I replied that I could, and followed Gunson, who showed me the way he had descended by the help of the rocks, and projecting roots of the dwarf firs which began to grow freely as soon as the slaty shale ceased.
Esau was waiting at the top, ready to lend me a hand, smiling triumphantly as soon as we were alone.
“You should have tried to go up all of a slope as I did,” he said, “not down of a slope as you did.”
“I tried my best, Esau,” I said, sadly.
“Of course you would. Well, I hope there isn’t going to be much more like that for us to do. Once is enough.”
By this time Quong was back at his fire, and we soon after partook of our mid-day meal, with copious draughts of tea for washing it down, and after an hour’s good nap started off again to find no further difficulties that afternoon, for our journey was through pine forest once more, where the grey moss hung like strands from the older branches, and in the more open places the dark, bronze-leaved barberry grew plentifully, with its purple-bloomed fruit which hung in clusters, and had won for themselves the name of “Oregon Grapes.”
They did not prove to be grapes, though, that we cared to eat, for Esau’s testing of their flavour was quite enough for both. The report he gave me was “Horrid”; so I contented myself with the little bilberries and cranberries we came upon from time to time.
It was on the second day after our struggle across the slope, that we came to a complete change in the scenery. The valley had been contracting and opening out again and again; but now we seemed to come at once upon a portion of the river where the sides rose up almost perpendicularly, forming a wild, jagged, picturesque, but terrible gorge, down which the river came thundering, reduced to narrow limits, and roaring through at a terrible speed. The noise, multiplied as it was by echoes, was deafening, and as we stood gazing at the vast forbidding chasm, our journey in this direction seemed to have come suddenly to an end.
I looked up at Gunson, and found he was looking at me, while Esau had got his hat off scratching his head, and Quong had placed his bundle on the ground, seated himself, and was calmly resting as if there were no difficulties before him—nothing troublous in the least.
“Well,” said Gunson, looking at Esau, “what do you think of the canon?”