There was no Cariboo Road then. There was only the narrow footpath of the trapper and the fisherman close down to the water; and when the rocks broke off in sheer precipice, an unsteady bridge of poles and willows spanned the abyss. A 'Jacob's ladder' a hundred feet above a roaring whirlpool without {20} handhold on either side was one thing for the Indian moccasin and quite another thing for the miner's hobnailed boot. The men used to strip at these places and attempt the rock walls barefoot; or else they cached their canoe in a tree, or hid it under moss, lashed what provisions they could to a dog's back, and, with a pack strapped to their own back, proceeded along the bank on foot. The trapper carries his pack with a strap round his forehead. The miner ropes his round under his shoulders. He wants hands and neck free for climbing. Usually the prospectors would appoint a rendezvous. There, provisions would be slung in the trees above the reach of marauding beasts, and the party would disperse at daybreak, each to search in a different direction, blazing trees as he went ahead so that he could find the way back at night to the camp. Distress or a find was to be signalled by a gunshot or by heliograph of sunlight on a pocket mirror; but many a man strayed beyond rescue of signal and never returned to his waiting 'pardners.' Some were caught in snowslides, only to be dug out years later. Many signs guided the experienced prospector. Streams clear as crystal came, he knew, from upper snows. Those swollen at midday {21} came from near-by snowfields. Streams milky or blue or peacock green came from glaciers--ice grinding over rock. Heavy mists often added to the dangers. I stood at the level of eight thousand feet in this region once with one of the oldest prospectors of the canyon. He had been a great hunter in his day. A cloud came through a defile of the peaks heavy as a blanket. Though we were on a well-cut bridle-trail, he bade us pause, as one side of the trail had a sheer drop of four thousand feet in places. 'Before there were any trails, how did you make your way here to hunt the mountain goat when this kind of fog caught you?' I asked. 'Threw chips of stone ahead and listened,' he answered, 'and let me tell you that only the greenest kind of tenderfoot ever takes risks on a precipice.'