dfall and throwing logs into sloughs. Horses
sank to their withers in seemingly bottomless muskegs,[2] so that packs
had to be cut off and the unlucky bronchos pulled out by all hands
straining on a rope.

Somewhere between the rivers Pembina and M'Leod the travellers were
amazed to see what the wise ones in the party thought a volcano--a
continuous and self-fed fire burning on the crown of a hill. Science
of a later {66} day pronounced this a gas well burning above some
subterranean coal seam.

At length the Overlanders were ascending the banks of the M'Leod, whose
torrential current warned them of rising ground. Three times in one
day windfall and swamp forced the party to ford the stream for passage
on the opposite side. The oxen swam and the ox-carts floated and the
packs came up the bank dripping. For eleven days in August every soul
of the company, including Mrs Shubert's babies, travelled wet to the
skin. At night great log fires were kindled and the Overlanders sat
round trying to dry themselves out. Then the trail lifted to the
foothills. And on the evening of the 15th of August there pierced
through the clouds the snowy, shining, serrated peaks of the Rockies.

[Illustration: Upper M'Leod River. From a photograph.]

A cheer broke from the ragged band. Just beyond the shining mountains
lay--Fortune. What cared these argonauts, who had tramped across the
width of the continent, that the lofty mountains raised a sheer wall
between them and their treasure? Cheer on cheer rang from the
encampment. Men with clothes in tatters pitched caps in air, proud
that they had proved themselves kings of their own fate. It is,
perhaps, well that we have to climb our {67} mountains step by step;
else would many turn back. But there were no faint-hearts in the camp
that night. Even the Irishwoman's two little children came out and
gazed at what they could not understand.

The party now crossed a ravine to the main stream of the Athabaska. It
was necessary to camp here for a week. A huge raft was built of pine
saplings bound together by withes. To the stern of this was attached a
tree, the branch end dipping in the water, as a sweep and rudder to
keep the craft to its course. On this the Overlanders were ferried
across the Athabaska. And so they entered the Yellowhead Pass.

[1] See the map in _The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay_ in this
Series.

[2] Perhaps the distinction should be made her