MOUNT RAINIER 



cable point, strode along the trail with as little delay 

 and as perfect unconcern as though an involuntary 

 ducking was of no more moment than climbing over a 

 log. 



The trail was blind. Longmire scented it through 

 thickets of salal, fern, and underbrush, stumbling over 

 roots, vines, and hollows hidden in the rank vegetation, 

 now climbing huge trunks that the animals could barely 

 scramble over, and now laboriously working his way 

 around some fallen giant and traveling two hundred 

 yards in order to gain a dozen yards on the course. 

 The packs, continually jammed against trees and 

 shaken loose by this rough traveling, required frequent 

 repacking no small task. At the very top of a high, 

 steep hill, up which we had laboriously zigzagged 

 shortly after crossing the Mishell, the little packhorse, 

 unable to sustain the weight of the pack, which had 

 shifted all to one side, fell and rolled over and over to 

 the bottom. Bringing up the goods and chattels one 

 by one on our own shoulders to the top of the hill, we 

 replaced the load and started again. The course was 

 in a southerly direction, over high rolling ground of 

 good clay soil, heavily timbered, with marshy swales at 

 intervals, to the Nisqually River again, a distance of 

 twelve miles. We encamped on a narrow flat between 

 the high hill just descended and the wide and noisy 

 river, near an old ruined log-hut, the former residence 

 of a once famed Indian medicine man, who, after the 

 laudable custom of his race, had expiated with his life 

 his failure to cure a patient. 



Early next morning we continued our laborious 

 march along the right bank of the Nisqually. Towards 

 noon we left the river, and after thridding in an easterly 

 course a perfect labyrinth of fallen timber for six miles, 

 and forcing our way with much difficulty through the 

 tangled jungle of an extensive vine-maple swamp, at 

 length crossed Silver Creek and gladly threw off the 

 packs for an hour's rest. 



104 



