Smith called again, the cayuse turned slightly, and whether he leaped deliberately or his feet slipped on the slippery stones, forcing him to leap, we could not say, but he plunged suddenly into the stream, uttering a cry that echoed up the canon and over the river like the cry of a lost soul. The cruel current caught him, lifted him, and plunged him over the drop, and he was lost instantly in the froth and foam of the falls. Far down, at a bend of the Athabasca, something white could be seen drifting towards the shore. That night Smith the Silent made an entry in his little red book marked "Grand Trunk Pacific," and tented under the stars. THE CURE'S CHRISTMAS GIFT "A country that is bad or good, Precisely as your claim pans out; A land that's much misunderstood, Misjudged, maligned and lied about." When the pathfinders for the New National Highway pushed open the side door and peeped through to the Pacific they not only discovered a short cut to Yokohama, but opened to the world a new country, revealing the last remnant of the Last West. Edmonton is the outfiling point, of course, but Little Slave Lake is the real gateway to the wilderness. Here we were to make our first stop (we were merely exploring), and from this point our first portage was to the Peace River, at Chinook, where we would get into touch once more with the Hudson's Bay Company. Jim Cromwell, the free trader who was in command of Little Slave, made us welcome, introducing us _ensemble_ to his friend, a former H.B. factor, to the Yankee who was looking for a timber limit, to the "Literary Cuss," as he called the young man in corduroys and a wide white hat, who was endeavoring to get past "tradition," that has damned this Dominion both in fiction and in fact for two hundred years, and do something that had in it the real color of the country. At this point the free trader paused to assemble the Missourian. This iron-gray individual shook himself out, came forward, and gripped our hands, one after another. The free trader would not allow us to make camp that night. We were sentenced to sup and lodge with him, furnishing our own bedding, of course, but baking his bread. The smell of cooking coffee and the odor of frying fish came to us from the kitchen, and floating over from somewhere the low, musical, well modulated voice of Cromwell, conversing in Cree, as he moved about among his mute and apparently inoffensive camp servants.