ON THE KOOTENAY 177 



passed, and hardly an hour of daylight, but some 

 one could be seen holding out a crust at which a 

 chipmunk was gnawing away. They lost all fear 

 and would crawl over the knees and sometimes 

 up on the shoulders in search of rations. They 

 would allow us to stroke their heads and feel of 

 the cheek-pouches in which they stored away food, 

 without raising the slightest objections. When we 

 left they had come to seem like old friends. They 

 deserved better treatment at our hands than was 

 accorded them, and the writer's heart is filled with 

 self-reproach as he recalls the dastardly act with 

 which we closed our relations with these little 

 friends. We gave them Jimmie's pie! (Jimmie 

 was the Chinese cook.) Near the close of our 

 stay he manufactured the most wonderful and in 

 every way impossible pie ever achieved by human 

 ingenuity. One after another, every member of 

 the party attacked that combination, only to suffer 

 defeat. It was still intact when the time came to 

 leave. It would have had abiding interest as a 

 specimen, but there was danger that it might be 

 broken in transit, so we left it for those confiding 

 chipmunks. One thing is sure, if living, they must 

 be woefully discouraged. 



Jimmie was a character. What he did not know 

 about the English language was equalled only by 

 his abysmal ignorance of cooking. Asked to bring 

 some breakfast-food for the Junior, he disappeared 

 kitchenward, and when, after a long absence, one 



