Charmian had not transferred her dwelling-place to the redwood hut after all her labours at removing the ghastly reminders of a vanished clan. Andy, when he saw it, opined that it would be far from water-tight despite his efforts with a wooden shovel that he had made with hunter’s axe and jackknife. What they wanted to do, he said, was to find a cave in the cliffs somewhere up the river. Who ever heard of castaways living in anything but a cave! And there must be caves in those craggy cliffs. Where was the romance of the Valley of Arcana if it could boast no caves? Anyway, he was not content to remain in the grove that harboured the ruined village. There were over a hundred square miles in the enchanted valley, and few of them had been explored. They set off early the following morning, Charmian loaded with the packs, Andy carrying her store of nuts, acorns and half-dried fruit and mushrooms in a blanket. They struck out for the river, deciding to explore its mysteries first. If it was in reality the lost river of the upper benches, Andy wanted to see how it found its erratic way into the valley. They crossed smiling meadows, lush with bronze-green grass. Once, from a little rise, they caught a glimpse of the distant blue lake. They came upon herds of deer which were too curious to continue their flight after the first startled dash, but turned and surveyed them in blank amaze. A skunk was hunting bugs in the grass, rooting in the turf, his plume asway above his striped back. The banks of the river were endowed with graceful willows, alders, yews, incense cedars, cottonwoods, oaks, California buckeyes, red madrones, spicy bays, and occasional pines and spruces, with grape vines crawling and climbing everywhere. The river bottoms were rank with huckleberry bushes, and Andy said: “Find a bee tree and we’ll get some honey and preserve those berries and grapes in Indian jars--if we find any more. Stretch a piece of hide over the mouth and seal it with spruce gum. Stay here all our lives, by golly! No? Yes?” It was like a park, this Valley of Arcana. Meadows merged into woodland stretches or necks of timber, to continue on the other side as grassy and level as before. The river plunged over outcroppings of bedrock, often in foaming cataracts from ten to fifty feet in height. In a neck of woods, in a drift that had collected about the roots of trees, they found a large canoe. Flat bottomed it was, blunt at either end, and burned and gouged from solid sycamore. Near it on the river bank they found an ancient _temescal_, or Indian sweat house.