; crossed the river on
an ice bridge at great risk, and horses and men scrambled up 1,000 feet
to the top of the plateau. There we mounted our steeds, and for two days
followed the trail through a country the beauty of which it is not easy
to exaggerate, and reached Half-way River, which we forded at infinite
risk on a roughly constructed raft, the horses being compelled to swim
the torrent.

Crossing the Peace River at the fort known as Hudson's Hope in a frail
canoe, I narrowly escaped drowning by the craft upsetting, losing gun
and revolver, although, wonderful to relate, the gun was recovered next
day by my half-breed attendant, who dredged it with a line and
fish-hook! From Hudson's Hope we made the portage of ten miles which
avoids the great canyon of the Peace River at the farther end of which
the river becomes navigable for canoes; and there we waited till April
29, when the ice in the upper part of the river broke up.

I took the opportunity of the delay to explore the canyon, which at this
point is 900 feet deep. Advancing cautiously to the smooth edge of the
chasm, I seized hold of a spruce-tree and looked down. Below lay one of
those grim glimpses which the earth holds hidden, save from the eagle
and the mid-day sun. Caught in a dark prison of stupendous cliffs,
hollowed beneath so that the topmost ledge literally hung over the
boiling abyss of water, the river foamed and lashed against rock and
precipice. The rocks at the base held the record of its wrath in great
trunks of trees, and blocks of ice lying piled and smashed in shapeless
ruin. It is difficult to imagine by what process the mighty river had
cloven asunder this wilderness of rock--giving us the singular
spectacle, after it had cleared the canyon, of a wide, deep, tranquil
stream flowing through the principal mountain range of the American
continent.

On May Day we started, a company of four--Little Jacques (a French miner
and trapper) as captain of the boat, another miner, my Scottish
half-breed servant, Kalder, myself, and Cerf-Vola--to pole and paddle
up-stream, fighting the battle with the current. Many a near shave we
had with the ice-floes and ice-jams. A week afterwards we emerged from
the pass to the open country, and before us lay the central mountain
system of north British Columbia, the highest snowcapped peak of which I
named Mount Garnet Wolseley, and there we camped. A mile from camp a
moose emerged from the forest; I took bead o