nights on the hard ground and doing without everything but a tooth brush. But not one of the hundred, young or old, shrank from the test and, after a five o'clock breakfast, we bade farewell to stoves, cooks and dish washers and took our march up Bubbs' creek hill. I had said a good deal about the rough trail and steep ascent, but found that the prompt work of the forest rangers had so improved the bad places that I had to hear some good-natured teasing from those who had expected to see the "real thing" in mountain trails. I may say also that Tulare and Fresno counties contributed liberally to bridging streams and mending trails in honor of the Sierra Club.

Individual lunches were carried on this day, so that small parties stopped wherever they wished for noon, but by

and a diet of mush and mush only threatened them, these enthusiasts voted no return to camp and to the "fleshpots" until they had had their fill of all that Nature had to give.

With their usual alacrity those who formed the party to climb Mount Brewer were up and off early the next morning. Each man shouldered his own blankets, but the seventeen women who went were favored by being allowed to place their loads on the sturdy little burros that scrambled up the three miles of steep, rocky trail to East lake. Food for the party, numbering fifty, was also on the pack train.

I shall never forget the wolfish feeling we developed on that two days' trip on short rations, nor the hungry eyes that followed us about as we stirred the soup

department, not being informed of this, fell short in its calculations. As usual, most of the hungry eyed joked about it and fell to picking up crumbs of precious bread that was being sliced for the lunch on Mount Brewer. I had no idea how much one could fill up on bread crumbs and cheese. Of this latter article twenty pounds were devoured at two meals. It was the only thing we had in abundance.

That night a huge camp fire cast its long shafts of light on the still lake and on the faces of the forty-nine climbers. "Forty-niners" proved a fit name for this the first large party who attempted the summit of dear old Brewer, made so familiar to some of us by several former ascents. Our thoughtful secretary once more enjoined on our members the expediency of military obedience during