Incidents are many.  The first morning after we turned back the little tug, the Kid and I left the slow trackers behind and were glad to stretch ourselves in a long forenoon’s tramp along the sandy beach.  The mosquitoes were practically gone and for the first time all summer one could really enjoy the woods, where a tang of autumn in the air made every breath a tonic draught.  Exulting in the fact that we were alive, we turned a sharp corner and came suddenly face to face with a grey wolf, loping along at a swinging pace at the water’s edge, muzzle close to the ground!  To make the story worth telling, one should have something to say of “yawning jaws” and “bloodshot eyes” and “haunches trembling for a spring.”  But this grey wolf simply refused to play that part.  He took one look at us, evidently didn’t approve, and turned up from his tracks quietly into the cottonwoods above.  As we on our side had brought neither gun nor camera from the Mee-wah-sin, we are unable to punctuate the story by either pelt or picture. Sic transit lupus!

A week out from Chipewyan, where the Swan River makes into the Peace, we came one glorious afternoon upon a camp of Crees, the family of the Se-weep-i-gons.  They had just killed two bears.  We bought the skins and a large portion of meat from them, and Mrs. Se-weep-i-gon very kindly added to the feast of fat things some high-bush cranberries “in a present.”  As an excuse for listening to their soft voices, before we left the camp we asked the name of every member of the little group, scratching the list down on a piece of birchbark.  The Crees evidently considered this an official ceremony, for after we had paid our score and shaken hands with everybody from Grandpa to the latest baby and were well out in mid-stream, Mrs. Se-weep-i-gon came running down to the bank to call us back.  Rowing to the shore we found that she had remembered one more child whose name she wanted to add to the list.  She assured us that this one too had a little brass cross hanging round his neck, so we will be sure to know him if we meet him in the woods.

We lived for the next two days on bear-meat and cranberries.

[Illustration:  Evening on the Peace]

So one wonderful day follows another as our little boat is towed first against one bank then another of this majestic stream.  The forest growth is a marvel.  We measure one morning three of the spruce trees to which our tent-ropes are tied, and get for base measurement six feet eight inches, five feet two inches, and five feet respectively.  The trees averaged ninety feet in height and would give perhaps one thousand feet to each tree.  The autumn tints on the willows and alders of the high river-banks are indescribably beautiful.  We pass through one hundred miles of a veritable field of the cloth of gold.  We look out of our tent-flaps at night on this living glory, and wake up to it again with each new morning sun.