between two waterways as great as
those of the Fraser and the Columbia. It's only two thousand five
hundred and sixty-three feet above sea-level at the summit, and, as I
said, is only twenty-one feet above the Fraser."

"We must have come down quite a way," said Rob, "since we left the
pass."

"More than a thousand feet. And in that thousand feet the Fraser has
grown from a trickle to a great river--in fifty miles downhill."

"Well, I can see," said Rob, looking about the pleasant valley which
lay before them, "that this is a good place for a town."

"Certainly," said the leader of their party. "There'll be more than
one railroad come through here across the Yellowhead Pass, very
likely, and already they are making surveys down the Fraser and
Thompson and the Canoe River. Sometime there will be a railroad down
the Big Bend of the Columbia below us, and it will have a branch up
here, as sure as we're standing here now. That will open up all this
country from the points along the Canadian Pacific. Then all these
names--the Thompson, the Fraser, and the Canoe--will be as familiar to
the traveling public as the Missouri and the Mississippi. Yet as we
stand here and look at that country it is a country as yet unknown and
unnamed! I couldn't map it, John, myself, for, although that country
south of us is one of the most interesting of the continent, it is one
of the least known. In short, that's the game country we've been
heading for, and I'll promise you a grizzly when we get south of that
flat divide."

"Well," said John, "that'll satisfy me, all right. We've had mighty
little shooting this far."

"All in good time, all in good time, John, my boy. Maybe we'll show
you as good sport as you're looking for, at least, what with rapids
and grizzly bears.

"But now we must go on and find Leo, if we can. I sent word to him
last fall for him to meet me here at the Cache this month. We'll see
what luck there is in the wilderness despatch."

They passed on rapidly along and across the sunlit valley, exulting in
a sense of freedom in getting out of the dark and gloomy mountains
into an open country where they could see all about them. Soon they
saw smoke rising above the tops of the low trees, and discovered it to
come from a number of tepees, tall and conical, built with long poles,
precisely like the tepees of the tribes east of the Rockies.

"That's the Shuswap village," said Uncle Dick. "Leo lives there with
his peop