ched houses, it is
impossible to say. There was a lone white man living on the site of
the old fort, as agent of the Hudson Bay Company. He kept a small
stock of clothing and groceries and traded for "skins," as the
Indians all call pelts. They count in skins. So many skins will buy a
rifle, so many more will secure a sack of flour.

The storekeeper told me that the two trampers had arrived there a few
days before without money and without food. "I gave 'em some flour
and sent 'em on," he said. "The Siwashes will take care of them, but
it ain't right. What the cussed idiots mean by setting out on such a
journey I can't understand. Why, one tramp came in here early in the
spring who couldn't speak English, and who left Quesnelle without
even a blanket or an axe. Fact! And yet the Lord seems to take care
of these fools. You wouldn't believe it, but that fellow picked up an
axe and a blanket the first day out. But he'd a died only for the
Indians. They won't let even a white man starve to death. I helped
him out with some flour and he went on. They all rush on. Seems like
they was just crazy to get to Dawson--couldn't sleep without dreamin'
of it."

I was almost as eager to get on as the tramps, but Burton went about
his work regularly as a clock. I wrote, yawned, stirred the big
campfire, gazed at the clouds, talked with the Indians, and so passed
the day. I began to be disturbed, for I knew the power of a rain on
the trail. It transforms it, makes it ferocious. The path that has
charmed and wooed, becomes uncertain, treacherous, gloomy, and
engulfing. Creeks become rivers, rivers impassable torrents, and
marshes bottomless abysses. Pits of quicksand develop in most
unexpected places. Driven from smooth lake margins, the trailers'
ponies are forced to climb ledges of rock, and to rattle over long
slides of shale. In places the threadlike way itself becomes an
aqueduct for a rushing overflow of water.

At such times the man on the trail feels the grim power of Nature.
She has no pity, no consideration. She sets mud, torrents, rocks,
cold, mist, to check and chill him, to devour him. Over him he has no
roof, under him no pavement. Never for an instant is he free from the
pressure of the elements. Sullen streams lie athwart his road like
dragons, and in a land like this, where snowy peaks rise on all
sides, rain meant sudden and enormous floods of icy water.

It was still drizzling on the third day, but we packed and pu