as a joyous rush for the table when this good news was
announced. For the first time in nearly three months we were able to
sit down to a fairly good meal with clean nice tableware, with pie
and pudding to end the meal. It seemed as though we had reached
civilization. The boat was handsomely built, and quite new and
capacious, too, for it held our horses without serious crowding. I
was especially anxious about Ladrone, but was able to get him into a
very nice place away from the engines and in no danger of being
kicked by a vicious mule.

We drifted down the river past Telegraph Creek without stopping, and
late at night laid by at Glenora and unloaded in the crisp, cool
dusk. As we came off the boat with our horses we were met by a crowd
of cynical loafers who called to us out of the dark, "What in hell
you fellows think you're doing?" We were regarded as wildly insane
for having come over so long and tedious a route.

We erected our tents, and went into camp beside our horses on the
bank near the dock. It was too late to move farther that night. We
fed our beasts upon hay at five cents a pound,--poor hay at
that,--and they were forced to stand exposed to the searching river
wind.

As for ourselves, we were filled with dismay by the hopeless dulness
of the town. Instead of being the hustling, rushing gold camp we had
expected to find, it came to light as a little town of tents and
shanties, filled with men who had practically given up the Teslin
Lake Route as a bad job. The government trail was incomplete, the
wagon road only built halfway, and the railroad--of which we had
heard so much talk--had been abandoned altogether.

As I slipped the saddle and bridle from Ladrone next day and turned
him out upon the river bottom for a two weeks' rest, my heart was
very light. The long trail was over. No more mud, rocks, stumps, and
roots for Ladrone. Away the other poor animals streamed down the
trail, many of them lame, all of them poor and weak, and some of them
still crazed by the poisonous plants of the cold green mountains
through which they had passed.

This ended the worst of the toil, the torment of the trail. It had no
dangers, but it abounded in worriments and disappointments. As I look
back upon it now I suffer, because I see my horses standing
ankle-deep in water on barren marshes or crowding round the fire
chilled and weak, in endless rain. If our faces looked haggard and
worn, it was because of the never en