The idea is to sell and reseed.
About twenty-five per cent of the timber we saw was yellow pine. But
most of the timber we saw on the east side of the Cascades will be safe
for some time. I wouldn't undertake to carry out, from most of that
region, enough pine-needles to make a sofa-cushion. It is quite enough
to get oneself out.
Up to now it had been hard going, but not impossible. Now we were to do
the impossible.
It is a curious thing about mountains, but they have a hideous tendency
to fall down. Whole cliff-faces, a mile or so high, are suddenly seized
with a wandering disposition. Leaving the old folks at home and sliding
down into the valleys, they come awful croppers and sustain about eleven
million compound comminuted fractures.
These family breaks are known as rock-slides.
Now to travel twenty feet over a rock-slide is to twist an ankle, bruise
a shin-bone, utterly discourage a horse, and sour the most amiable
disposition.
There is no flat side to these wandering rocks. With the diabolical
ingenuity that nature can show when she goes wrong, they lie edge up.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151