CHAPTER XLIL 



|N our return to Chehalis that town of 

 unsavory odors and salmon-drying, 

 salmon-smoking Siwashes I at once 

 - employed two other Indians, named John 

 and Seymour, and, on the following day we 

 started up Ski-ik-kul Creek, to a lake of the 

 same name, in which it heads ten miles back in 

 the mountains. The Indians claimed that goats, or 

 sheep, as they call them, were plentiful on the cliffs 

 surrounding this lake, and that we could kill plenty 

 of them from a raft while floating up and down 

 along the shores. Seymour claimed to have killed 

 twenty-three in March last, just after the winter 

 snows had gone off, and a party of seven Siwashes 

 from Chehalis had killed ten about two weeks pre- 

 vious to the date of my visit. 



Such glowing accounts as these built up my hopes 

 again to such a height as to banish from my mind all 

 recollection of the bitter disappointment in which the 

 former expedition had ended, and, although the 

 rain continued to fall heavily at short intervals, so 

 that the underbrush reeked with dampness and 

 drenching showers fell from every bush we touched, 

 I trudged cheerily along regardless of all discom- 

 forts. 



The first two miles up the creek, we had a good, 

 open trail, but at the end of this we climbed a steep, 



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