A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



killed porcupine. During the morning we saw a number of 

 grizzly and wolf tracks in the mud of the trail, and succeeded 

 in shooting some Franklin's grouse with the small rifle. While 

 we were finishing luncheon a telegraph lineman from the 

 station at Echo Lake, about one hundred and seventy-five 

 miles farther south, appeared ; but as he was in a great hurry to 

 reach Telegraph Creek, he tarried with us only a few moments. 

 We crossed the Little Iskoot on a substantial log bridge and 

 camped in a mosquito-infested swamp, having made about 

 thirteen miles that day. On the cliffs back of camp we counted 

 eighteen mountain-goats, and spent what was left of the day 

 fighting mosquitoes and watching the goats with the field- 

 glasses. 



It was raining hard next morning, and this delayed our start 

 until about ten o'clock, but we succeeded in making the tele- 

 graph station on the Iskoot River at about 1.30 p.m. Here we 

 found an operator and a lineman living in a tent, as their cabin 

 had been burned recently; and while the Indians and Hunger- 

 ford were ferrying the packs and swimming the horses across 

 the Iskoot, these two men gave Howe and myself a much ap- 

 preciated luncheon. On the opposite bank of the Iskoot we 

 left the telegraph line and followed up the flat of the river, 

 which consisted of a gravel country cut up by numerous small 

 streams and covered by a growth of willows ten to twelve feet 

 in height. While Mac was picking the way for the pack-train 

 along a small creek he surprised a large Canada lynx in the act 

 of drinking. To judge by the noise, Telecum gave it quite a 

 run through the bushes, but was forced to return in a crestfallen 

 manner to face the gibes of the whole outfit. At dusk we 

 pitched our tents in a thicket of balsams, and found it a great 

 relief to be camping in the woods instead of on the horse-trail 

 of the telegraph line. 



Early the next morning we started out in a drizzling rain 

 to work our way over the burnt slope of the first mountain, the 



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