MOUNT RAINIER 



ours was nurtured to the self-sustaining point, we 

 searched to find where the sage Sowee kept his pota- 

 bles. Carefully covered up in sedges was a slender 

 supply of water, worth concealing fron vulgar dabblers. 

 Its diamond drops were hidden away so thoroughly 

 that we must mine for them by torchlight. I held a 

 flaring torch, while Loolowcan lay in wait for the 

 trickle, and captured it in a tin pot. How wild he 

 looked, that youth so frowzy by daylight, as, stoop- 

 ing under the tall sedges, he clutched those priceless 

 sparkles. 



Upon the carte du jour at Restaurant Sowee was 

 written Grouse. "How shall we have them?" said 

 I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmitpn and 

 convive. "One of these cocks of the mountain shall 

 be fried, since gridiron is not," said I to myself, after 

 meditation. "Two shall be spitted, and roasted ; 

 and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast to- 

 morrow, the fourth shall go on the carte de dejeuner!* 



"O Pork ! what a creature thou art !" continued I, in 

 monologue, cutting neat slices of that viand with my 

 bowie-knife, and laying them fraternally, three in a 

 bed, in the frying-pan. " Blessed be Moses ! who 

 forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispen- 

 sations, heirs of all the ages, inherit also pigs more 

 numerous and bacon cheaper. O Pork ! what could 

 campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, 

 thy saltness, thy portableness ?" 



Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds 

 plucked featherless as Plato's man. The two roasters 

 we planted carefully on spits before a sultry spot of 

 the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked 

 stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an 

 automatic baster, an inverted cone of pork, ordained 

 to yield its spicy juices to the wooing flame, and drip 

 bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters 

 ripened deliberately, while keen and quick fire told 

 upon the fryer, the first course of our feast. Mean- 



68 



