around him or the stars above him.

I think of one prospector whose range was at the headwaters of the
Athabaska. In the dance-halls he had married a cheap variety actress.
When the money of his first find had been dissipated she refused to
live with him, and tried to extort high alimony by claiming their
two-year-old son. The penniless prospector knew that he was no equal
for law courts and sheriffs and lawyers; so he made him a raft, got a
local trader to outfit him, and plunged with his baby boy into the
wilderness, where no sheriff could track him. I asked him why he did
not use pack-horses. He said dogs could have tracked them, but 'the
water didn't leave no smell.' In the heart of the wilderness west of
Mounts Brown and Hooker he built him a log cabin with a fireplace. In
that cabin he daily hobbled his little son, so {27} that the child
could not fall in the fire. He set his traps round the mountains and
hunted till the snow cleared. By the time he could go prospecting in
spring he had seven hundred dollars' worth of furs to sell; and he kept
the child with him in the wilds till his wife danced herself across the
boundary. Then he brought the boy down and sent him to school. When
the Canadian Pacific Railway crossed the Rockies, that man became one
of the famous guides. He was the first guide I ever employed in the
mountains.

Up-stream, then, headed the prospectors on the Fraser in that autumn of
'58. The miner's train of pack-horses is a study in nature. There is
always the wise old bell-mare leading the way. There is always the
lazy packer that has to be nipped by the horse behind him. There are
always the shanky colts who bolt to stampede where the trail widens;
but even shanky-legged colts learn to keep in line in the wilds. At
every steep ascent the pack-train halts, girths are tightened, and sly
old horses blow out their sides to deceive the driver. At first colts
try to rub packs off on every passing tree, but a few tumbles heels
over head down a bank cure them of that trick.

Always the course in new territory is {28} according to the slope of
the ground. River-bank is followed where possible; but where windfall
or precipice drives back from the bed of the river over the mountain
spurs, the pathfinder takes his bearings from countless signs. Moss is
on the north side of tree-trunks. A steep slope compels a zigzag,
corkscrew ascent, but the slope of the ground guides the climber as t