Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains

by George Cary Eggleston

"We'll have to go back, Corporal," suggested one of the men.

"We can't go back," he replied. "That last stream we crossed is as full as this one now. Besides we must get these supplies to camp."

"But how?"

"I don't know how! Shut up and let me think the thing out."

After his thinking the corporal ordered the caravan to leave the trail and work its way up the mountain in the space between the two streams. It was a difficult and sometimes a perilous ascent. There were cliffs in the way around and over which a passage was partly found and partly forced by great labor. At some places the pathway was so steep that no mule could carry his load up it. Here the corporal divided the loads and led the mules up with only one-fourth or one-fifth of the burden upon each. Then unloading that he took the animals back again and placed another portion of their load upon their backs, repeating the journey as often as might be necessary. As he had twenty mules in his pack train it sometimes took half a day to get over thirty or forty yards of distance in this tedious and toilsome fashion. But at any rate there was progress made.

Often, too, there were great detours to be made in order to get around obstacles that could not be overcome. Thus day after day was consumed in the tedious climb up the mountain. The corporal knew how anxiously his commanding officer was awaiting his coming, but he could not hurry it more than he was already doing.

"What's your plan, Corporal?" asked one of the men when a bivouac was made one evening.

"Simple enough," answered the corporal. "When you've served in the mountains as long as I have, you'll know that every mountain torrent has a beginning somewhere up towards the top of the mountain. I'm simply following this one up to find its head waters and go around them."

The raging stream had grown much smaller now, as the caravan neared its place of beginning, and the next morning the corporal found a place at which he thought it safe to attempt a crossing. It was perilous work, but after an hour or two of struggle all the mules and all the men were got safely to the farther side.

The corporal knew that he was much higher up the mountain than the site of Camp Venture. But it was no part of his plan to descend until he had passed the head waters of all other streams and reached a point directly south of the camp and above it. So he proceeded westward around the mountain.