Through the Olympics With the Mountaineers 155 



hours behind. Improvising" lanterns out of tin basins and 

 candles, an investigating party started back. Long after dark 

 the lantern corps returned with a solitary messenger bearing 

 tidings that the whole train was benighted far down the trail. 

 He brought a bag of hardtack, a quarter of a disk apiece, and 

 on that and a cup of cold water we went to bed, the contents of 

 thirty bags so conscientiously distributed among sixty suffer- 

 ers that none might claim the base distinction of having slept 

 warm. 



But even in the cold dawn not a complaint was heard. 

 About 8 o'clock frying pans, bacon, and flour began to appear, 

 borne on the backs of fellow mountaineers. We broke our 

 fast with three prunes apiece and some time later, twenty- 

 two hours after the last square meal, we were feasting royally. 

 However, ours had been the easier part. Not only had the 

 men carried all the baggage across the canon, not only had 

 they dragged animals out of the mire, unpacked, repacked, un- 

 packed them again, but they had carried into camp from forty 

 to fifty pounds apiece on their own shoulders. The exhausted 

 animals could carry their loads no farther. Time and again 

 one would slip on the loose edges of the trail and roll down 

 the bank. It seemed a miracle that none was hurt. Fortunately 

 sacks of grain were cached here and the itinerary admitted an 

 extra day of rest. 



A long climb the following morning brought us to the 

 Queets-Queniult Divide, a high park region of heather slopes 

 and erythronium beds, of hemlock groves and dodecatheon- 

 starred strips of meadows. Later the divide narrowed to a 

 mere knife-edge. From one watershed to the other and back 

 the trail swung, on one side the deep canon of the Queets and 

 far away, beyond rolling forest lands, the white, vision-like 

 crown of Olympus ; on the other a green basin where lay camp. 



One more day of forest trail brought us to the outposts of 

 civilization at Lake Queniult. Above the lake the river valley 

 was dotted with prosperous farms. Gigantic Sitka spruces, 

 (Picea sitchensis), broad-leaf maples, and vine maples (Acer 

 circinatum), here replaced the firs and hemlocks we had 

 travelled amongst so long. Our campfire circle that night held 

 many strange faces — farming people assembled to greet us, 



