Gilbert was busy getting wood and preparing the breakfast.  Soon I heard him at the door of the men’s tent saying, “All aboard.”

“Any mosquitoes this morning, Gilbert?”

“Not a one.  Too cold.  By Garge, but it’s cold this morning!  I went down to the lake and tried to wash, but I had to l’ave off.  It was too cold.”

Shortly I heard them at the fire.  The click of the cups told me that they were taking a little tea and bannock before starting to carry.  Then all was quiet, and one load had gone forward to the next lake, nearly a half mile ahead.  When all but the camp stuff had been taken forward, we had breakfast, and by 7 A.M. we were in the canoes.

Our course led us south through two little lakes, with a portage between, for something more than two miles.  Here the second lake bent away to the southeast, and we landed on our right at the foot of a low moss-covered ridge.  Beyond this we hoped to see the river.  As we climbed, new heights appeared before us, and it proved to be about three-quarters of a mile to the top, from which the ridge dropped abruptly on the west, and at its foot was a long, narrow lake.  At first I thought it was the river, but, when it became clear that it was not, my heart sank a little.  Had we been wrong after all?  Had the river bent away to the north instead of the south as we supposed?

Job and Gilbert outstripped us in the climb, and now we saw them disappearing across a valley on our left in the direction of a high hill farther south, and we followed them.  As before, new heights kept appearing as we went up, and when the real summit came in view we could see Job and Gilbert sitting on its smooth and rounded top looking away westward.  How I wondered what they had found.  When we came up with them there, to the west, around the south end of the opposite ridge, we could see the river flowing dark and deep as before.  Above, to the southwest, were two heavy falls, and at the head of the upper and larger one the river widened.  There were several islands, and it looked as if we might be coming to the expansions near the upper part of the river.  One lake beside that at the foot of the mountain would make the portage route an easy and good one.

The view from the mountain top was magnificent in all directions.  To the north the hills lay east and west in low, regular ridges, well covered with green woods; and thirty miles away, on a few of the highest of them, were great patches of snow lying.  East and west and south were the more irregular hills, and everywhere among them were the lakes.  It was very fine; but to my great regret I had left my kodaks in the canoe.

The green woods interested Gilbert, who was looking for new trapping grounds for himself and Donald Blake.  We had come more than fifty miles from Seal Lake, the limit of his present trapping grounds, and he quite seriously considered the question of extending his path up to those hills the following winter.