cloud line, where seas of tossing mist blotted out earth, and from cloud line to the Alpine valleys with larch-grown meadows and painters’ flowers knee deep, all the colors of the rainbow. Beside a rill trickling from the ice fields pause would be made for a meal. Then came tree line, the spruce and hemlock forests--gigantic trees, branches interlaced, festooned by a mist-like moss that hung from tree to tree in loops, with the windfall of untold centuries piled criss-cross below higher than a house. The men grumbled. They had not bargained on this kind of voyaging. Once down on the west side of the Great Divide, there were the Forks. MacKenzie’s instincts told him the north branch looked the better way, but the old guide had said only the south branch would lead to the Great River beyond the mountains, and they turned up Parsnip River through a marsh of beaver meadows, which MacKenzie noted for future trade. [Illustration: From a photograph by Mathers. The Ramparts of MacKenzie River.] It was now the 3rd of June. MacKenzie ascended a mountain to look along the forward path. When he came down with McKay and the Indian Cancre, no canoe was to be found. MacKenzie sent broken branches drifting down stream as a signal and fired gunshot after gunshot, but no answer! Had the men deserted with boat and provisions? Genuinely alarmed, MacKenzie ordered McKay and Cancre back down the Parsnip, while he went on up stream. Whichever found the canoe was to fire a gun. For a day without food and in drenching rains, the three tore through the underbrush shouting, seeking, despairing till strength was exhausted and moccasins worn to tatters. Barefoot and soaked, MacKenzie was just lying down for the night when a crashing echo told him McKay had found the deserters. They had waited till he had disappeared up the mountain, then headed the canoe north and drifted down stream. The Indians were openly panic-stricken and wanted to build a raft to float home. The French voyageurs pretended they had been delayed mending the canoe. MacKenzie took no outward notice of the treachery, but henceforth never let the crew out of his own or McKay’s sight.