For those who have the right sort of taste, existence such as the Humes's must seem quite Utopian. Their garden and their rifles, supplemented by importations from the store "down below," feed them; their meadows supply hay for their stock; fuel of course is everywhere, and a little captivated stream brought to the house in a hand-hewed flume supplies an icy approximation of "running water." Hemming in the meadowland oasis are giant hills, their neighboring flanks hidden by mighty timber, their summits gray and brown beneath mantles of brush and berry, closing in the valley so resolutely that its hours of sunlight are almost as meager as in the cavernous fjord lands of Norway. After Humes's the trail wound through abysmal forest depths, skirting fir and pine and cedar of unbelievable girth, or making irksome detours where some fallen monarch blocked the way. Needles and ferns there were underfoot, a drapery of moss overhead, and everywhere a penetrating silence. The most _silent_ woods imaginable are those of the wet coast country, where the trees are enormous and set close together, thickets and ferns clutter the ground beneath them, and moss clings to the lower limbs; sunlight, if not a total stranger, at best is but an itinerant acquaintance. When the whim seized it the fickle trail deserted one bank of the Elwha for the other, one of us leading Billy across while his companion, in vain effort to keep dry-shod, essayed perilous crossings on logs, often as not resulting in disaster. Toward evening of the fourth day we dragged Billy up a final hill. Except for scattered and weather-beaten blazes, all vestiges of the trail had vanished, and, in fact, Grant Humes had told us that no one had been that way for two years, a fact testified by fallen trees and the unrepaired destruction of spring freshets. Hidden at the base of giant Douglas firs was all that remained of the Elwha, now scarcely more than a brook, its waters opaquely white with the silt of glaciers close at hand. Suddenly we emerged upon a hillock and below us lay Elwha Basin, where the river has its birth. A cup, carpeted with grass, walled with crags; an amphitheater studded with trees, hemmed in by banks of snow, and roofed by blue sky--such is the basin of the Elwha. At the far end is a wall of rock, over which tumbles the jolly little infant river in a silvery cascade, and beyond is a snow bank jutting into the greenery of an upper meadow. From a dark cave at the glacial snowbank's base the river seemed to have its start, though beyond the snow, from still loftier cliffs, fluttered another ribbon of water coming from unseen heights beyond. Westerly a few jagged snow peaks peered down upon us over the nearer cliffs, and great shadows reached across the pleasant valley to the very base of our little hill of vantage.