The Cassiar Trail 



and of his many camps in the Canadian woods, hidden 

 like the nests and dens of wild animals; stories that 

 have a singular interest to everybody, for they awaken 

 inherited memories of the lang, lang syne when we 

 were all wild. He had nine children, he told me, the 

 youngest eight years of age, and several of his daugh- 

 ters were married. His home was in Victoria. 



Next morning was cloudy and windy, snowy and 

 cold, dreary December weather in August, and I 

 gladly ran out to see what I might learn. A gray 

 ragged-edged cloud capped the top of the divide, its 

 snowy fringes drawn out by the wind. The flowers, 

 though most of them were buried or partly so, were 

 to some extent recognizable, the bluebells bent over, 

 shining like eyes through the snow, and the gentians, 

 too, with their corollas twisted shut; cassiope I could 

 recognize under any disguise; and two species of 

 dwarf willow with their seeds already ripe, one with 

 comparatively small leaves, were growing in mere 

 cracks and crevices of rock-ledges where the dry 

 snow could not lie. Snowbirds and ptarmigan were 

 flying briskly in the cold wind, and on the edge of a 

 grove I saw a spruce from which a bear had stripped 

 large sections of bark for food. 



About nine o'clock the clouds lifted and I enjoyed 

 another wide view from the summit of the ridge of 

 the vast grassy fountain region with smooth rolling 

 features. A few patches of forest broke the monotony 

 of color, and the many lakes, one of them about five 

 miles long, were glowing like windows. Only the 

 highest ridges were whitened with snow, while rifts in 



[83 ] 



