PREPARATIONS. 



51 



the top of Mount Tahawus, it is nearly twenty miles 

 through the woods. Not a human footstep, so our guide 

 the " mighty hunter, Cheney," tells us, has profaned it 

 for six years, and it is two good days' work to go and 

 return. A tramp of forty miles through a pathless 

 forest to see one mountain, is a high price to pay, but 

 we have resolved to do it. You must know that thirty 

 miles in dense woods, is equal to sixty miles 

 along a beaten track. These primeval forests are not 

 your open groves like those south and west, through 

 which a horse can gallop ; but woven and twisted to- 

 gether and filled up with underbrush that prevent you 

 from seeing ten rods ahead, and which scratch and 

 flog you at every step, as if you were running the 

 gauntlet. 



One or two nights at least, we must sleep in the 

 woods, and our provision be carried on our backs, and 

 so behold us at 7 o'clock in the morning ready to start. 

 First comes Cheney, our guide, with a heavy pack on 

 his back filled with bread, and pork and sugar, carry- 

 ing an axe in his hand with which to build our shanty 



and cut our fuel. Young S th has also a pack 



strapped to his shoulders, while A Id and P 



have nothing but their overcoats lashed around them ; 



