former are individual. For the
Trail is a vantage-ground, and from it, as your day's travel unrolls,
you see many things. Nine tenths of your experience comes thus, for in
the long journeys the side excursions are few enough and unimportant
enough almost to merit classification with the accidents. In time the
character of the Trail thus defines itself.

Most of all, naturally, the kind of country has to do with this
generalized impression. Certain surprises, through trees, of vista
looking out over unexpected spaces; little notches in the hills beyond
which you gain to a placid far country sleeping under a sun warmer than
your elevation permits; the delicious excitement of the moment when you
approach the very knife-edge of the summit and wonder what lies
beyond,--these are the things you remember with a warm heart. Your
saddle is a point of vantage. By it you are elevated above the
country; from it you can see clearly. Quail scuttle away to right and
left, heads ducked low; grouse boom solemnly on the rigid limbs of
pines; deer vanish through distant thickets to appear on yet more
distant ridges, thence to gaze curiously, their great ears forward;
across the canon the bushes sway violently with the passage of a
cinnamon bear among them,--you see them all from your post of
observation. Your senses are always alert for these things; you are
always bending from your saddle to examine the tracks and signs that
continually offer themselves for your inspection and interpretation.

Our trail of this summer led at a general high elevation, with
comparatively little climbing and comparatively easy traveling for days
at a time. Then suddenly we would find ourselves on the brink of a
great box canon from three to seven thousand feet deep, several miles
wide, and utterly precipitous. In the bottom of this canon would be
good feed, fine groves of trees, and a river of some size in which swam
fish. The trail to the canon-bed was always bad, and generally
dangerous. In many instances we found it bordered with the bones of
horses that had failed. The river had somehow to be forded. We would
camp a day or so in the good feed and among the fine groves of trees,
fish in the river, and then address ourselves with much reluctance to
the ascent of the other bad and dangerous trail on the other side.
After that, in the natural course of events, subject to variation, we
could expect nice trails, the comfort of easy travel, pin