e between the muskeg and
the slough. The slough was simply any depression in the ground filled
with mud and water. The muskeg was permanent wet ground resting on
soft mud, covered over on the top with most deceiving soft green moss
which looked solid, but which quaked to every step and gave to the
slightest weight. Many muskegs west of Edmonton have been formed by
beavers damming the natural drainage of a small river for so many
centuries that the silt and humus washed down from the mountains have
formed a surface of deep black muck.

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CHAPTER V

CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS

Like many lowland dwellers, the Overlanders had thought of a pass as a
door opening through a rock wall. What they found was a forested slope
flanked on both sides by mighty precipices down which poured cataracts
with the sound of the voice of many waters. Huge hemlocks lay
criss-crossed on the slope. Above could be seen the green edge of a
glacier, and still higher the eternal snows of the far peaks. The tang
of ice was in the air; but in the valleys was all the gorgeous bloom of
midsummer--the gaudy painter's brush, the shy harebell, the tasselled
windflower, and a few belated mountain roses. Long-stemmed, slender
cornflowers and bluebells held up their faces to the sun, blue as the
sky above them. Everywhere was an odour as of incense, the fragrance
of the great hemlocks, of grasses frost-touched at night and sunburnt
by day, of the unpolluted earth-mould of a thousand years.

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Where was the trail? None was visible! The captain led the way,
following blazes chipped in the bark of the trees, zigzagging up the
slope from right to left, from left to right, hanging to the horse's
mane to lift weight from the saddle, with a rest for breathing at each
turn as they climbed; and, when the ridge of the foothill was
surmounted, a world of peacock-blue lakes lay below, fringed by
forests. The cataracts looked like wind-blown ribbons of silver.
Instead of dipping down, the trail led to the rolling flank of another
great foothill, and yet another, round sharp saddlebacks connecting the
mountains. Here, ox-carts were dangerous and had to be abandoned. It
was with difficulty that the oxen could be driven along the narrow
ledges.

Jasper House, Whitefish Lake, the ruins of Henry House, they saw from
the height of the pass. One foaming stream they forded eight times in
three hours, driven from side to side by precipice and wind