The Grayling at Caribou Crossing 43 



There "lonely sunsets flare forlorn 

 Down valleys dreadly desolate"; 



There "lordly mountains soar in scorn 

 As still as death, as stern as fate." 



Robert IV. Service. 



Down the long rock-ridges between the lakes goes the trail, 

 on and on through reindeer moss and heather, all the way 

 above timber line, down to Lake Linderman — long and 

 narrow, like a rock-bound ditch of the giants — down the 

 long shore of gusty Lake Bennett, through scrub and swamp, 

 birch and bramble. No wonder so many took to the ice, 

 rotten though it be in the early summer. No wonder so 

 many tried to make rafts of logs, when the wind blew in the 

 right direction. On and on down the straight shore of Lake 

 Bennett, two days' march it may be, then you come to 

 Caribou Crossing. The Caribou is the native reindeer, and 

 here in the interval between Lake Bennett and Lake Tagish, 

 with Lake Marsh beyond, is the only place for five hundred 

 miles where a herd of caribou can cross the Yukon River. 

 Let us cross it quickly, too, for the water is very cold and 

 deeper than a man or caribou likes to wade. Here at Cari- 

 bou Crossing lived and worked for a generation Father 

 Bompas of blessed memory, Bishop of the Yukon. And 

 here still lives his charming wife, born to the soft skies of 

 England and the gentle ways of English society, but a power 

 for good in the wilderness to which she has given her life. 

 It seems to me that if the Church of England were all wise, 

 it would some time send His Grace the Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury to exchange places with the Bishop of Yukon for a 

 year. The bishop of the boundless hills would learn some- 

 thing no doubt in fair hand-painted Kent, but think what 

 the Archbishop of Canterbury would learn were the seat of 

 his diocese for a year at Caribou Crossing ! 



From Caribou Crossing the river curves through the fir 

 woods to the right, for we are below timber-line again. 

 Then it swerves forward through a couple of lakes into a 



