the almost endless song of
summer. At the end of the long day, when the sun, as if to make up for
its absence, lingers, loath to leave us in the twilight, beneath their
wings the song-birds hide their heads, then wake and sing, for the sun
is swinging up over the horizon where the pink sky, for an hour, has
shown the narrow door through which the day is dawning.

The dogs and sleds have been left behind and now, with Jaquis the
half-breed "boy" leading, followed closely by Smith the Silent, we go
deeper and deeper each day into the pathless wilderness.

To be sure it is not all bush, all forest. At times we cross wide
reaches of wild prairie lands. Sometimes great lakes lie immediately in
front of us, compelling us to change our course. Now we come to a wide
river and raft our outfit over, swimming our horses. Weeks go by and we
begin to get glimpses of the Rockies rising above the forest, and we
push on. The streams become narrower as we ascend, but swifter and more
dangerous.

We do not travel constantly now, as we have been doing. Sometimes we
keep our camp for two or three days. The climbing is hard, for Smith
must get to the top of every peak in sight, and so I find it "good
hunting" about the camp.

Jaquis is a fairly good cook, and what he lacks we make up with good
appetites, for we live almost constantly out under the sun and stars.

Pathfinders always lay up on Sunday, and sometimes, the day being long,
Smith steals out to the river and comes back with a mountain trout as
long as a yardstick.

The scenery is beyond description. Now we pass over the shoulder of a
mountain with a river a thousand feet below. Sometimes we trail for
hours along the shore of a limpid lake that seems to run away to the
foot of the Rockies.

Far away we get glimpses of the crest of the continent, where the Peace
River gashes it as if it had been cleft by the sword of the Almighty;
and near the Rockies, on either bank, grand battlements rise that seem
to guard the pass as the Sultan's fortresses frown down on the
Dardanelles.

Now we follow a narrow trail that was not a trail until we passed. A
careless pack-horse, carrying our blankets, slips from the path and goes
rolling and tumbling down the mountain side. A thousand feet below lies
an arm of the Athabasca. Down, down, and over and over the pack-horse
goes, and finally fetches up on a ledge five hundred feet below the
trail. "By damn," says Jaquis, "dere is won bronco b