, walked twice in a circle within the confines of a thick
swamp about two miles square. On the other hand, many exhibit almost
marvelous skill in striking a bee-line for their objective point, and
can always tell you, even after an engrossing and wandering hunt,
exactly where camp lies. And I know nothing more discouraging than to
look up after a long hard day to find your landmarks changed in
appearance, your choice widened to at least five diverging and similar
canons, your pockets empty of food, and the chill mountain twilight
descending.

Analogous to this is the ability to follow a dim trail. A trail in the
mountains often means merely a way through, a route picked out by some
prospector, and followed since at long intervals by chance travelers.

It may, moreover, mean the only way through. Missing it will bring you
to ever-narrowing ledges, until at last you end at a precipice, and
there is no room to turn your horses around for the return. Some of
the great box canons thousands of feet deep are practicable by but one
passage,--and that steep and ingenious in its utilization of ledges,
crevices, little ravines, and "hog's-backs"; and when the only
indications to follow consist of the dim vestiges left by your last
predecessor, perhaps years before, the affair becomes one of
considerable skill and experience. You must be able to pick out
scratches made by shod hoofs on the granite, depressions almost filled
in by the subsequent fall of decayed vegetation, excoriations on fallen
trees. You must have the sense to know AT ONCE when you have overrun
these indications, and the patience to turn back immediately to your
last certainty, there to pick up the next clue, even if it should take
you the rest of the day. In short, it is absolutely necessary that you
be at least a persistent tracker.

Parenthetically; having found the trail, be charitable. Blaze it, if
there are trees; otherwise "monument" it by piling rocks on top of one
another. Thus will those who come after bless your unknown shade.

Third, you must know horses. I do not mean that you should be a
horse-show man, with a knowledge of points and pedigrees. But you must
learn exactly what they can and cannot do in the matters of carrying
weights, making distance, enduring without deterioration hard climbs in
high altitudes; what they can or cannot get over in the way of bad
places. This last is not always a matter of appearance merely. Some
bits of