C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

In and Out 45light that may be sky or water. Begin to realise how a man might go mad if hewalked on among trees hour after hour, day after day, at first hopefully andthen hopelessly, never coming to anything else. Craving for a hill or ahummock or even one rock. We came out suddenly on the river bank at last... Talked to an old-timer who had once walked 900 miles to stake his claimfor gold and 900 miles back again. The river is the only highway, summer andwinter alike ... Had a chat with a bearded Catholic priest from Rome. Mterliving '20 years in Colombo he was now inspecting Missions in USA and theNorth ... Went ashore alone and on return found Gwen had acquired a newfriend, a gold-toothed trapper just arrived on board with five huskies, to gethis mail. Wearing breeches, high boots and an old women's jumper. Took usto his cabin nearby, neatly ceiled with brown paper. Stink of martens he hadcaught four alive for breeding, but the only male had died. He would have toget a Government permit to catch another. Last season he got a hundredskins, worth about $'20 each ... Steamer hooted its departure signal and ourtalk was cut short ... Found a big party of Indians on board. Several smilinggirls, sly-faced and slit-eyed, going home from school. Mixed and interestingcrowd.Indeed the crowd was almost too interesting. We longed for more mentalenergy so that we could listen to our fellow-passengers with greater attention, butlife on the steamer in that horde of people was very exhausting. The long hoursof daylight, extending to nearly midnight, curtailed our sleep and the nights werevery noisy. Often we would stop at a settlement in the middle of the night, and acertain number of the passengers, nuns and officials, would have to go ashore totransact their business.It was not, however, only lack of sleep that made us tired, nor was it only thestrain of living in a crowd. This was a strange new kind of lethargy that camestealing over us both, making it almost impossible for Gwen to sketch and for meto write down word -pictures of the passing scenes. Nor could either of ussummon energy enough to keep, in our diaries, a full and clear record of ourexperiences. We began to wonder how we should ever manage, when we arrived atAklavik, to complete the arrangements for our canoe journey up the Rat and overthe Divide. This was something more insidious than mere physical lethargy. Wehad left behind the unresting activity of cities and the alertness of conventionallife that expresses itself in action rather than in dreams. We were in a do-