212 The Wilderness Hunter 



blazes made with the axe, man's first highway 

 through the hoary forest, but this we did not mind, 

 as for most of the distance we followed the well- 

 worn elk-trails. The train traveled in Indian file. 

 At the head, to pick the path, rode tall, silent old 

 Woody, a true type of the fast-vanishing race of 

 game hunters and Indian fighters, a man who had 

 been one of the California forty-niners, and who 

 ever since had lived the restless, reckless life of the 

 wilderness. Then came Ferguson and myself; then 

 the pack-animals, strung out in line; while from 

 the rear rose the varied oaths of our three com- 

 panions, whose miserable duty it was to urge for- 

 ward the beasts of burden. 



It is heart-breaking work to drive a pack-train 

 through thick timber and over mountains, where 

 there is either a dim trail or none. The animals 

 have a perverse faculty for choosing the wrong turn 

 at critical moments ; and they are continually scrap- 

 ing under branches and squeezing between tree- 

 trunks, to the jeopardy or destruction of their bur- 

 dens. After having been laboriously driven up a 

 very steep incline, at the cost of severe exertion both 

 to them and to the men, the foolish creatures turn 

 and run down to the bottom, so that all the work has 

 to be done over again. Some travel too slow ; others 

 travel too fast. Yet one can not but admire the 

 toughness of the animals, and the surefootedness 

 with which they pick their way along the sheer 



