330 CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



the valley they fell across each other in every direction, 

 and piled up higher and higher, until the uncut resid- 

 uum is absolutely impassable for horse, deer, or any 

 large hoofed animal except man. There are places 

 where the criss-crossed logs are only four feet high, but 

 there are others w^here they are ten, fifteen, or twenty. 



To get a horse through, a course must be so cut out 

 that the highest uncut log is low enough that a horse can 

 step over it; and such a trail winds in the wildest and 

 dizziest zig-zags ever laid out by man. A worm fence, 

 or a streak of chain lightning, is an air-line in compar- 

 ison with it. In advancing one mile you travel three 

 or four. 



The foot-slogger who is unhampered by a pack-train 

 can get over the infernal tangle by walking on the top- 

 most logs. He goes first in one direction and then in 

 another, as the good ones, — no, I mean the least bad 

 ones, — happen to lie. The stems are bare of bark, and 

 smooth as a floor, but plentifully provided with tough, 

 mean limbs to catch in your clothes and otherwise throw 

 you down. There is hardly a square yard below that is 

 not criss-crossed by logs, and if you lose your balance 

 and fall, you plunge down upon an assortment of tree 

 trunks and limbs as hard as iron, and lying all sorts of 

 ways about. 



When your foot-log is near the ground, you jog along 

 quite joyously, but at six feet or more above mother 

 earth, a fall means broken bones. Broken bones in the 

 mountains spell calamity, to yourself and to your whole 

 party. Doctors are impossible, and to carry a man out 



