IIo MOUNTAINS

up-wind, and cooked supper. Bearlake Billy, whose
grin was apparently permanent, came afterward to
talk. He began by expounding the genealogical
mysteries of his tribe: we gathered that practically
all of the fifty present members were directly de-
scended from, or related by marriage to the direct
descendants of, the venerable Mrs. Quock, who
lived in a tent over there by the corral and who was
still in excellent health.

“We go soon. Always going to Tel’graph or
Spatsizi; hundred of mile every year. No-one know
where Bearlakers belongs. Tel’graph Tahltans calls
us Bearlakers, but in Caribou Hide they say us
Tahltans. Me I can speak with Liard Indian, Tel’-
graph Indian, McDames Indian, but salt-water
Indian he talk an’ talk and me I listen, and I think
I maybe are deaf.”

He looked at our maps, shaking his head
dubiously.

“Along trail him all right, but any man can
follow trail without map. But this, no. No lake
there. Big mountain there. And this? Little Klappan
it say? They drawed its picture wrong. Bearlakers
knows it. My wife she sick with her arm: I cannot
go. But I have nephew can take you where is no
trail, all down there.”

We were by this time as much amused as the