e unreliability
of a member of our party who was telling what seemed a "fish story," and
he clinched his argument by adding that he would apply to the case the
words of the immortal Shakespeare, "Othello's _reputation's_ gone."

[Illustration: JAKE SMITH, GUARDING THE CAMP FROM HOSTILE INDIAN ATTACK.
"REQUIESCAT IN PACE."]

We broke camp this morning with the pack train at 10 o'clock, traveling
in a westerly course for about two miles, when we gradually veered
around to a nearly easterly direction, through fallen timber almost
impassable in the estimation of pilgrims, and indeed pretty severe on
our pack horses, for there was no trail, and, while our saddle horses
with their riders could manage to force their way through between the
trees, the packs on the pack animals would frequently strike the trees,
holding the animals fast or compelling them to seek some other passage.
Frequently, we were obliged to re-arrange the packs and narrow them, so
as to admit of their passage between the standing trees. At one point
the pack animals became separated, and with the riding animals of a
portion of the party were confronted with a prostrate trunk of a huge
tree, about four feet in diameter, around which it was impossible to
pass because of the obstructions of fallen timber. Yet pass it we must;
and the animals, one after another, were brought up to the log, their
breasts touching it, when Williamson and I, the two strongest men of the
party, on either side of an animal, stooped down, and, placing each a
shoulder back of a fore leg of a horse, rose to an erect position, while
others of the party placed his fore feet over the log, which he was thus
enabled to scale. In this way we lifted fifteen or twenty of our animals
over the log.

Soon after leaving our camp this morning our "Little Invulnerable,"
while climbing a steep rocky ascent, missed his footing and turned three
back summersaults down into the bottom of the ravine. We assisted him to
his feet without removing his pack, and he seemed none the worse for his
adventure, and quickly regained the ridge from which he had fallen and
joined the rest of the herd.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon we halted for the day, having traveled
about six miles, but our camp to-night is not more than three miles from
our morning camp.

Mr. Hedges' pack horse, "Little Invulnerable," was missing when we
camped; and, as I was one of the four men detailed for the day to take
charge of the p