The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-12-12

with field glasses and alpenstOcfS. These
mountains of Idaho are too remote from
the highways of the tourists, and even
when the railroad comes, as 1t must in
a few years, it will be a bobtailed, jerk
water ore-carrying road that VIII be too
busy with profitable freight to bother
with Pullman cars and personally con-
Quoted excursions. Only those who love
mountains for their own sake, and not
for the sake of seeing if the scenery
that the railroads advertise is really
what they claim for it, will penetrate to
this sanctuary of the Upper Rockies.
Those who come will come because they
love the vast solitude of the silent hills,
the glorious miracle of a. growing forest,
and the return to first principles that
men and women get when they hit the
trail! For such as these, the hills of
Idaho can never be spoiled by the COM
ing of mines and the making of new
roads and trails For the land is so big
and so wide that a thousand smelters
and stamp mills could be seen at one
canyon, and the wild grandeur of the
scenery would be no more married than
stars.
BEST ROUTE TO THE CAMP.
This year the best road into Thun-
der Mountain was by way of Council,
the Meadows, Resort and Warren. On
the other trails there were impedimentS
and accidents and perils that brought
death with them. But the Warren
trail was good during the whole sea-
SUI. II WAS DSll0T Indn II Was last
year, for either the finger of time or
the hand of man had lifted some of the
bOulders from the Elk Creek trail, and
in going from Schieffer's Ranch to
Roosevelt we found a score of cabins
and outfits that last year were not
there. This year they made easy and
comfortable stopping places for the
traveller. In all the world there is no
more genuine hospitality than that in
a miners cabin. Hunger seasons the
Bile, and the tin plates of miners
cabin seem more desirable than rarest
china, and the simple, wholesome food
better than q. feast of Lucullus.
IMPROVEMENT ALONG THE WAY.
A year has done much to improve
the wayfarer's journey into Thunder
Mountain. 1t has put the grateful
touch of a womans hand into the hos
pitality at Resort, it has started a new
and much-needed hotel at Warren, it
has put Mrs. Phelan in charge of
Schieffer's Ranch. And the greatest
of these is Mrs. Phelan. She has irri-
gated a little patch of hat-lying land,
somewhat bigger than a table-cloth,
but not much bigger than wagon
sheet. and on this she has grown peas
and beans and summer squash and
green corn and all the fresh vegetab leS
that the miners who eat canned things
dream about. Best of all. she has
grown the strawberry Short-cake. Min
ers hearing of her strawberry short
cake bushes, have walked forty miles
to sample them, and then have walked
back contented. Entertainment for
man is four bits a meal and for beast
six bits, as Mrs. Phelans, but there
are few places of public entertainment
in this broad land where men part with
their money more enthusiastically than
at Mrs. Phelan'S- A pretty fair cook
is Mrs. Phelan, much better than the
AVERAGE but she has an able assistant
in sixty five miles of wagon road and
a dozen miles of trail-hard, down-hill
trail, with an appetizer in every rod
of ito add piquancy and character to
her cooking, for the incoming guest;
and as for the outgoing guest, he who
has lived a season in the hills, the mere
sight of an honest woman-body moving
about the house at her work is enough
to give a man the appetite of stone
crusher and the temper of peri in
paradise.
SENSATIONS OF THE TRAIL
It is a days journeys as mountain
journeys go, from Mrs. Phelan's to the
Big Creek country; but it Is a short.
davis tourney even to what may be
Creek territory, say, to HOLSTERS town
site of Golden, where the slaughter
house stands this year; and to the head
of Big Creek, where the Blackfoot Min
ing companys silent Frlend mines mines
are located, is but a good forenoon's
jaunt Naturally, one would think that
the second trip across a mountain or
over a trail would be uninteresting-
Presumably the cream OF the cnarm
would have been SKINNED off by the
first excursion. But the truth is, that
on the first journey one is so occupied
with the dangers and perhaps the
hardships of the trip, if he is a genuine
tenderfoot that he only begins to see
the beauty of the scenery when ne mas
been thoroughly convinced that there
is little to fear. and nothing worth
mentioning to endure. So the second
trip to Thunder Mountain was, so far
as getting the real meat or the mat
ter. really the first; and the trip from
Mrs. Phelan's over Elk Creek summit
this year was a trip over an old trail
with new eyes. We loitered up the Elk
Creek trail this year, eating huckle-
berries and snoozing on the bear-grass
between whites, shooting at mark
near the smoke-house and killing time
most ruthlessly, so that when we came
to the summit it was early afternoon
The beauty of the vast panorama OF
mountains and chasms. stretching al
most infinitely away before US to the
north and east, made it seem like an
undiscovered country. There was to 1t
that indefinable feeling of dreamy IA
miliarity. The trend and direction of
the hog-backs and of the canyons was
topographicalIy as it seemed at the
first visit. but above that sense of IA
miliarity came another-that of COM
prehension and appreciation. The
copper and iron daubed hills. and the
great gashes that the snowslides have
made into the raw white and yellow
porphyry. on the second trip to the di-
vide seem to have some meaning that
they withheld before from a man SO
tired he could not taste it, and SO
scared he couldn't bat his eyes without
clutching the saddle horn But this
year we were all saddle broke and
noun tain-wise. We had enough fore
thought to examine the altitude and
found that Elk Summit by the aneroid
is 5000 feet high. and after we had en-
joyed the beauty of the scene for many
minutes almost in silence. the marvel
GUS naturalization of the country be-
T -