o can draw a map of
the river from here to Revelstoke as accurately as any professional
map-maker, and name every stream and tell every rapid all the way
down. In short, we furnish the grub and Leo furnishes the experience."

"We'll not furnish grub much longer," said Moise. "The flour she's
getting mighty low, and not much pork now, and the tea she's 'bout
gone."

"Well, what could you expect?" said Uncle Dick. "With three Injuns and
an engineer to eat, we ought to have an extra boat to carry the
grub--not to mention John, here, who is hungry all the time. We may
have to eat our moccasins yet, young men."

"Leo says we can't get any fish yet," said John, "and we're not to
stop for any more bear meat, even if we could eat it. We're not apt to
get any grub right along the river either. I don't see how any one can
hunt in this awful forest. It's always cold and dark, and there
doesn't seem to be anything to eat there. Rob and I measured some
trees by stretching out our arms, and we figured that they were thirty
feet or more around, some of them. And one log we walked which paced
over three hundred feet--it was so thick we couldn't crawl over it at
all. That's no sort of place to hunt."

"No, not for anything unless it was a porcupine," said Uncle Dick. "We
may have to come to that. But even with a little grub we can last for
a hundred miles or so, can't we? Can't we make forty or fifty miles a
day, Leo?"

Leo laughed and shook his head. "Some day not make more than ten or
twelve mile," said he.

"Well, I know that there's a good deal of slack water for quite a way
below here. At least, I have heard that that is the case. So for a
time, if we don't meet bad head-winds, we can put a good deal of this
country back of us."

"Could any one walk along these banks and get out to the settlements
at all if he were left alone in here?" inquired Rob.

"One can do a great deal if he has to," said Uncle Dick. "But I hope
none of us will ever have to try to make the railroad on foot from
here. There isn't any trail, and very often the banks are sheer rock
faces running into the river. Get behind such a hill, and you're on
another slope, and the first thing you know you're clear away from the
river and all tangled up. But, still, men have come up here one way
or another. On the other side, there used to be a sort of pack-horse
trail from Revelstoke up to the Selkirk gold-mines. There are two or
three creeks which are still wo