278 THE WILDERNESS OF THE UPPER YUKON 



We pitched our tent near his cabin and made up the 

 packs which would cause our shoulders to ache the next 

 day. In the afternoon I took a walk through the woods 

 and circled around to the shore of a long slough, half a 

 mile below the cabin, which I named Rose Slough. The 

 shore was hard clay and contained the tracks of a moose 

 which looked so fresh that I concluded they had been 

 made the night before. But Rose told me that they had 

 been there for eighteen days which only goes to show 

 how easily one can be deceived as to the age of the tracks 

 of hoofed animals. 



The day before, Rose had constructed a set-gun two 

 miles below on the river, for a bear, and that evening 

 asked Jefferies' advice as to his method of constructing 

 it. "Absolutely wrong!'* was Jefferies* verdict. "Im- 

 possible for the bear to set it off." My own judgment 

 seconded his opinion. Then it was explained how a set- 

 gun should be arranged, and Rose decided to go down 

 river the next morning and reconstruct it according to 

 expert advice. 



September 13. As he left, we burdened our shoulders 

 with the packs and struggled upward through the brushy 

 woods. Behind a succession of benches and terraced 

 ridges the range of mountains rises, rugged and bold, to a 

 crest culminating in peaks from five thousand eight hun- 

 dred feet to six thousand two hundred feet in height. I 

 named this range the Rose Mountains, as a tribute to the 

 old man, who will probably spend his last days beneath 

 them on the banks of the Pelly. For five hours we climbed 

 up through a deep draw, and emerged at timber-line on 



