Gently we stole our way up from beneath it, and were still within thirty yards of it when the great boulder, looming high, crashed into the river.
On the fourth day we got clear of this shore ice, and drew near the main range of the mountains. But there was one important question which experience soon told me there was no cause for anxiety about—it was the question of food.
Game was abundant; the lower hills were thickly stocked with blue grouse—a noble bird, weighing between three and four pounds.
The bays of the river held beaver, swimming through the driftwood, and ere we had reached the mountain gate a moose had fallen to my trusty smooth-bore, in one of the grassy glens between the river and the snowy range. It was literally a hunter’s paradise. This was the worst time of the year, except for beaver, but necessity knows no game law, and the wilderness at all times must feed its wanderers.
We usually camped a couple of hours before sun-down, for in this northern land the daylight was more than long enough to stiffen our shoulders, and make our arms ache from pole or paddle. Then came the time to stretch one’s legs over these great grassy uplands, so steep, yet so free of rock; so full of projecting point and lofty promontory, beneath which the river lay in long silvery reaches, while around on every side the mountains in masses of rock and snow, lay like giant sentinels, guarding the great road which Nature had hewn through their midst.
At the entrance to the main range, the valley of the river is about two miles wide. The river itself preserves its general width of 250 to 300 yards with singular uniformity. The reaches are from one to three miles in length, the banks are dry, the lower beaches are level and well wooded, and the current becomes deeper and less rapid.
On the 8th of May we reached, early in the morning, the entrance to the main range. A short rapid marks it, a rapid easy to run at all stages of water, and up which we towed our canoe, carrying the more perishable articles to save them from the spray—a precaution which was, however, not necessary, as no water was shipped.
We were now in the mountains. From the low terrace along the shore they rose in stupendous masses; their lower ridges clothed in forests of huge spruce, poplar, and birch; their middle heights covered in dense thickets of spruce alone; their summits cut into a thousand varied peaks, bare of all vegetation, but bearing aloft into the sunshine 8000 feet above us the glittering crowns of snow which, when evening stilled the breezes, shone reflected in the quiet waters, vast and motionless.
Wonderful things to look at are these white peaks, perched up so high above our world. They belong to us, yet they are not of us. The eagle links them to the earth; the cloud carries to them the message of the sky; the ocean sends them her tempest; the air rolls her thunders beneath their brows, and launches her lightnings from their sides; the sun sends them his first greeting, and leaves them his latest kiss. Yet motionless they keep their crowns of snow, their glacier crests of jewels, and dwell among the stars heedless of time or tempest.
