fall; and in
places they could advance only by ascending the stream bed. This was
risky work on a fractious pony, and some of the riders preferred wading
to riding. At noon on the 22nd of August the riders crossed a small
stream and set up their tents on the border of a sedgy lake. Then {70}
somebody noticed that the lake emptied west, not east; and a wild
halloo split the welkin. They had crossed the Divide. They were on
the headwaters of the Fraser, where a man could stand astride the
stream; and the Fraser led to the Cariboo gold-diggings. They still
had four hundred miles to travel. Their boots were in shreds and their
clothes in tatters; but what were four hundred miles to men who had
tramped almost three thousand?

But their progress had been so slow that the provisions were running
short. The first snow of the mountains falls in September, and it was
already near the end of August. There was not a moment to lose in
resting. What had been a lure of hope now became a goad of
desperation. So it is with all life's highest emprises. We plunge in
led by hope. We plunge on spurred by fate. When the reward is won,
only God and our own souls know that, even if we would, we could not
have done otherwise than go on.

Those travellers who had insisted on bringing oxen had now to kill them
for meat. Chipmunks were shot for food. So were many worn-out horses.
Hides were used to resole boots and make mitts. Not far from Moose
Lake the last bag of pemmican was eaten. {71} Perhaps it was a good
thing at this time that the band of Overlanders began to spread out and
scatter along the trail; for hungry men in large groups are a tragic
danger to themselves. Those of the advance-party were now some ten
days ahead of their companions in the rear. Mrs MacNaughton, whose
husband was with the rear party, of which we shall hear more anon,
relates the story of a young fellow so ravenous that he fried the
deer-thong he had bought for a tump-line back at one of the company's
forts. Fortunately, somewhere west of Moose Lake, the travellers came
on a band of Shuswap Indians who traded for matches and powder enough
salmon and cranberry cakes to stave off actual famine.

Trees with chipped bark pointed the way down the Fraser. For three
days the party followed the little stream that had come out of the lake
hardly wider than the span of a man's stride. With each mile its
waters swelled and grew wilder. On the third day