20 JOHN BURROUGHS 



of from one to two thousand feet. It is along these in- 

 land ocean highways, through tortuous narrows, up smooth 

 placid inlets, across broad island-studded gulfs and bays, 

 with now and then the mighty throb of the Pacific felt for 

 an hour or two through some open door in the wall of 

 islands, that our course lies. 



For two days Vancouver Island is on our left with 

 hardly a break in its dark spruce forests, covering moun- 

 tain and vale. On our right is British Columbia, presenting 



the same endless spruce 

 forests, with peaks of the 

 Coast Range, eight or ten 

 thousand feet high, in 

 the background, and only 

 an occasional sign of hu- 

 SSSJt^ 1 - man 1^ on shore. I re- 



inside passage.^ cal1 a lone farmhouse in a 



stumpy clearing that drew 

 our eyes. How remote and secluded it looked. The dark 

 forests with a fringe of dead trees where the pioneer's fire 

 had raged, encompassed it about. The grass and grain 

 looked green among the stumps, and near the house, 

 which was a well-built, painted structure, we could see 

 fruit trees and a garden. Not much wild life about us; 

 now and then a duck or two, an occasional bald eagle, a 

 small flock of phalaropes, which the sailors call ' sea 

 geese ' as they sit on the water like miniature geese. 



Our first dangerous passage is Seymour Narrows, which 

 we strike at the right stage of the tide. Cautiously the 

 ship feels her way through the contorted currents that 

 surge above the sunken rocks. Fog clouds cling to the 

 white peaks that rise above the dark forests about us and 

 partly veil them. At times we are so near them that with 

 a glass one can see where little snow balls have detached 

 themselves and made straight lines down the smooth 



