s of melting snow, and all around went on the incessant
signalling of the marmots--the only cheerful sound in all the wide
green land.

We had made about twenty-three miles that day, notwithstanding
tremendous steeps and endless mudholes mid-leg deep. It was the
greatest test of endurance of our trip.

We had the good luck to scare up a ptarmigan (a sort of piebald
mountain grouse), and though nearly fainting with hunger, we held
ourselves in check until we had that bird roasted to a turn. I shall
never experience greater relief or sweeter relaxation of rest than
that I felt as I stretched out in my down sleeping bag for twelve
hours' slumber.

I considered that we were about one hundred and ninety miles from
Hazleton, and that this must certainly be the divide between the
Skeena and the Stikeen. The Manchester boys reported finding some
very good pieces of quartz on the hills, and they were all out with
spade and pick prospecting, though it seemed to me they showed but
very little enthusiasm in the search.

"I b'lieve there's gold here," said "Chihuahua," "but who's goin' to
stay here and look fer it? In the first place, you couldn't work fer
mor'n 'bout three months in the year, and it 'ud take ye the other
nine months fer to git yer grub in. Them hills look to me to be
mineralized, but I ain't honin' to camp here."

This seemed to be the general feeling of all the other prospectors,
and I did not hear that any one else went so far even as to dig a
hole.

As near as I could judge there seemed to be three varieties of
"varmints" galloping around over the grassy slopes of this high
country. The largest of these, a gray and brown creature with a
tawny, bristling mane, I took to be a porcupine. Next in size were
the giant whistlers, who sat up like old men and signalled, like one
boy to another. And last and least, and more numerous than all, were
the smaller "chucks" resembling prairie dogs. These animals together
with the ptarmigan made up the inhabitants of these lofty slopes.

I searched every green place on the mountains far and near with my
field-glasses, but saw no sheep, caribou, or moose, although one or
two were reported to have been killed by others on the trail. The
ptarmigan lived in the matted patches of willow. There were a great
many of them, and they helped out our monotonous diet very
opportunely. They moved about in pairs, the cock very loyal to the
hen in time of danger; but not even this loy