There are three distinct methods of travel on the trail. You may ride horses and carry your supplies on a pack-horse. You may walk and let the pack animal do the burden bearing. Or you may be a host unto yourself and bear your entire household on your back, with your own legs supplying locomotion. On this trip we chose the middle course, and walked, while Billy was our common carrier. Back packing is a strenuous undertaking where many miles are to be covered, and yet a superfluity of horses is a nuisance if the going is rough and instead of gaining speed with many animals you actually lose it. So it seemed to us the best way was to go afoot, with a single pack-horse. The brawling Elwha was our guide to Olympus, for its headwaters spring almost from the base of the mountain, and our trail wandered up the bank of the stream until, perhaps a dozen miles beyond our departure point from the highroad, we came to an appetizing meadow, and the pleasantest mountain home imaginable. It was the log house of the "Humes Boys," who seem as much of an institution in the Olympics as the mountains themselves. Bred in the Adirondacks the Humes migrated westward and hit upon this isolated homestead in the corner of Washington, where a growing influx of hunters and fishermen finds them out and they are kept busy during the summer months as guides and packers to the many vacationists who know them and their knowledge of the surrounding regions. In the winter they trap and--I imagine from the evident tastes of Grant Humes--read good books on out-of-door subjects, close to the glowing stove, while the winds whistle up and down the valley and the snow piles high. Gardeners, too, they are in a modest way, raising all their vegetables. And cooks! What cooks! In years gone by some pioneer settler had planted plum trees, and when we first saw Grant Humes no housewife was busier with jelly-making than he. "It's a bother now, and I don't suppose I enjoy it more than any other man likes such work," said he. "But when we're here in January and February, pretty well shut off from the world, and there's a great sameness about the food, I tell you a hundred glasses of plum jelly look almighty good--not to mention tasting!" I can vouch for the taste of it in September; if the midwinter season improves the flavor I'm in a most receptive mood for a Christmas invitation to the cabin on the Elwha!