  (For Parents and Similar People) It seems to be generally assumed that a story for boys must be crowded full of adventures, and the assumption is doubtless based on experience. This would be all right if the adventures were also based on experience. Unfortunately, however, such is not always the case, and then the result is something that may possibly satisfy an immediate craving of the boy for excitement, but in the long run can only confuse his sense of reality. It is probably more important, in a boy’s development, to clarify his sense of reality than it is to feed his imagination. His imagination, normally, needs very little prodding to carry him away from 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 imagination while, at the same time, keeping touch with the real. They have the lure of fiction, and the solidity of fact. It has been my steady purpose, in the Boy Scout series of stories which I have written, to bear this in mind. I have not described places with which I was unfamiliar, nor created adventures it was impossible for boys to experience. In the volume preceding the present one, “Boy Scouts in Glacier Park,” I endeavored to give some adequate idea of that beautiful National Park, and hence of a section of the Rocky Mountain wilderness, and the actual adventures one may now encounter therein. Our friend, Bill Hart, of movie fame, may be relied on to supply the other sort of Wild West adventure, without any need of help from me. The response of my young readers was so pleasantly encouraging that I am asking them, in this book, to go still farther West, into another National Park, Crater Lake, and into the Cascade wilderness of Oregon. Whitman’s ride for Oregon was long ago, and today they are building a macadam highway where his horse left a solitary track. The Cascade Mountains afford numerous opportunities for snow climbing—and anyone who has practiced this noble sport does not need to be told that it supplies plenty of adventure. Snow mountains have a way of withdrawing themselves many miles from human habitation, and a pack train is scarcely to be afforded save by those who have reached years of comparative discretion, so I have no fear of sending youngsters out alone to start up the Roosevelt Glacier. If, however, I can inspire some few of them to persuade their fathers to take them into the high places, I know that both they and their fathers will ultimately thank me. But chiefly, in the end, I want young America to know and to love and to preserve what is left of the American wilderness. W. P. E.
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