Chapter 36 - Page 2

back, their hearts swell, and they push forward. They love to

conquer difficulties. But enough for the present. Night is coming

on; let us return to our camp."

He moved on, and they followed in silence. On reaching the camp,

he found the men extremely discouraged. One of their number had

been surveying the neighborhood, and seriously assured them that

the snow was at least a hundred feet deep. The captain cheered

them up, and diffused fresh spirit in them by his example. Still

he was much perplexed how to proceed. About dark there was a

slight drizzling rain. An expedient now suggested itself. This

was to make two light sleds, place the packs on them, and drag

them to the other side of the mountain, thus forming a road in

the wet snow, which, should it afterward freeze, would be

sufficiently hard to bear the horses. This plan was promptly put

into execution; the sleds were constructed, the heavy baggage was

drawn backward and forward until the road was beaten, when they

desisted from their fatiguing labor. The night turned out clear

and cold, and by morning, their road was incrusted with ice

sufficiently strong for their purpose. They now set out on their

icy turnpike, and got on well enough, excepting that now and then

a horse would sidle out of the track, and immediately sink up to

the neck. Then came on toil and difficulty, and they would be

obliged to haul up the floundering animal with ropes. One, more

unlucky than the rest, after repeated falls, had to be abandoned

in the snow. Notwithstanding these repeated delays, they

succeeded, before the sun had acquired sufficient power to thaw

the snow, in getting all the rest of their horses safely to the

other side of the mountain.

Their difficulties and dangers, however, were not yet at an end.

They had now to descend, and the whole surface of the snow was

glazed with ice. It was necessary; therefore, to wait until the

warmth of the sun should melt the glassy crust of sleet, and give

them a foothold in the yielding snow. They had a frightful

warning of the danger of any movement while the sleet remained. A

wild young mare, in her restlessness, strayed to the edge of a

declivity. One slip was fatal to her; she lost her balance,

careered with headlong velocity down the slippery side of the

mountain for more than two thousand feet, and was dashed to

pieces at the bottom. When the travellers afterward sought the

carcass to cut it up for food, they found it torn and mangled in

the most horrible manner.

It was quite late in the evening before the party