Over Harrison's Pass with Animals. 119 



would have another night without feed. Two of the don- 

 keys, however, "Johnny" and "Jumbo," little beasts with 

 much worldly wisdom in their heads, stood with a look 

 of evil contentment in their eyes. They slowly munched 

 their jaws, and yellow bits falling from their mouths, 

 together with yellow blotches on their noses and on the 

 snow, and a torn corn-meal bag, showed us the nature 

 and extent of their theft. A short way from them, and 

 not so fortunate in breaking loose, stood " Pete," our 

 third donkey, tugging at his rope with watering mouth 

 and ears bent forward in a piteously expectant attitude. 

 This corn meal we had neglected to bring down; so we 

 took the blame for its loss on ourselves. 



After this funny little incident we started to lead the 

 animals down the trail. Three of us led off, each lead- 

 ing a horse ; and the three donkeys were driven behind us 

 by Halloran, who led the fourth horse. The horses occa- 

 sionally plunged belly-deep in the soft snow, but always 

 managed to lunge out and keep on the trail. Their 

 efforts to free themselves from the snow were sometimes 

 so violent that we had to give them a long rope to pre- 

 vent being trodden upon. On coming to the end of the 

 trail we turned the horses loose, expecting that they 

 could go down the remaining slope easily. But each one of 

 them rolled head over tail for about a hundred yards, and 

 then, gradually picking themselves up, stood around as 

 though nothing unusual had happened. They were too 

 exhausted to even be nervous. On this last stretch the 

 donkeys fared better than the horses, owing to the inborn 

 stubbornness in their natures as well as to their cool- 

 headedness. They sat on their haunches and, ears bent 

 forward intensely and fore-feet propped well out in front 



