Signed, &c., &c.
I claim for this memorandum or manifesto some slight degree of praise. It bears, I think, a striking analogy to diplomatic documents, for which of late years the British Government has been conspicuous in times of grave foreign complications; but in one important respect my judicial memorandum was very much more successful than any of the political papers upon which it was framed; for whereas they had been received by the respective belligerents to whom they had been addressed in a manner not at all flattering to our national dignity, my very lucid statement that, diplomatically speaking, two and two made four, had a marked impression on the minds of my audience.
On the one hand, I clearly pointed out that murder, arson, and robbery were not singly or collectively in unison with the true interpretation of British law; and on the other, I carefully abstained from giving any indication of what would result from the infringement of that law in the persons of any of the belligerents.
I have reason to believe that the negro Bismarck was deeply impressed by the general tenour of the document; and that a lengthened perusal of the word “executed,” in the last sentence, carried with it a sense of profound strangulation under which he long laboured.
And now it was time to think of moving again towards the setting sun.
Many months of travel had carried me across the great plateau of the North to this spot, where from the pine-clad plain arose the white ridges of the Rocky Mountains. Before me lay a land of alps, a realm of mountain peaks and gloomy cañons, where in countless valleys, unseen by the eye of man, this great Peace River had its distant source. In snow that lasts the live-long year these mountain summits rest; but their sides early feel the influence of the summer sun, and from the thousand valleys crystal streams rush forth to swell the majestic current of the great river, and to send it foaming in mighty volume to the distant Athabasca.
At such a time it is glorious work for the voyageur to launch his cotton-wood canoe on the rushing water and glance down the broad bosom of the river. His paddle lies idle in the water, or is used only to steer the swift-flying craft; and when evening darkens over the lofty shores, he lights his camp-fire full half a hundred miles from his starting-point of the morning.
But if it be idle, easy work to run down the river at its summer level, what arduous toil it is to ascend it during the same season! Bit by bit, little by little, the upward way must be won; with paddle, with pole, with line dragged along shore and pulled round tree-stump or projecting boulder; until evening finds the toiler often not three river reaches from his starting-point.
When the river finally breaks up, and the ice has all passed away, there is a short period when the waters stand at a low level; the sun is not yet strong enough to melt the snow quickly, and the frosts at night are still sharp in the mountain valleys. The river then stands ten feet below its level of mid-June; this period is a short one, and not an hour must be lost by the voyageur who would gain the benefit of the low water in the earlier days of May.
Seventy miles higher up the Peace River stands a solitary house called Hudson’s Hope. It marks the spot where the river first emerges from the cañon of the Rocky Mountains, and enters the plain country. A trail, passable for horses, leads along the north shore of the river to this last trading-post of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the verge of the mountains. Along this trail I now determined to continue my journey, so as to gain the west side of the Great Cañon before the ice had left the river, and thus reap the advantage of the low water in ascending still farther into the mountains.