cleft like the arched entrance to a cave; only this
arch led through the rock to the sky beyond.

"I wish," said my guide, "you had time to spend two or three weeks here.
We'd take you to the high country above these battlements and palisades.
See that hole in the mountain?"

"Rough Upper Alpine meadows?" I asked.

"Oh, dear no! Open park country with lakes and the best of fishing. It
used to be an almost impossible trail to get up there; but there has
been a hermit fellow there for the last ten years, living in his cabin
and hunting; and year after year, never paid by anybody, he has been
building that trail up. When men ask him why he does it, he says it's to
lead people up; for the glory of God and that sort of thing. Of course,
the people in the valley think him crazy."

Of course, they do. What would we, who love the valley and its dust and
its maniacal jabber of jealousies and dollars do, building trails to
lead people up to see the Glory of God? We call those hill-crest
dwellers the troglodytes. Is it not we, who are the earth dwellers, the
dust eaters, the insects of the city ant heaps, the true troglodytes
and subsoilers of the sordid iniquities? Perhaps, by this, you think
there are some things to do if you go out to the National Forests.

* * * * *

You have been told so often that the National Forests lock up timber
from use that it comes as a surprise as you ride up the woodland trail
to hear the song of the crosscut saw and the buzzing hum of a
mill--perhaps a dozen mills--running full blast here in this National
Forest. Heaps of sawdust emit the odors of imprisoned flowers. Piles of
logs lie on all sides stamped at the end U. S.--timber sold on the stump
to any lumberman and scaled as inspected by the ranger and paid by the
buyer. To be sure, the lumberman cannot have the lumber for nothing; and
it was for nothing that the Forests were seized and cut under the old
regime.

How was the spoliation effected? Two or three ways. The law of the
public domain used to permit burn and windfall to be taken out free.
Your lumberman, then, homesteaded 160 acres on a slope of forest
affording good timber skids and chutes. So far, no wrong! Was not public
domain open to homesteading? Good; but your homesteading lumberman now
watched his chance for a high wind away from his claim. Then, purely
accidentally, you understand, the fire sprang up and swept the entire
slope of green for