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Should you care to examine, the storekeeper will hook down from aloft capotes of different degrees of fineness. Fathoms of black tobacco-rope lie coiled in tubs. Tump-lines welter in a tangle of dimness.
Instead of tump-lines the man used his sash, and the woman a blanket knotted loosely together at the ends. The details of their costumes were interesting in combination of jeans and buckskin, broadcloth and blanket, stroud and a material evidently made from the strong white sacking in which flour intended for frontier consumption is always packed.
All the women carried babies in little hammocks slung over the shoulder. One little girl, not more than six years old, was carrying on her back a child of two, in a hammock supported from her head by a tump-line. It will be remembered that forest Indians nearly always use tump-lines so as to allow their hands free play.
Nearing an island, some of the men went ashore and cut a mast and sprit-sail boom for each canoe. They lashed the masts to the thwarts with tump-lines, and rigged the tarpaulins, used to cover the packs, into sails. Again the paddles were shipped, save those of the steersmen; and the crews lounged about, either smoking or drowsing. The men were weary.
Then there was a girding up of the loins, a getting out of tump-lines and canvas packs, and the long portage was begun. The voyagers carried each two hundred pounds as they stalked away into the wilderness, while the attorney-at-law "hefted" his pack, wiped his eyeglasses with his pocket-handkerchief, and tried cheerfully to assume the responsibilities of "a dead game sport."
A strange, sweet wind freighted with stray bird-notes wandered aimlessly. Nothing was said. Dick led the way and set the intervals of the carrying. When he swung the canoe from his shoulders the others slipped their tump-lines. Then all rubbed their faces with the broad caribou-leaf to keep off the early flies, and lay back, arms extended, breathing deep, resting like boxers between the rounds.
So two stout poles were secured and laid across our two large canoes as they rested about a foot apart and parallel to one another. Then, the poles being lashed to the thwarts, a single "four-point" blanket was rigged horizontally to two masts, one standing in each canoe and both guyed with tump-lines, and leaning away from each other in order to spread the improvised sail.
It is well to have another cloth disk attached to one spot at the top of the bag, to cover the contents before the draw-strings are fastened. A great variety of desirable camp packs, including duffel-bags, pack-straps, harness, and tump-lines, may be purchased at the camp-outfitter's; investigate before deciding upon home-made camp packs.
Tucker and Coello returned in the middle of the afternoon, reported that there seemed to be no serious difficulties in the first part of the climb and that a cache had been established about 2000 feet above the Base Camp, on a snow field. Tucker now assigned our packs for the morrow and skillfully prepared the tump-lines and harness with which we were to carry them.
There was nothing for it but to shoulder our packs, arrange our tump-lines, and proceed with the same steady drudgery now a little harder than the day before. We broke camp at half-past seven and by noon had reached an altitude of about 20,000 feet, on a snow field within a mile of the saddle between the great truncated peak and the rest of the range.
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