But to return to my forlorn and altogether ridiculous situation.  With needle and thread it would have been an easy matter to manufacture a pair of buckskin pantaloons such as I had worn in years gone by and would have welcomed in my present predicament.  But needles, thread, scissors, razor and combs had followed the cooking utensils to the bottom of the river.  There was nothing to do but simply to “grin and bear it,” and I did so with the best possible grace.  On an exploring expedition one day I found a tall tree on the bank of the river at a spot where the channel was contracted between narrow banks.  I had no axe and therefore set to work to burn it down, but it was a weary task.  Day after day I tended that fire, keeping in the shade to avoid the hot rays of the sun, and after six weeks of waiting had the satisfaction of seeing the tree spanning the river, and affording me a means of reaching clothing.  But I could not go to the settlements clothed like the Georgia Major, minus the spurs.  During the period of waiting for the tree to fall, I had made a needle of bone and taking an empty flour sack proceeded to manufacture a pair of legs which, with infinite pains, I stitched to the waistband of my long lost trousers and added wooden pegs to insure stability and strength to the flimsy ravelings.  In order to form a fair idea of my appearance, one must imagine a youth with a six weeks’ growth of hair and beard, a shirt that had to be taken off once a week to wash, a black band around his waist, to which was stitched and pegged parts of flour sacks.  I say, imagine all this and you can form some idea of a youth who, under ordinary circumstances, was rather proud of his good looks.  My brothers called me “Robinson Crusoe,” and I imagine the resemblance between the unlucky sailor, marooned on an island, and a wretched young fellow marooned in the depths of the Cascade mountains without clothing enough to hide his nakedness, was not an inapt comparison.

However, I was now happy.  A tree spanned the river and parts of flour sacks covered my limbs, and I would go to Mr. Allen’s place, sixty miles below and get my clothing.  Crossing the river, however, I discovered that our horses, left in a prairie, had “skipped out.”  I knew they would be caught at Mr. Allen’s place, and the next day I started out.  All the dogs followed.  They seemed to have an antipathy for my brothers, and, try as they would, they could not make friends with them.  Indeed, I have observed through life that children and dogs have an affinity for me.  I started in the morning and made about 35 miles the first day, camping and sleeping beside a fallen tree against which I kindled a big fire.  After a breakfast of cold bread and venison roasted on a stick, I started on the final lap of my journey.  About a mile from Mr. Allen’s home is a spot known to campers as “Rock House,” where the mountains crowd the river bank, leaving a space of not more than thirty feet between the almost precipitous bluff and the