28 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



excited wondering attention ; but the countless 

 hosts of living trees rejoicing at home on the 

 mountains are scarce considered at all. Most 

 travelers here are content with what they can see 

 from car windows or the verandas of hotels, and 

 in going from place to place cling to their pre- 

 cious trains and stages like wrecked sailors to 

 rafts. When an excursion into the woods is 

 proposed, all sorts of dangers are imagined, — 

 snakes, bears, Indians. Yet it is far safer to 

 wander in God's woods than to travel on black 

 highways or to stay at home. The snake danger 

 is so slight it is hardly worth mentioning. Bears 

 are a peaceable people, and mind their own busi- 

 ness, instead of going about like the devil seeking 

 whom they may devour. Poor fellows, they have 

 been poisoned, trapped, and shot at until they 

 have lost confidence in brother man, and it is not 

 now easy to make their acquaintance. As to 

 Indians, most of them are dead or civilized into 

 useless innocence. No American wilderness that 

 I know of is so dangerous as a city home " with 

 all the modern improvements." One should go to 

 the woods for safety, if for nothing else. Lewis 

 and Clark, in their famous trip across the conti- 

 nent in 1804-1805, did not lose a single man by 

 Indians or animals, though all the West was then 

 wild. Captain Clark was bitten on the hand as 

 he lay asleep. That was one bite among more 

 than a hundred men while traveling nine thou- 



