ent, as was often his custom,
smiling out of his frank blue eyes at his companions.

"What do you think about it, Rob?" asked Jesse.

"I agree with you, Jess," replied Rob. "I've always wanted to get into
this part of the Rocky Mountains. The Yellowhead Pass, over yonder, is
the place I've always wanted to see. It's an old pass across the
Rockies, but no one seems to know much about it."

"Besides," went on Jesse, "we ought to get plenty of game and good
fishing."

"Surely we will, for this is a country that no one visits, although we
are now on the trail of the old fur-traders who came here often enough
more than a hundred years ago. On the high ridges in here you can see
the old trail cut down a foot deep. And it was made in part by the
feet of men, more than a hundred years ago."

"Besides," added John, "we can see where the engineers have gone ahead
of us."

"Yes," said Rob, "they've pretty much followed the trail of the old
fur-traders."

"Didn't they come by water a good way up here?" asked John.

Rob answered by pulling out of his pocket a long piece of heavy paper,
a map which they three had worked over many days, laying out for
themselves in advance the best they knew how the route which they were
to follow and the distances between the main points of interest. "Now,
look here," said he, "and you'll see that for once we are at a place
where the old voyageurs had to leave their boats and take to the land.
We're going to cross the Rockies at the head of the Athabasca River,
but you see it runs away northeast from its source at first, at least
one hundred miles north of Edmonton. That used to be called Fort
Augustus in the old days, and the voyageurs went all the way up there
from Montreal by canoe. Sometimes they followed the Saskatchewan from
there. That brought them into the Rockies away south of here. They
went over the Kootenai Plains there, and over the Howse Pass, which
you know is between here and Banff."

"I know," said Jesse, eagerly. "Uncle Dick told us they used to go
down the Blaeberry Creek to the Columbia River."

"Exactly; and there was a way they could go near the Wood River to the
Columbia River. For instance, here on the map is a place near the head
of the Big Bend of the Columbia. That's the old Boat Encampment, of
which the old histories tell so much."

"You don't suppose we'll ever get there?" said John, doubtfully. "It
looks a long ways off from here."

"Of course we will," s