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

PreludetoAdv,nture 97brothers to wave good - bye. A swarm of mosquitoes met us as we crossed the plankto the boat. There were six of us on board, Mr Parsons and a lad, our two guidesand ourselves. For the next ten days or so we should be completely at the mercy ofthe two Indians. The success of our enterprise depended on their fidelity ratherthan on our own efforts and powers of endurance. Yet we were not troubled byany such thoughts when our boat steamed away from the mud banks of Aklavikand turned up the Peel River, churning the smooth, glassy water into foam andbreaking up the rainbow-coloured reflections of the Richardson mountainrange. On that still morning, our attention was riveted by every successive bendand forward reach of the river. We never looked back into our wake of water. Wewere moving forward, going up the current as steadily as a river flows down andthe feeling of progress, after all those days of inactivity, was one of bliss. Everybird and tree and flower on the river banks, each reflection in the water, eachnew vista in our forward course, absorbed us as if we were under a spell.There was forest on either side of the banks, bordered by the brilliant green ofmare's-tails, with silver willows, green willows, alder, spruce, cottonwood treesand a few black poplars. Against all the greenery there were repeated splashes ofblue lupin. We saw no animals except two red foxes, but there were many ducks,and once a couple of swans passed overhead and once we glimpsed a whiteheadedeagle.At noon, when we went ashore to boil our kettle and have a meal the mosquitoesattacked us in hordes; it was the worst experience of them that we had as yetencountered. We lunched on black tea, pemmican and bannock but despiteSister Firmin's instructions I had rolled the bannock too thin. The pemmicanwas to prove a standby for the guides, eating it seemed to produce instantaneousenergy, but Gwen and I, after eating a lump no larger than a greengage, felt wehad devoured an enormous meal.For 12 miles we steamed up the Peel River and then we came to the mouth ofthe Husky. All the way the water was more like a sluggish channel than a movingriver and as we moved on in loops and circles we seemed to remain stationarybeneath the same point of a mountain range which had barren summits andgreen ravines lit by patches of blue lupin. After a while we noticed that the riverbanks were a little higher, but always they were formed of mud, with one banksloping smoothly into the water like the stone sides of an artificial reservoir,while the other was eaten away by melting ice and was overhanging the current.There was little sunshine and hardly any wind all day, and the mosquitoes came