Over Harrison's Pass zvith a Pack-Train. 2gg 



animal, a beautiful creature, went through the snow with 

 her front feet at the edge of a snow-basin some six feet 

 deep, and turning a three-quarters somersault came 

 to a stop in its bottom w4th her feet in the air. Her body 

 fitted the basin so tightly that although she beat the air 

 with her feet and threw up clouds of snow in her strug- 

 gles to get out it was of no avail. She was "hard 

 a-ground." Whereupon one of us sat gently and caress- 

 ingly upon her lovely head while the other shoveled in 

 snow on one side of her body and out from under on the 

 other until we rolled her over and on to her feet. This 

 took time, for she resented the situation every time she 

 regathered strength and opportunity to struggle. The 

 snow basin had been caused, as is usual in such cases, by 

 the heat of the sun on a large rock, which now lay at its 

 bottom, like a huge ant-lion in its circular trap pit. On 

 the sharp rock the good horse had cut her legs and back 

 shamefully. In fact every horse's feet and legs were 

 bleeding and they left a thin trail of blood on the snow. 



After extricating the mare from the snow basin we 

 began to cut a zigzag trail up the shale slide towards 

 the gap of the Pass, some i,ooo feet* above us. The 

 slide is so steep that the shale continually slips and slides 

 as the snow and ice melt and rocks frequently roll down. 



We would cut fifty or one hundred yards of trail at a 

 time and then lead the horses up to our work. We had as 

 working-tools a hand-pick and a spade. At one turn in 

 the zigzag the shale went out from under a horse's feet 

 and in the consequent plunging the entire pack and sad- 



* Mr. Robert D. Pike, in his most accurate and excellent account of the 

 trip over the Pass from the opposite side of the Divide, has modestly said: 

 "A vertical distance of about 700 feet." 



