At Quesnelle Mouth we slung our roll of blankets on our backs, and started on foot for William’s Creek. The road was very rough, a narrow pack-trail cut through the woods; the stumps of the felled trees were left in the ground, and the thick stratum of mud in the spaces between was ploughed into deep holes by the continual trampling of mules. The ground had been frozen, and covered with several inches of snow, but this had partially melted, and rendered the surface greasy and slippery. We stumbled about amongst the hardened mud-holes, and our huge jack-boots soon blistered our feet so dreadfully, that by the second day we were almost disabled. Fortunately we picked up a pair of “gumboots”--long boots of India-rubber, used by the miners for working in the water--which had been cast away by the road-side, and substituting these for our cumbrous riding-boots, struggled on less painfully afterwards. The trail, gradually ascending, passed along the sides of pine-clad hills closely packed together, and separated only by the narrowest ravines; we had indeed entered the same region of mountain and forest which we had formerly encountered on the upper part of the North Thompson. By the road-side lay the dead bodies of horses and mules, some standing as they had died, still stuck fast in the deep, tenacious mud. We passed a score of them in one day in full view; and hundreds, which had turned aside to die, lay hidden in the forest which shut in the trail so closely. Martens and wood-partridges were numerous, and a tall Yankee, from the State of Maine, who had joined our company, greatly distinguished himself, knocking them over with his revolver from the tops of the high pines in a manner which astonished us. As we approached William’s Creek, the ascent became more rapid and the snow deeper, for the frost at this height had been unbroken. On the evening of the third day’s march we reached Richfield, sixty-five miles from the Mouth of Quesnelle; but, acting on the advice of our friend from Maine, walked on through Barkerville to Cameron Town, lower down the same creek, where the richest mines were being at this time worked. It was already dark, and we had a rough walk of it--along the bottom of the narrow ravine through which runs William’s Creek, scrambling over “flumes,” logs, and heaps of rubbish for about two miles, before we doffed our packs at Cusheon’s Hotel. We had reached Cariboo at last, although by a much more roundabout way than we originally intended. CHAPTER XIX.