CHAPTER V
CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS
Like many lowland dwellers, the Overlanders had thought of a pass as a door opening through a rock wall. What they found was a forested slope flanked on both sides by mighty precipices down which poured cataracts with the sound of the voice of many waters. Huge hemlocks lay criss-crossed on the slope. Above could be seen the green edge of a glacier, and still higher the eternal snows of the far peaks. The tang of ice was in the air; but in the valleys was all the gorgeous bloom of midsummer—the gaudy painter's brush, the shy harebell, the tasselled windflower, and a few belated mountain roses. Long-stemmed, slender cornflowers and bluebells held up their faces to the sun, blue as the sky above them. Everywhere was an odour as of incense, the fragrance of the great hemlocks, of grasses frost-touched at night and sunburnt by day, of the unpolluted earth-mould of a thousand years.
Where was the trail? None was visible! The captain led the way, following blazes chipped in the bark of the trees, zigzagging up the slope from right to left, from left to right, hanging to the horse's mane to lift weight from the saddle, with a rest for breathing at each turn as they climbed; and, when the ridge of the foothill was surmounted, a world of peacock-blue lakes lay below, fringed by forests. The cataracts looked like wind-blown ribbons of silver. Instead of dipping down, the trail led to the rolling flank of another great foothill, and yet another, round sharp saddlebacks connecting the mountains. Here, ox-carts were dangerous and had to be abandoned. It was with difficulty that the oxen could be driven along the narrow ledges.
Jasper House, Whitefish Lake, the ruins of Henry House, they saw from the height of the pass. One foaming stream they forded eight times in three hours, driven from side to side by precipice and windfall; and in places they could advance only by ascending the stream bed. This was risky work on a fractious pony, and some of the riders preferred wading to riding. At noon on the 22nd of August the riders crossed a small stream and set up their tents on the border of a sedgy lake. Then somebody noticed that the lake emptied west, not east; and a wild halloo split the welkin. They had crossed the Divide. They were on the headwaters of the Fraser, where a man could stand astride the stream; and the Fraser led to the Cariboo gold-diggings. They still had four hundred miles to travel. Their boots were in shreds and their clothes in tatters; but what were four hundred miles to men who had tramped almost three thousand?
But their progress had been so slow that the provisions were running short. The first snow of the mountains falls in September, and it was already near the end of August. There was not a moment to lose in resting. What had been a lure of hope now became a goad of desperation. So it is with all life's highest emprises. We plunge in led by hope. We plunge on spurred by fate. When the reward is won, only God and our own souls know that, even if we would, we could not have done otherwise than go on.
Those travellers who had insisted on bringing oxen had now to kill them for meat. Chipmunks were shot for food. So were many worn-out horses. Hides were used to resole boots and make mitts. Not far from Moose Lake the last bag of pemmican was eaten. Perhaps it was a good thing at this time that the band of Overlanders began to spread out and scatter along the trail; for hungry men in large groups are a tragic danger to themselves. Those of the advance-party were now some ten days ahead of their companions in the rear. Mrs MacNaughton, whose husband was with the rear party, of which we shall hear more anon, relates the story of a young fellow so ravenous that he fried the deer-thong he had bought for a tump-line back at one of the company's forts. Fortunately, somewhere west of Moose Lake, the travellers came on a band of Shuswap Indians who traded for matches and powder enough salmon and cranberry cakes to stave off actual famine.