THE GREAT STIKEEN DIVIDE
At about eight o'clock the next morning, as we were about to line up for our journey, two men came romping down the trail, carrying packs on their backs and taking long strides. They were "hitting the high places in the scenery," and seemed to be entirely absorbed in the work. I hailed them and they turned out to be two young men from Duluth, Minnesota. They were without hats, very brown, very hairy, and very much disgusted with the country.
For an hour we discussed the situation. They were the first white men we had met on the entire journey, almost the only returning footsteps, and were able to give us a little information of the trail, but only for a distance of about forty miles; beyond this they had not ventured.
"We left our outfits back here on a little lake—maybe you saw our Indian guide—and struck out ahead to see if we could find those splendid prairies they were telling us about, where the caribou and the moose were so thick you couldn't miss 'em. We've been forty miles up the trail. It's all a climb, and the very worst yet. You'll come finally to a high snowy divide with nothing but mountains on every side. There is no prairie; it's all a lie, and we're going back to Hazleton to go around by way of Skagway. Have you any idea where we are?"
"Why, certainly; we're in British Columbia."
"But where? On what stream?"
"Oh, that is a detail," I replied. "I consider the little camp on which we are camped one of the head-waters of the Nasse; but we're not on the Telegraph Trail at all. We're more nearly in line with the old Dease Lake Trail."
"Why is it, do you suppose, that the road-gang ahead of us haven't left a single sign, not even a word as to where we are?"
"Maybe they can't write," said my partner.
"Perhaps they don't know where they are at, themselves," said I.