THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



137 



of them. With a good pack sack a man can carry forty or fifty 

 pounds with comfort and be independent. 



I made an early start. At half past two in the morning I 

 was off, down the silent streets of the little sleeping hamlet. I 

 crossed the White Salmon River on the boom dam of the 

 lumbermen. Beneath me the murmuring waters glinted in the 

 starlight. It was quite dark under the tall pines and firs ; they 

 shut out the light from the stars, and starlight does not do 50 

 bad when we cannot get any other fight. I could not see the 

 trail but I knew its general direction, having been over that 

 part of it before, and one soon gets in the way of keeping the 

 trail with his feet, when his eyes can no longer serve him. The 

 trail through a forest is firm to the tread, but a step off of it 

 puts one on the soft carpet of the forest debris. Wild things 

 screeched weirdly now and then off in the dark woods, and 

 occasionally something would go pattering off over the fallen 

 leaves. I knew what made the pattering; it was the Xeotoma 

 or wood rat, a mild-eyed and harmless night-prowler in the 

 forests of the West. I did not know what sort of creature was 

 doing the screeching but I encouraged myself with the thought 

 that, taken all in all, the forest is far safer than the city. 



I had planned to- be on the highlands near timberline by 

 daybreak and I was there on time. Daybreak at timberline is 

 an experience never to be forgotten. While all the lowlands 

 were yet in deep shadows, the great snow-clad cones of the 

 ancient volcanoes, which dot the northwestern part of our 

 country, began to stand out against the sky clothed in rosy 

 light. In the south, Mount Hood rose into the sky with its 

 sharp spear point of snowy granite. Farther away Blount 

 Jefferson could be seen. In the west Mount St. Helen's sym- 

 metrical cone was all aglow with the first-born sunbeams of 

 the new day. As it grew lighter, I began to notice the flowers. 

 It is not my purpose to give a list of all the flowers I found on 

 the trip ; I shall mention only a few wdiich were especiallv inter- 



