On the last morning, the Head gave his horse for breakfast one
rain-soaked biscuit, an apple, two lumps of sugar, and a raw egg. The
other horses had nothing.
We dropped three pack-horses over cliffs in two days, but got them
again, cut and bruised, and we took out our outfit complete, after two
weeks of the most arduous going I have ever known anything about. When
the news that we had got over the pass penetrated to the settlements, a
pack-outfit started over Cascade Pass in our footsteps to take supplies
to a miner. They killed three horses on that same trail, and I believe
gave it up in the end.
Doubtless, by next year, a passable trail will have been built up to
Doubtful Lake and another one up that eight-hundred-foot mountain-wall
above the lake, where, when one reaches the top, there is but room to
look down again on the other side. Perhaps, too, there will be a trail
down the Agnes Creek Valley, so that parties can get through easily.
When that is done,--and it is promised by the Forest Supervisor,--one of
the most magnificent horseback trips in the country will be opened for
the first time to the traveler.
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