STEEP TRAILS 



sands of square miles in extent, attract but 

 little attention. Most travelers content them- 

 selves with what they may chance to see from 

 car windows, hotel verandas, or the deck of 

 a steamer on the lower Columbia — clinging 

 to the battered highways like drowning sail- 

 ors to a Ufe-raft. When an excursion into the 

 woods is proposed, all sorts of exaggerated 

 or imaginary dangers are conjured up, filling 

 the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds, 

 fevers, Indians, bears, snakes, bugs, impass- 

 able rivers, and jungles of brush, to which is 

 always added quick and sure starvation. 



As to starvation, the woods are full of food, 

 and a supply of bread may easily be carried 

 for habit's sake, and replenished now and then 

 at outlying farms and camps. The Indians 

 are seldom found in the woods, being confined 

 mainly to the banks of the rivers, where the 

 greater part of their food is obtained. More- 

 over, the most of them have been either buried 

 since the settlement of the country or civilized 

 into comparative innocence, industry, or harm- 

 less laziness. There are bears in the woods, 

 but not in such numbers nor of such unspeak- 

 able ferocity as town-dwellers imagine, nor 

 do bears spend their lives in going about the 

 country like the devil, seeking whom they 

 may devour. Oregon bears, like most others, 



312 



