lantern."

"Twenty-five minutes to reach Dad's! Come, you fellows--loosen up your
joints. The climb up the gulch to the Park is a real one, and there isn't
a place in the canyon to camp," called Mr. Allen, as he started forward
at a more rapid gait.

When they reached the farthest point of the big Horseshoe Bend, they
stopped to rest a moment before starting up the last long incline to
Daddy Wright's.

"Isn't it really wonderful when you think of the obstacles men have
overcome just to accomplish their desired ends?" asked Mr. Allen as he
stood gazing out over the mountains. "Men have risked their very lives
just for the privilege of climbing into these old hills to look for gold.
Many were the narrow escapes from death by starvation or wild beasts
that these hills could tell of if they could speak. Did you ever stop to
think that if it hadn't been for the gold that God hid away here in this
Continental Divide, that perhaps the men in the old Eastern colonies
would never have crossed over and taken possession of the wonderful
Westland. It was the gold that was hidden under the snow and ice of
Alaska that beckoned men northward. This has always been true. The
prospectors of the Nation have always been its best explorers--certainly
they were its real frontiersmen. They led and civilization followed.
Think of the thousands of people who endured hardships of which we can
not even imagine just to follow westward that trail, blazed by such
sturdy old men as Dad Wright and others like him. I've heard Dad tell
many a time of that caravan of forty-niners, all their earthly
possessions packed in one of those old prairie schooners, drawn by slow,
patient oxen. I've heard him tell of the time gold was discovered in