The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 
sign of the trail is to break a twig off and leave 
it hanging in the direction in which you propose 
to proceed. This is a trick which soon develops 
into a habit for those whose business takes them 
much into a wooded country. 
The way was still uphill but the incline gentle, 
for which I was duly thankful, as my load began 
to feel uncomfortably heavy. I was carrying 
about forty-five pounds—a trifle compared to 
Elia’s and Shanghai’s loads, which must have 
been eighty pounds each. Hunter, too, had 
much more than I had, but he stuck to it like 
wax. 
We were approaching the edge of the timber 
line, where moose paths were quite common, and 
seemed to be much used. Once we came upon 
a party of moose, but they crashed away through 
the brush without giving us a sight of them, 
much less a shot. At last we reached the camp, 
situated close to the edge of the timber, and on 
a small stream that came from the mountains. 
Hunter called my attention to a bag of flour 
which he had cached in the limb of a tree two 
autumns ago, and which was still there. We 
opened it to see how the flour had withstood the 
rain and exposure, and I was surprised to find 
it good enough. The outsides and top, where 
the rain had penetrated, had formed into a hard 
crust which practically sealed up the remainder 
of the contents of the bag. We had plenty of 
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