ne, so that we ate, drank and slept under our
veils.

In that rankly growing wilderness we saw no sign of life, not even a
rabbit. It was all desolate and God-forsaken. By nightfall our packs
seemed very heavy, our limbs very tired. Three days, four days, five
days passed. The creek was attenuated and hesitating, so we left it and
struck off over the mountains. Soon we climbed to where the timber
growth was less obstructive. The hillside was steep, almost vertical in
places, and was covered with a strange, deep growth of moss. Down in it
we sank, in places to our knees, and beneath it we could feel the points
of sharp boulders. As we climbed we plunged our hands deep into the cool
cushion of the moss, and half dragged ourselves upward. It was like an
Oriental rug covering the stony ribs of the hill, a rug of bizarre
colouring, strangely patterned in crimson and amber, in emerald and
ivory. Birch-trees of slim, silvery beauty arose in it, and aided us as
we climbed.

So we came at last, after a weary journey, to a bleak, boulder-studded
plateau. It was above timber-line, and carpeted with moss of great depth
and gaudy hue. Suddenly we saw two vast pillars of stone upstanding on
the aching barren. I think they must have been two hundred feet high,
and, like monstrous sentinels in their lonely isolation, they
overlooked that vast tundra. They startled us. We wondered by what
strange freak of nature they were stationed there.

Then we dropped down into a vast, hush-filled valley, a valley that
looked as if it had been undisturbed since the beginning of time. Like a
spirit-haunted place it was, so strange and still. It was loneliness
made visible. It was stillness written in wood and stone. I would have
been afraid to enter it alone, and even as we sank in its death-haunted
dusk I shuddered with a horror of the place.

The Indians feared and shunned this valley. They said, of old, strange
things had happened there; it had been full of noise and fire and steam;
the earth had opened up, belching forth great dragons that destroyed the
people. And indeed it was all like the vast crater of an extinct
volcano, for hot springs bubbled forth and a grey ash cropped up through
the shallow soil.

There was no game in the valley. In its centre was a solitary lake,
black and bottomless, and haunted by a giant white water-snake,
sluggish, blind and very old. Stray prospectors swore they had seen it,
just at dusk, and its sightless,