OF SHOOTING AND FISHING 107 
stumbled and disappeared over the precipice; he 
rolled a little way down a slope which broke his 
pack loose, scattering the contents before he took 
his final plunge. We never saw anything more 
of the poor creature but we managed to collect 
some of the contents of the pack. A great many 
odds and ends were lost, however, and among them 
the tea. This incident was a warning to us never 
to trust ourselves on horses in dangerous places; 
some animals are perfectly safe on a bad trail, but 
a horse is not one of them. 
Arriving at the summit, we found a very fine bear 
trap: it was an exceedingly strong, well-built little 
log house. Should the bear enter and disturb the 
bait, a sliding door immediately dropped and 
penned him in. 
We camped for lunch at a spring close by, called 
Soldier’s Spring. Here we had a conference with 
Beard, who seemed to know more of the country 
than any one else; indeed it was beginning to dawn 
upon us that the neighbourhood was absolutely 
new to most of our men! SBeard said that our des- 
tination lay over the second ridge, that the next 
ereek we came to was called the Five Mile Creek, 
and that we then had to cross another ridge before 
reaching our Mecca. We decided to camp on Five 
Mile Creek that night, so after lunch started along 
an ill-defined trail in that direction. We were now 
travelling on the crest of aridge. On our right the 
country fell away rapidly and was precipitous, 
pines growing sparsely, while on our left the slope 
was much more gradual and covered with timber. 
