As we floated down the river the eye was continually held by tall and prominent spruce trees that had been cut into peculiar forms as below. These were known as "lob-sticks," or "lop-sticks," and are usually the monuments of some distinguished visitor in the country or records of some heroic achievement. Thus, one would be pointed out as Commissioner Wrigley's lob-stick, another as John MacDonald's the time he saved the scow. The inauguration of a lob-stick is quite a ceremony. Some person in camp has impressed all with his importance or other claim to notice. The men, having talked it over, announce that they have decided on giving him a lob-stick. "Will he make choice of some prominent tree in view?" The visitor usually selects one back from the water's edge, often on some far hilltop, the more prominent the better; then an active young fellow is sent up with an axe to trim the tree. The more embellishment the higher the honor. On the trunk they then inscribe the name of the stranger, and he is supposed to give each of the men a plug of tobacco and a drink of whiskey. Thus they celebrate the man and his monument, and ever afterwards it is pointed out as "So-and-so's lob-stick." It was two months before my men judged that I was entitled to a lob-stick. We were then on Great Slave Lake where the timber was small, but the best they could get on a small island was chosen and trimmed into a monument. They were disappointed however, to find that I would by no means give whiskey to natives, and my treat had to take a wholly different form. Grand Rapids, with its multiplicity of perfectly round pot-hole boulders, was passed in four days, and then, again in company with the boats, we entered the real canyon of the river. Down Athabaska's boiling flood Of seething, leaping, coiling mud. CHAPTER III HUMAN NATURE ON THE RIVER