288 CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



water which is colder than ice, and every camp is a wet 

 one. Naturally, the guides and hunters go about with 

 water-soaked feet and wet clothing, and if they do not 

 have to sleep in wet blankets, they are lucky. 



The rheumatic tendencies in all this are very great, 

 and it is no wonder that Charlie Smith, and many other 

 mountain men who hunt bear in the spring, are afflicted 

 by that painful malady. 



I was greatly impressed by the axe-like straightness 

 with which an avalanche cuts its way through a mountain- 

 side forest. You never see a slideway with ragged edges, 

 or an occasional tree standing upon it. To-day I cannot 

 remember any slideway stumps. No army of laborers 

 ever cut a railway line through a forest with straighter 

 sides than the snow-slide cuts for itself. Trees and brush 

 are swept away, root, stem and branch, and the earth 

 remaining is left all ready for cultivation. Nature then 

 proceeds to plant it with the seeds of yellow willow, trail- 

 ing juniper, aspen, hedysarum, snow lily, fire-weed, wild 

 onion, and various grasses. 



Naturally, these clearings become so many sun gar- 

 dens, and as the new vegetation develops, it attracts the 

 ground-squirrel, chipmunk and snow-shoe rabbit, insects 

 a few and birds a-many. It is upon them that about nine 

 bears out of every ten are found, feeding, and either shot, 

 or shot at, from the timber on one side. 



A very common agent for the starting of avalanches 

 is the " snow comb " which often forms on one side of a 

 sharp mountain-top, and overhangs like a gigantic cor- 

 nice. Sometimes this overhanging comb is forty or fifty 



