Travelling in the Western Hunting Grounds. 19 



recrimination, hard language, and the loss of half a day or more in 

 digging up the hundred-and-one camp belongings scattered in a 

 wide circle all over the place, while another half day will have to be 

 spent in drying the ropes and blankets and saddles before the fire 

 ere they can be used. What wonder, therefore, that all old hands 

 are punctiliously tidy, and that they can lay their hands, blindfolded, 

 on the canister containing the stock of precious matches, or on the 

 whetstone whereon to sharpen their skinning knives, or on any 

 other small "icta" you like to mention. 



Leaving such a comfortable camp is like departing from home. 

 You have had time to place a layer of soft pine boughs under your 

 bed, the angularities of mother earth not being usually thus softened. 

 You have discovered a delightful stretch of sandy beach on the lake 

 for your matutinal dip. By means of a few logs tied together by 

 odds and ends of rope you have fashioned a raft, on which you have 

 pushed out into the middle of the tarn, where, with an improvised 

 rod the real article having long ago come to utter grief under the 

 hoofs of one of the horses you have landed some splendid trout, 

 and the experience of the odd hours thus devoted to the gentle art 

 has taught you that when fishing for the pot, i.e., to feed four 

 hungry members and an occasional dog or two, a plentiful supply 

 of fat grasshoppers, vulgo " bugs," will accomplish the trick far more 

 speedily than do artificial flies that tear, or get lost, or turn out not 

 the right sort, or for which your body evinces a magnetic attraction. 



The surrounding hills have been scoured, and yonder, as yet 

 unnamed, peak, which the aneroid tells you is something over 

 I3,oooft. in altitude, has been climbed in a long day on the rocks 

 and snow. The topographical details seen from this outlook have 

 been added to the material already collected, which will assist in 

 compiling a new map, which, bad as it may be, will yet be an 

 improvement upon the only existing one, based, as the latter appears 

 to be, on guess work, and bad guesses at that. 



When the actual start comes to be made, one does not get off 

 as early as was intended. Some of the horses are " playing mean," 

 and object in sundry ways to be packed and to leave such a good 



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