Then, Breasting The Snow Again, Crossing The Shifting
Avalanche Slopes And Torrents, I Reached Camp About Dark, Wet And
Weary And Glad.
While I was getting some coffee and hardtack, Mr. Young told me that
the Indians were discouraged, and had been talking about turning
back, fearing that I would be lost, the canoe broken, or in some
other mysterious way the expedition would come to grief if I
persisted in going farther.
They had been asking him what possible
motive I could have in climbing mountains when storms were blowing;
and when he replied that I was only seeking knowledge, Toyatte said,
"Muir must be a witch to seek knowledge in such a place as this and
in such miserable weather."
After supper, crouching about a dull fire of fossil wood, they became
still more doleful, and talked in tones that accorded well with the
wind and waters and growling torrents about us, telling sad old
stories of crushed canoes, drowned Indians, and hunters frozen in
snowstorms. Even brave old Toyatte, dreading the treeless, forlorn
appearance of the region, said that his heart was not strong, and
that he feared his canoe, on the safety of which our lives depended,
might be entering a skookum-house (jail) of ice, from which there
might be no escape; while the Hoona guide said bluntly that if I was
so fond of danger, and meant to go close up to the noses of the
ice-mountains, he would not consent to go any farther; for we should
all be lost, as many of his tribe had been, by the sudden rising of
bergs from the bottom.
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