haps, men will know your story as well as you do that of
Mackenzie and Fraser, although theirs was written in books. This is
our custom. If it pleases you, we are very glad."

Hats still in hand, the boys now stepped up one by one and shook hands
with Alex and Moise. When they left this camp they looked back for a
long time, and they could see their commemorative tree standing out
tall, slender, and quite distinct from all the others. No doubt it
stands there to-day just as it was left in the honor of our young
_voyageurs_.

XVIII

BAD LUCK WITH THE "MARY ANN"

Alex now went down to the boats and began to rearrange the cargo, from
which the boys saw that in his belief it was best to continue the
journey that evening, although it now was growing rather late.
Evidently he was for running down ahead of the flood-water if any such
should come, although it seemed to all of them that after all they
need have no great fear, for the river had risen little if any since
morning.

They determined to put the big bear hide in the _Mary Ann_, and
shifted some of the burden of that boat to the _Jaybird_, folding up
the long hide and putting it at the bottom of the canoe under the
thwarts, so that the weight would come as low as possible. When the
_Mary Ann_ had received the rest of her necessary cargo she showed
most of her bundles and packages above the gunwale, and Alex looked at
the two boats a little dubiously, even after Moise had carried down to
the dugout of his cousins such of the joint supplies as even his
liberality thought proper.

"We'll try her, anyhow," said Alex, taking a look up the river, which
came rolling down, tawny now, and not white and green in its colors.
So saying, they pushed off.

They must, at this camp, have been somewhere between twelve and twenty
miles east of the mouth of the Parle Pas rapids, and they had made
perhaps a dozen miles more that evening when they began to come to a
place where again the mountains approached the stream closely. Here
they could not see out at all from their place at the foot of the high
banks which hedged them in. At nightfall they encamped in a wild
region which seemingly never had known the foot of man. The continuous
rush of the waters and the gloom of the overhanging forests now had
once more that depressing effect which sometimes is not unknown even
to seasoned _voyageurs_. Had they been asked, the young travelers must
truthfully have replied that they