tains
remained splendid to the last; and as we made our start I looked back
upon them with undiminished pleasure.

We pitched tent at night just below the ford, and opposite another
Indian village in which a most mournful medicine song was going on,
timed to the beating of drums. Dogs joined with the mourning of the
people with cries of almost human anguish, to which the beat of the
passionless drum added solemnity, and a sort of inexorable marching
rhythm. It seemed to announce pestilence and flood, and made the
beautiful earth a place of hunger and despair.

I was awakened in the early dawn by a singular cry repeated again and
again on the farther side of the river. It seemed the voice of a
woman uttering in wailing; chant the most piercing agony of
despairing love. It ceased as the sun arose and was heard no more. It
was difficult to imagine such anguish in the bustle of the bright
morning. It seemed as though it must have been an illusion--a dream
of tragedy.

In the course of an hour's travel we came down to the sandy bottom of
the river, whereon a half-dozen fine canoes were beached and waiting
for us. The skilful natives set us across very easily, although it
was the maddest and wildest of all the rivers we had yet seen. We
crossed the main river just above the point at which the west fork
enters. The horses were obliged to swim nearly half a mile, and some
of them would not have reached the other shore had it not been for
the Indians, who held their heads out of water from the sterns of the
canoes, and so landed them safely on the bar just opposite the little
village called Kispyox, which is also the Indian name of the west
fork.

The trail made off up the eastern bank of this river, which was as
charming as any stream ever imagined by a poet. The water was
gray-green in color, swift and active. It looped away in most
splendid curves, through opulent bottom lands, filled with wild
roses, geranium plants, and berry blooms. Openings alternated with
beautiful woodlands and grassy meadows, while over and beyond all
rose the ever present mountains of the coast range, deep blue and
snow-capped.

There was no strangeness in the flora--on the contrary, everything
seemed familiar. Hazel bushes, poplars, pines, all growth was
amazingly luxuriant. The trail was an Indian path, graceful and full
of swinging curves. We had passed beyond the telegraph wire of the
old trail.

Early in the afternoon we passed some fiv