fair. In 

 one step you leave the glaring sunlight, and are swal- 

 lowed up by the dark, restful shadows, just as when one 

 steps from the glare and stress of a stone pavement into 

 the soothing shadows of a cloister. By one step you 

 make your exit, and land full upon the angular agonies 

 of slide-rock, or into the horizontal terrors of " down 

 timber." For a mile or more a creek will go brawling 

 noisily over its bed of stones, and all at once drop entirely 

 out of sight, under a great mass of slide-rock. Down the 

 steep mountain-side, the track of each avalanche is cut as 

 clean as the swath of a mower going through tall grass. 



Even timber-line itself is not half so long drawn out 

 as one usually sees in other mountains. There is no diffi- 

 culty in drawing a contour line to mark it out on your 

 sketch. 



Throughout our mountains, there was no such thing 

 as travelling by pack-train without a cut-out trail. The 



