The morning of the 30th broke fine and we got away about 8.30 a.m., but before long the rain came down and we plodded along through the forest for some seven hours, during which we did not cover much more than three miles.
The undergrowth was nearly everywhere dense, consisting of wine-berries and that curse of the forest, the thorny devil-club. The trees rose from one to two hundred feet in height over our heads. Windfalls of timber were numerous, adding to the difficulty of the march.
Of animal life we could see nothing. Deer marks were plentiful, and in the early morning before starting we heard the melancholy howling of two wolves. Game might have been in abundance, but what was the good when it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. I began to have serious misgivings as to what stalking a wapiti would be like in such a country. The wapiti country was, however, far away and we had still to get there.
About 4 o'clock we pitched camp, if possible on a worse ground than that of the day before.
Packs for two men had been left behind to be brought on next day, which meant that I had to remain in camp on the 31st with nothing to do, for there was neither game nor fish in the neighbourhood. Smith went on to find the way for next day's march, and the other two men went back to bring up the loads left behind. They turned up about 7 p.m. Smith got back in the afternoon, having found Kitsewa River, which was to be our objective the next day.
About 5 p.m. the rain came down in torrents and continued all night. Fortunately my little tent was quite waterproof. One great advantage of a camp in the forest is that there is no wind to drive the rain through the tent. I doubt whether my tent would have kept out such rain if the camp had been in the open.
September 1st. The rain stopped about 5 a.m. but the trees and undergrowth were dripping and a bad wet march was before us.
Getting away about 8.30 a.m.—it was always difficult to get the men to make an earlier start—we were soon wet to the skin. Smith, having got the compass bearings of the river, tried to find a better route than that he had taken the day before; but towards the end of the march we hit on a very bad windfall on the slope of a steep hill. Giant trees lay in a dense tangle, over, under and across which we had to make our way. It was timber crawling at its worst, and the trunks of the trees being covered with damp, slippery moss made the going really dangerous at times. Unfortunately I was wearing a pair of strong shooting boots with Scafe's patent rubber studs instead of nails. They had no hold on the slippery trunks of the trees we had to cross; the result was a bad fall and a sprained knee which caused me great pain and discomfort for the rest of the trip. I shall never forget the end of that march, for my knee kept giving way, and I stumbled and tumbled about till I was covered with bruises.
We made the Kitsewa River after six hours' march, and as the rain again set in, we camped at a disused trapper's hut on a high bank overlooking the river. The river here was about thirty yards broad and full of humpbacked salmon, but apparently no trout. We had seen many tracks of deer, wolves and one cougar on the march, but the undergrowth was so dense that shooting was impossible.
September 2nd. The men had again to go back to bring up the packs left behind. These double journeys were most annoying, and yet I do not see how they could have been avoided. We certainly only had the bare necessaries of life—more packers would have meant more mouths to feed and more provisions to carry—yet each double journey meant a lost day.