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

128 THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATWe and our guides were nearing the Divide alone, having climbed thus farafter days of muscular effort and there would not, of course, be company orcomfort on our height of land. Nor were there any landmarks by which we coulddirect our course in this illimitable country. There was only the position of thesun and the direction of flowing water to help us in our journey to the Yukon. Atthe point where we found water flowing downhill away from the Rat, we shouldknow how far we had come. When we did reach the top of the Divide it was, infact, the loneliest place I have ever seen. On that day, when we were nearing thecomparatively flat plateau, some of these thoughts were passing through mymind, but we had not yet finished with the difficulties and vagaries of the Rat.We got away at our usual time from that stony spit which was, as we discoveredto our surprise, an island, and when we discovered this we felt a heightened,perhaps rather childish, sense of adventure. It seemed a wonderful thing thattwice we should camp on an island in the very middle of the Rat River. Thisheightened sense of adventure which comes and goes like gleams of sunshine inthe traveller's overarching sky, was by no means often with us while we werepushing our way up the river. There were long spells when we thought only ofhow we could manage to put one foot before another, or extricate a boot frommud, or save our aching arms which had to be raised so often to protect our veils.The strange thing about those happy, sunlit moods is that they never may besummoned, nor commanded to stay. Such a mood may take possession of onefor a whole plodding day, when there is nothing of spectacular beauty in earth orsky and it may desert one in the face of Niagara.Progress was easy that morning for the river was flowing in pleasantly wideloops and much of the time we were walking across sterile spits of land where theonly obstacles were stones of varying sizes. Among these pebbles and boulders weoften found most beautiful flowers and the higher we got the richer was the flora.Several times Lazarus called us and said: "I guess you fellers chance go across,"and then he and Jimmy would paddle us over to the other bank and deposit us onanother stony spit where it was easy going. Lazarus was all the time as watchful andthoughtful over our progress as over his own. He would often point ahead to levelground where he could take a short cut and would say: "I guess you fellers makeportage." ("Portage" seemed to be his only word for travel by land.)The mosquitoes during that morning were very hungry as Lazarus said. Mter awhile our easy progress came to an end and we had a wearisome spell walking overmuskeg where, since it was a sultry day, we found it difficult to put one foot