THE OVERLANDERS 65

departing guests. And to the skirl of the bag-
pipes the procession wound away westward
bound for the mountains.

Instead of the thirty miles a day which they
had made farther east, the travellers were now
glad to cover ten miles a day. Fallen trees
lay across the trail in impassable ramparts and
floods filled the gullies. Scouts went ahead
blazing trees to show the way. Bushwhackers
followed, cutting away windfall and throwing
logs into sloughs. Horses sank to their withers
in seemingly bottomless muskegs,! so that
packs had to be cut off and the unlucky
bronchos pulled out by all hands straining on
a rope.

Somewhere between the rivers Pembina and
M‘Leod the travellers were amazed to see
what the wise ones in the party thought a
volcano—a continuous and self-fed fire burn-
ing on the crown of a hill. Science of a later

1 Perhaps the distinction should be made here between the
muskeg and the slough. The slough was simply any depression
in the ground filled with mud and water. The muskeg was
permanent wet ground resting on soft mud, covered over on the
top with most deceiving soft green moss which looked solid, but
which quaked to every step and gave to the slightest weight.
Many muskegs west of Edmonton have been formed by beavers
damming the natural drainage of a small river for so many
centuries that the silt and humus washed down from the mountains

have formed a surface of deep black muck.
GR; B

A os ne a tO