bounds
of the National Forests; one notch and one blaze, the trail; but they
had gone off the trail trout fishing. "If they had been good
path-finders, they could have found the way out by following the stream
down," remarked a critic of this little group to me; and a very apt
criticism it was from the safe vantage point of a study chair. How about
it, if when you came to follow the stream down, it chanced to cut
through a gorge you couldn't follow, with such a sheer fall of rock at
the sides and such a crisscross of big trees, house-high, that you were
driven back from the stream a mile or two? You would keep your
directions by sunlight? Maybe; but that big tree region is almost
impervious to sunlight; and when the fog blows in or the clouds blow
down thick as wool, you will need a pocket compass to keep the faintest
sense of direction. Compass signs of forest-lore fail here. There are
few flowers under the dense roofing to give you sense of east or west;
and you look in vain for the moss sign on the north bark of the tree.
All four sides are heavily mossed; and where the little Englishwoman
lost herself, they were in ferns to their necks.

"Weren't the kiddies afraid?" I asked.

"Not a bit! Bob got the trout ready; and Son made a big fire. We curled
ourselves up round it for the night; and I wish you could have seen the
children's delight when the clouds began to roll up below in the
morning. It was like a sea. The youngsters had never seen clouds take
fire from the sun coming up below. I want to tell you, too, that we put
out every spark of that fire before we left in the morning."

All of which conveys its own moral for the camper in the National
Forests.

It ought not to be necessary to say that you cannot go to the National
Forests expecting to billet yourself at the ranger's house. Many of the
rangers are married and have a houseful of their own. Those not married,
have no facilities whatever for taking care of you. In my visit to the
Vasquez Forest, I happened to have a letter of introduction to the
ranger and his mother, who took me in with that bountiful hospitality
characteristic of the frontier; but directly across the road from the
ranger's cabin was a little log slab-sided hotel where any comer could
have stayed in perfect comfort for $7 a week; and at the station, where
the train stopped, was another very excellent little hotel where you
could have stayed and enjoyed meals that for nutritious cooking