ean and
Reynolds, our packers, being appealed to, thought the plan not feasible
unless they could be utilized as pack animals. When we reached the spot
where Washburn and Hauser had last seen the bear, we traced her into a
dense thicket, which, owing to the darkness, we did not care to
penetrate, for not one of us felt that we had lost that particular bear.
Jake Smith, with more of good sense than usual, but with his usual lack
of scriptural accuracy, remarked, "I always considered Daniel a great
fool to go into a den of bears."[Q]

Our journey for the entire day has been most trying, leading us through
a trackless forest of pines encumbered on all sides by prostrate trunks
of trees. The difficulty of urging forward our pack train, making choice
of routes, extricating the horses when wedged between the trees, and
re-adjusting the packs so that they would not project beyond the
sides of the horses, required constant patience and untiring toil,
and the struggle between our own docility and the obstacles in our way,
not unfrequently resulted in fits of sullenness or explosions of wrath
which bore no slight resemblance to the volcanic forces of the country
itself.

[Illustration: Benj. Stickney]

On one of these occasions when we were in a vast net of down timber and
brush, and each man was insisting upon his own particular mode of
extrication, and when our tempers had been sorely tried and we were in
the most unsocial of humors, speaking only in half angry expletives, I
recalled that beautiful line in Byron's "Childe Harold," "There is a
pleasure in the pathless woods," which I recited with all the "ore
rotundo" I could command, which struck the ludicrous vein of the company
and produced an instantaneous response of uproarious laughter, which, so
sudden is the transition between extremes, had the effect to restore
harmony and sociability, and, in fact, to create a pleasure in the
pathless wilderness we were traveling.

One of our pack horses is at once a source of anxiety and amusement to
us all. He is a remarkable animal owned by Judge Hedges, who, however,
makes no pretentious to being a good judge of horses. Mr. Hedges says
that the man from whom he purchased the animal, in descanting upon his
many excellent qualities, said: "He is that kind of an animal that
drives the whole herd before him." The man spoke truly, but Mr. Hedges
did not properly interpret the encomium, nor did he realize that the
seller meant to de