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34

266 CASSTIAR

After the first fifteen miles have been struggled over
the nature of the country changes, and you get out into
a wide valley that is a relief to reach and a joy to trayel
in. There it is sparsely timbered, with rich bunch grass
growing on the lower hills and big stretches of open
meadows along a pretty little creek which races merrily
through the centre of the valley. Farther on you pass
a succession of brilliant blue lakes, which vary in length
from a half to two miles long. Some of these lakes
have white fish in them, others a species of pike as well
as a fair number of lake trout, which are really char,
After twenty-four miles have been passed you strike the
telegraph line which runs from Hazleton to Dawson,
and from there on for the next five or six days you have
a horse trail which is fairly good, except that now and
again it is swampy for a mile or two at a time.

If it were not for the everlasting swamps, Cassiar would
indeed be a paradise to travel in, but no matter whether
you are low down in a valley or away up above timber
line on a mountain, you will find swamps and quagmires
and boggy ground in which a horse will get mired. Some
of this soft ground is quite dangerous for horses, and
whoever pilots your pack train through that country
must have a thorough knowledge of soft ground and be
able to decide where it is safe to go, or your horses will
constantly be in serious danger. Even an experienced
man is bound to have some trouble, and every once in a
while a horse will get down and have to be helped out,
perhaps unpacked before it can be released from its
predicament.

Mosquitoes are very seldom troublesome. In all my
five hunting trips in that district there was only one
evening when they bothered us to any extent, and even
then they disappeared when it got cool. Black flies
occasionally cause a little annoyance for a day or two
in the early part of the trip, but for the past two seasons
neither flies nor mosquitoes have been in evidence at all.
Last year we were considerably bothered by wasps, and
this year there was a perfect plague of them. For two or