Pack Train Descending to Hunt’s Cove. Mount Jefferson in the Distance.
Boy Scouts at Crater Lake
A STORY OF CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK AND THE HIGH CASCADES
By
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
Illustrated with Photographs
FRED H. KISER
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON CHICAGO
Copyrighted, 1922,
By W. A. Wilde Company
All rights reserved
Made in U.S.A.
FOREWORD
(For Parents and Similar People)
It seems to be generally assumed that a story for boysmust be crowded full of adventures, and the assumptionis doubtless based on experience. This wouldbe all right if the adventures were also based on experience.Unfortunately, however, such is not alwaysthe case, and then the result is something that maypossibly satisfy an immediate craving of the boy forexcitement, but in the long run can only confuse hissense of reality. It is probably more important, in aboy’s development, to clarify his sense of reality thanit is to feed his imagination. His imagination, normally,needs very little prodding to carry him awayfrom reality. That is why tales of actual adventure,such as the records of explorers, hunters, and the like,are so worth while for boys. They feed the imaginationwhile, at the same time, keeping touch with thereal. They have the lure of fiction, and the solidityof fact.
It has been my steady purpose, in the Boy Scoutseries of stories which I have written, to bear this inmind. I have not described places with which I wasunfamiliar, nor created adventures it was impossiblefor boys to experience. In the volume preceding thepresent one, “Boy Scouts in Glacier Park,” I endeavoredto give some adequate idea of that beautifulNational Park, and hence of a section of the RockyMountain wilderness, and the actual adventures onemay now encounter therein. Our friend, Bill Hart, ofmovie fame, may be relied on to supply the other sortof Wild West adventure, without any need of helpfrom me. The response of my young readers was sopleasantly encouraging that I am asking them, in thisbook, to go still farther West, into another NationalPark, Crater Lake, and into the Cascade wilderness ofOregon. Whitman’s ride for Oregon was long ago,and today they are building a macadam highway wherehis horse left a solitary track.
The Cascade Mountains afford numerous opportunitiesfor snow climbing—and anyone who has practicedthis noble sport does not need to be told that itsupplies plenty of adventure. Snow mountains havea way of withdrawing themselves many miles fromhuman habitation, and a pack train is scarcely to beafforded save by those who have reached years of comparativediscretion, so I have no