108 CRUISINGS IN THE CASCADES 



rocky bluff, about 500 feet high, and made the greater 

 portion of the remaining distance at an average of 

 about this height above the stream. There was a 

 blind Indian trail all the way to the lake, but it led 

 over the roughest, most tortuous, outlandish country 

 that ever any fool of a goat hunter attempted to 

 traverse. There are marshes and morasses away up 

 among these mountains, where alders and water 

 beeches, manzanitas, and other shrubs grow so thick 

 that their branches intertwine to nearly their full 

 length. Many of these have fallen down in various 

 directions, and their trunks are as inextricably mixed 

 as their branches, forming altogether a labyrinthine 

 mass, through which it was with the utmost difficulty 

 we could walk at all. 



There were numberless little creeks coming down 

 from the mountain into the main stream, and each 

 had in time cut its deep, narrow gulch, or canon, 

 lined on both sides with rough, shapeless masses of 

 rock, and all these we were obliged to cross. In 

 many cases, they were so close together that only a 

 sharp hog- back lay between them, and we merely 

 climbed out of one gulch 300 or 400 feet deep, to go 

 at once down into another still deeper, and so on. 

 Fire had run through a large tract of this country, 

 killing out all the large timber, and many trees have 

 since rotted away and fallen, while the blackened 

 and barkless trunks of others, with here and there a 

 craggy limb, still stand as mute monuments to 

 the glory of the forest before the dread element laid 

 it waste. 



We camped that night at the base of one of these 

 great dead firs around which lay a cord or more 



