126 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
The cook tent was black and swarming with the 
little pests. They covered the food like a pall, they 
committed unpleasant suicide in the coffee or the 
soup, it was worth a sting or so to pass the sugar 
or jam, and eating soon became for us the most irk- 
some task of the whole twenty-four hours. 
Our nerves and our dispositions suffered from 
these things. We were therefore distinctly relieved 
when the baseline came at last into camp and work 
was assigned for the following day. The runs here 
were planned to extend north and south; up the 
high, steep ridges that shut in the stream and over 
into the cut up, rough country beyond where moun- 
tains and rocky spurs tossed like waves in a choppy 
sea. 
When I reached my first station next morning and 
glanced upward at the prospect before me it seemed 
impossible that one could ever win to the top of the 
first ridge. There was no hope in offsetting. On 
either side it was surely as bad, perhaps worse. One 
must simply make a beginning and trust to luck. 
So I started on the arduous ascent, working slowly 
up crevices in the bluffs, carefully crossing the 
broken surface of huge rock slides liable at a false 
move to go rumbling to the bottom bearing the un- 
wary intruder haplessly upon the stony crest, and 
up steep, bare slopes so sharp that only by the 
timely aid of shrubs and stunted trees could one rise 
at all. It was hours before I even approached the 
top. Below, a thousand feet and more, ran the river 
