and put them up not more than an hour ago.

"And then," he went on, "north of here runs the Arctic, with who knows
what beyond the shore-line. South and west of the place where we will
cross the Canadian and American line there's a lot of country no man
knows much about. And everywhere you looked as we came through, east
and west of the big river, there was country that was mapped, but with
really little known of it. The Liard has been mapped, but that's all
you can say about it. The only way to travel through this country is
on the rivers, and when you are on one of these rivers you don't have
much time to see beyond the banks, believe me."

"Well, it's kept me mighty busy with my little old map," said John,
"changing directions as much as we have. I wanted to ask you, Rob,
whether I've got the distances all right. Why not check up on the
jumps in our whole journey from the start to here, where we are at the
end of the trail?"

"All right," said Rob, and produced his own memorandum-book from his
pocket. "I've got the distances here, the way they were given to me by
the government men:

"From Athabasca Landing to Pelican Portage was one hundred and twenty
miles; to the Grand Rapids, one hundred and sixty-five miles; to
McMurray, two hundred and fifty-two miles; to Chippewyan, four hundred
and thirty-seven miles; to Smith's Landing, five hundred and
thirty-seven miles; to Fort Smith, below the portage, five hundred and
fifty-three miles; to Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake, seven
hundred and forty-five miles; to Hay River, eight hundred and fifteen
miles; to Fort Providence, nine hundred and five miles; to Fort
Simpson, ten hundred and eighty-five miles; to Fort Wrigley, twelve
hundred and sixty-five miles; to Fort Norman, fourteen hundred and
thirty-seven miles; to Fort Good Hope, sixteen hundred and nine miles;
to Arctic Red River, eighteen hundred and nineteen miles; to Fort
McPherson, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine miles. That's the way we
figured it out at first, and I guess it's about as accurate as any one
can tell," he concluded.

John was setting down these figures and doing a little figuring on the
margin of his paper. "We left on May twenty-ninth," said he, "and got
here July eighth--forty days into two thousand miles--that makes fifty
miles a day we've averaged, including all the stops. You see that
fifty miles a day, kept up, gets you into the thousands in time,
doesn't it? After we struck the st