Since daylight it had snowed incessantly; and in a dense driving snow-storm we made the passage of the mountain.
The winter’s snow lay four feet deep upon the trail, and our horses sunk to their girths at every step. Slowly we plodded on, each horse stepping in the old footprints of the last journey, and pausing often to take breath in the toilsome ascent. At length the summit was reached; but a thick cloud hung over peak and valley. Then the trail wound slowly downwards, and by noon we reached the shore of a dim lake, across whose bosom the snow-storm swept as though the time had been mid-November instead of the end of May.
We passed the outlet of the Nation Lake (a sheet of water some thirty-five miles in length, lying nearly east and west), and held our way for some miles along its southern shore. In the evening we had reached a green meadow, on the banks of a swollen stream.
While Rufus and I were taking the packs off the tired horses, preparatory to making them swim the stream; a huge grizzly bear came out upon the opposite bank and looked at us for a moment. The Indians who were behind saw him approach us, but they were too far from us to make their voices audible. A tree crossed the stream, and the opposite bank rose steeply from the water to the level meadow above. Bruin was not twenty paces from us, but the bank hid him from our view; and when I became aware of his proximity he had already made up his mind to retire. Grizzlies are seldom met under such favourable circumstances. A high bank in front, a level meadow beyond, I long regretted the chance, lost so unwittingly, and our cheerless bivouac that night in the driving sleet would have been but little heeded, had my now rusty double-barrel spoken its mind to our shaggy visitor. But one cannot always be in luck.
All night long it rained and sleeted and snowed, and daylight broke upon a white landscape. We got away from camp at four o’clock, and held on with rapid pace until ten. By this hour we had reached the summit of the table-land “divide” between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. It is almost imperceptible, its only indication being the flow of water south, instead of north-east. The day had cleared, but a violent storm swept the forest, crashing many a tall tree prostrate to the earth; and when we camped for dinner, it was no easy matter to select a spot safe from the dangers of falling pine-trees.
As I quitted this Arctic water-shed, and stood on the height of land between the two oceans, memory could not help running back, over the many scenes which had passed, since on that evening after leaving the Long Portage, I had first entered the river systems of the North.
Full 1300 miles away lay the camping-place of that evening; and as the many long hours of varied travel rose up again before me, snow-swept, toil-laden, full at times of wreck and peril and disaster; it was not without reason that, turning away from the cold northern landscape, I saluted with joy the blue pine-tops, through which rolled the broad rivers of the Pacific.
“THE LOOK-OUT MOUNTAIN.”