126 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 



The cook tent was black and swarming with the 

 little pests. They covered the food like a pall, they 

 committed unpleasant suicide in the coffee or the 

 soup, it was worth a sting or so to pass the sugar 

 or jam, and eating soon became for us the most irk- 

 some task of the whole twenty-four hours. 



Our nerves and our dispositions suffered from 

 these things. We were therefore distinctly relieved 

 when the baseline came at last into camp and work 

 was assigned for the following day. The runs here 

 were planned to extend north and south; up the 

 high, steep ridges that shut in the stream and over 

 into the cut up, rough country beyond where moun- 

 tains and rocky spurs tossed like waves in a choppy 

 sea. 



.When I reached my first station next morning and 

 glanced upward at the prospect before me it seemed 

 impossible that one could ever win to the top of the 

 first ridge. There was no hope in offsetting. On 

 either side it was surely as bad, perhaps worse. One 

 must simply make a beginning and trust to luck. 



So I started on the arduous ascent, working slowly 

 up crevices in the bluffs, carefully crossing the 

 broken surface of huge rock slides liable at a false 

 move to go rumbling to the bottom bearing the un- 

 wary intruder haplessly upon the stony crest, and 

 up steep, bare slopes so sharp that only by the 

 timely aid of shrubs and stunted trees could one rise 

 at all. It was hours before I even approached the 

 top. Below, a thousand feet and more, ran the river 



