JOHN COLTER — FREE TRAPPER 249 



got there we found the lake dry. However, we dug a pit which 

 produced a kind of stinking liquid which we all drank. It was 

 salt and bitter, caused an inflammation of the mouth, left a dis- 

 agreeable roughness of the throat, and seemed to increase our 

 thirst. . . . We passed the night under great uneasiness. Next 

 day we continued our journey, but not a drop of water was to be 

 found, . . . and our distress became insupportable. . . . All at 

 once our horses became so unruly that we could not manage them. 

 We observed that they showed an inclination towards a hill which 

 was close by. It struck me that they might have scented water. 

 ... I ascended to the top, where, to my great joy, I discovered a 

 small pool. . . . My horse plunged in before I could prevent 

 him, . . . and all the horses drank to excess." 



"The plains across" — which was a western expression mean- 

 ing the end of that part of the trip — there rose on the west rolling 

 foothills and dark peaked profiles against the sky scarcely to be 

 distinguished from gray cloud banks. These were the mountains ; 

 and the real hazards of free trapping began. No use to follow 

 the easiest passes to the most frequented valleys. The fur com- 

 pany brigades marched through these, sweeping up game like a 

 forest fire ; so the free trappers sought out the hidden, inaccessible 

 valleys, going where neither pack horse nor canot a bee d'e sturgeon 

 could follow. How did they do it ? Very much the way Simon 

 Fraser's hunters crawled down the river-course named after him. 

 "Our shoes," said one trapper, "did not last a single day." 



"We had to plunge our daggers into the ground, . . . other- 

 wise we would slide into the river," wrote Fraser. "We cut steps 

 into the declivity, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, with 

 which some of the men ascended in order to haul it up. . . . Our 

 lives hung, as it were, upon a thread, as the failure of the line or 

 the false step of the man might have hurled us into eternity. . . . 

 We had to pass where no human being should venture. . . . Steps 

 were formed like a ladder on the shrouds of a ship, by poles hanging 



