AND OTHER HUNTING ADVENTURES. 249 



enced wood -men and hunters to follow it in day- 

 light. We were therefore utterly at sea. We were 

 safe, however, and we heaved a sigh of relief when 

 we found ourselves on level ground, for none of us 

 had relished the idea of having a bone broken in that 

 country, so far from medical aid and home comforts. 



Great snow slides had for ages been coming down 

 these mountain sides bringing their debris, such 

 as rocks, and logs, and whole trees with them. 

 These had frequently gone some distance into the 

 creek bottom, breaking and felling all the trees in 

 their path. Tornadoes had raged through the canon, 

 also, breaking and lopping trees in various direc- 

 tions, so that we now encountered a body of woods 

 through which the most expert woodsman could not 

 possibly travel more than a mile an hour in day- 

 light. Add to this the Cimmerian darkness in which 

 we were now groping (for there was no snow here in 

 the bottom of the canon) aiid the reader may well 

 imagine that our progress was slow and tedious in 

 the extreme. 



We sat down and held another consultation. I 

 favored building a fire and staying there till morn- 

 ing, but Frank preferred pushing on to camp, so I 

 acquiesced. We soon found, however, that it was 

 utterly impossible for us to get through these wind- 

 falls in the darkness and with our heavy loads, and 

 decided as a last resort to get into the bed of the 

 creek and wade up it. We were already wet to the 

 skin from head to foot, and this wading could be no 

 worse than clambering over logs and through jungles 

 of wet underbrush. We soon reached the creek and 

 our hearts sank within us as we listened to its tumult- 



