“Looks good to me,” said Bruce.

He sat down as he spoke, with his back to a rock, and over his knee he levelled a long brass telescope.  From his saddle Langdon unslung a binocular glass imported from Paris.  The telescope was a relic of the Civil War.  Together, their shoulders touching as they steadied themselves against the rock, they studied the rolling slopes and the green sides of the mountains ahead of them.

They were in the Big Game country, and what Langdon called the Unknown.  So far as he and Bruce Otto could discover, no other white man had ever preceded them.  It was a country shut in by tremendous ranges, through which it had taken them twenty days of sweating toil to make a hundred miles.

That afternoon they had crossed the summit of the Great Divide that split the skies north and south, and through their glasses they were looking now upon the first green slopes and wonderful peaks of the Firepan Mountains.  To the northward—­and they had been travelling north—­was the Skeena River; on the west and south were the Babine range and waterways; eastward, over the Divide, was the Driftwood, and still farther eastward the Ominica range and the tributaries of the Finley.  They had started from civilization on the tenth day of May and this was the thirtieth of June.

As Langdon looked through his glasses he believed that at last they had reached the bourne of their desires.  For nearly two months they had worked to get beyond the trails of men, and they had succeeded.  There were no hunters here.  There were no prospectors.  The valley ahead of them was filled with golden promise, and as he sought out the first of its mystery and its wonder his heart was filled with the deep and satisfying joy which only men like Langdon can fully understand.  To his friend and comrade, Bruce Otto, with whom he had gone five times into the North country, all mountains and all valleys were very much alike; he was born among them, he had lived among them all his life, and he would probably die among them.

It was Bruce who gave him a sudden sharp nudge with his elbow.

“I see the heads of three caribou crossing a dip about a mile and a half up the valley,” he said, without taking his eyes from the telescope.

“And I see a Nanny and her kid on the black shale of that first mountain to the right,” replied Langdon.  “And, by George, there’s a Sky Pilot looking down on her from a crag a thousand feet above the shale!  He’s got a beard a foot long.  Bruce, I’ll bet we’ve struck a regular Garden of Eden!”

“Looks it,” vouchsafed Bruce, coiling up his long legs to get a better rest for his telescope.  “If this ain’t a sheep an’ bear country, I’ve made the worst guess I ever made in my life.”

For five minutes they looked, without a word passing between them.  Behind them their horses were nibbling hungrily in the thick, rich grass.  The sound of the many waters in the mountains droned in their ears, and the valley seemed sleeping in a sea of sunshine.  Langdon could think of nothing more comparable than that—­slumber.  The valley was like a great, comfortable, happy cat, and the sounds they heard, all commingling in that pleasing drone, was its drowsy purring.  He was focussing his glass a little more closely on the goat standing watchfully on its crag, when Otto spoke again.