h refreshed. All bore a hand in breaking the camp
and loading the boats, and early in the day they were once more off in
their swift journey down the mountain river. The river itself seemed
to have changed almost overnight. From being mild and inoffensive it
now brawled over its reefs and surged madly through its canyons. Many
times they were obliged to go ashore and line down some of the bad
water, and all the time, when running, the paddlers were silent and
eager, looking ahead for danger, and obliged constantly to use care
with the paddles to dodge this rock or to avoid that stretch of
roaring water. There was no accident, however, to mar their progress,
and they kept on until in the afternoon they reached a place where the
valley seemed to flatten and spread, a wide and beautiful mountain
prospect opening out before them. After a time, at the head of a long
stretch of water, as both boats were running along side by side, they
saw suddenly unfold before them the spectacle of a wide, green flood,
beyond which rose a wedgelike range of lofty mountains, the inner
peaks of which were topped with snow.

"_La Grande Riviere!_" exclaimed Moise; and Leo turned his head to
shout: "Ketch 'um Columby!"

"Yes, there's the Columbia, boys," said Uncle Dick. And the three
young hunters in the boat waved their hats with a shout at seeing at
last this great river of which they had heard so much, and which had
had so large a place in their youthful dreams.

Steadily the boat swept on down the stained and tawny current of their
smaller river, until they felt beneath them the lift of the green
flood of the great Columbia, here broken into waves by the force of an
up-stream wind. Uncle Dick called out an order to the lead-boat. Soon
they all were ashore on a little beach near the mouth of the Canoe
River, each feeling that now at last a great stage of their journey
had been completed, and that another yet as great still lay before
them.

XXIV

THE BOAT ENCAMPMENT

Our party of adventurers were now in one of the wildest and most
remote regions to be found in all the northern mountains, and one
perhaps as little known as any to the average wilderness goer--the
head of the Big Bend of the Columbia River; that wild gorge, bent in a
half circle, two hundred miles in extent, which separates the Selkirks
from the Rockies. There are few spots on this continent farther from
settlements of civilized human beings.

To the left, up