That day I noticed that all my Indians, in crossing logs over a stream, always turned the toes of both feet in the same direction (to the right), although they kept the body square to the front, or nearly so, and each foot passed the other at every step, as in ordinary walking. The advantage to be gained was not obvious to the author; as the novice, in attempting it, feels much more unsafe than in walking over the log as usual. Nearing Camp 5, we passed over two or three hundred yards of snow from three to fifteen feet deep. This day's march of the 10th of June brought us to the head of the Dayay river at a place the Indians call the "stone-houses." These _stone-houses_, however, are only a loose mass of huge bowlders piled over each other, projecting high above the deep snow, and into the cave-like crevices the natives crawl for protection whenever the snow has buried all other tracts, or the cold wind from the glaciers is too severe to permit of sleep in the open. All around us was snow or the clear blue ice of the glacier fronts, while directly northward, and seemingly impassable, there loomed up for nearly four thousand feet the precipitous pass through the mountains, a blank mass of steep white, which we were to essay on the morrow.
[Illustration: CHASING A MOUNTAIN GOAT IN THE PERRIER PASS.]
Shortly after camping I was told that the Indians had seen a mountain goat nearly on the summit of the western mountain wall, and I was able to make out his presence with the aid of field-glasses. The Indians had detected him with their unaided eyes, in spite of his white coat being against a background of snow. Had the goat been on the summit of a mountain in the moon I should not have regarded him as any safer than where he was, if the Indians were even half as fatigued as I felt, and they had carried a hundred pounds over the trail and I had not. But the identity of the goat was not fully established before an Indian, the only one who carried a gun, an old flintlock, smooth bore, Hudson Bay musket, made preparations for the chase. He ran across the valley and soon commenced the ascent of the mountains, in a little while almost disappearing on the white sides, looking like a fly crawling over the front of a house. The Indian, a "Stick," finally could be seen above the mountain goat and would have secured him, but that a little black cur dog which had started to follow him when he was almost at the summit, made its appearance on the scene just in time to frighten the animal and started him running down the mountain side toward the pass, the "Stick" closely following in pursuit, assisted by the dog. Just as every one expected to see the goat disappear through the pass, he wheeled directly around and started straight for the camp, producing great excitement. Every one grabbed the first gun he could get his hands on and waited for the animal's approach. A shot from camp sent him flying up the eastern mountains, which were higher than those of the west, closely followed almost to the summit by the indefatigable "Stick," who finally lost him. I thought it showed excellent endurance for the mountain goat, but the Indian's pluck was beyond all praise, and as he returned with a jovial shake of the head, as if he met such disappointments every day, I felt sure that I would not have undertaken his hunt for all the goat meat in the country, even with starvation at hand.