Thursday, September 8.—Travel to-day has led us in zigzag directions over fallen timber some twelve miles. We have halted on a small creek about one mile from the most southerly arm of the lake and about seven miles in a straight line from our morning camp.
This has been a terrible day for both men and horses. The standing trees are so thick that we often found it impossible to find a space wide enough for the pack animals to squeeze through, and we were frequently separated from each other in a search for a route. Hedges and Stickney, in this way, became separated from the rest of the party, and after suffering all the feelings of desolation at being lost in this wilderness, accidentally stumbled upon our camp, and they freely expressed their joy at their good fortune in being restored to the party. I fully sympathized with them, for, speaking from a personal experience of a similar character which I had in 1862, I can say that a man can have no more complete sense of utter desolation than that which overwhelms him when he realizes that he is lost.
At one point while they were seeking some sign of the trail made by the rest of the party, a huge grizzly bear dashed by them, frightening Hedges' horse, which broke his bridle and ran away.
After supper Washburn and Hauser went up on the ridge back of the camp to reconnoiter and ran across a she grizzly and her two cubs. Being unarmed, they hastily returned to camp for their guns, and five or six of us joined them in a bear hunt. The members of this hunting party were all elated at the thought of bagging a fine grizzly, which seemed an easy prey. What could one grizzly do against six hunters when her instinctive duty would lead her to hurry her little ones to a place of safety!
While putting our guns in order and making other preparations for the attack, an animated discussion took place concerning a proper disposition of the two cubs which were to be captured alive. Some of our party thought that they ought to be carried home to Helena, but Bean and Reynolds, our packers, being appealed to, thought the plan not feasible unless they could be utilized as pack animals. When we reached the spot where Washburn and Hauser had last seen the bear, we traced her into a dense thicket, which, owing to the darkness, we did not care to penetrate, for not one of us felt that we had lost that particular bear. Jake Smith, with more of good sense than usual, but with his usual lack of scriptural accuracy, remarked, "I always considered Daniel a great fool to go into a den of bears."[[Q]]
Our journey for the entire day has been most trying, leading us through a trackless forest of pines encumbered on all sides by prostrate trunks of trees. The difficulty of urging forward our pack train, making choice of routes, extricating the horses when wedged between the trees, and re-adjusting the packs so that they would not project beyond the sides of the horses, required constant patience and untiring toil, and the struggle between our own docility and the obstacles in our way, not unfrequently resulted in fits of sullenness or explosions of wrath which bore no slight resemblance to the volcanic forces of the country itself.
On one of these occasions when we were in a vast net of down timber and brush, and each man was insisting upon his own particular mode of extrication, and when our tempers had been sorely tried and we were in the most unsocial of humors, speaking only in half angry expletives, I recalled that beautiful line in Byron's "Childe Harold," "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," which I recited with all the "ore rotundo" I could command, which struck the ludicrous vein of the company and produced an instantaneous response of uproarious laughter, which, so sudden is the transition between extremes, had the effect to restore harmony and sociability, and, in fact, to create a pleasure in the pathless wilderness we were traveling.
One of our pack horses is at once a source of anxiety and amusement to us all. He is a remarkable animal owned by Judge Hedges, who, however, makes no pretentious to being a good judge of horses. Mr. Hedges says that the man from whom he purchased the animal, in descanting upon his many excellent qualities, said: "He is that kind of an animal that drives the whole herd before him." The man spoke truly, but Mr. Hedges did not properly interpret the encomium, nor did he realize that the seller meant to declare that the animal, from sheer exhaustion, would always be lagging behind the others of the herd. From the start, and especially during our journey through the forest, this pony, by his acrobatic performances and mishaps, has furnished much amusement for us all. Progress to-day could only be accomplished by leaping our animals over the fallen trunks of trees. Our little broncho, with all the spirit necessary, lacks oftentimes the power to scale the tree trunks. As a consequence, he is frequently found resting upon his midriff with his fore and hind feet suspended over the opposite sides of some huge log. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He has an ambitious spirit, which is exceeded only by his patience. He has had many mishaps, any one of which would have permanently disabled a larger animal, and we have dubbed him "Little Invulnerable." One of the soldiers of our escort, Private Moore, has made a sketch of him as he appeared to-day lying across a log, of which I am to have a copy.