Bent upon crossing the Great Divide, or Continental watershed, here repre- sented by that most formidable of Rocky Mountain chains, the Big Windriver range, we had to rely upon our pathfinding instincts, for none of us had ever been there before.

For the last few days we had been following, as our sole guide, a watercourse which some Soshone Indians had told us headed at the foot of one of the few notches visible in that formidable one hundred and twenty miles long and fifty miles wide barrier, the highest elevations of which could nearly vie with those of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

Indeed, the view presented to our eyes as we were approaching the eastern face reminded me of the first sight of the Alps as the traveller approaches them over the great plains of Lombardy.

Nature marked the elevation of this pass, for it was on a level with timber-line, which in thq$e latitudes is reached at a height of goooft or 95ooft We had made a long day of it, for water, though nigh at hand, was ungetatable, and better reason were we not heading for the promised land, to gain which we had made strenuous efforts ? To man and beast it was to be a veritable paradise.

To me it meant a practically primeval hunting ground, abundantly stocked with wapitis by the thousand, bighorns, grizzlies, as well as with the grotesquely-shaped white antelope goat of the Rockies, which latter was the special object of my expeditioN For my trapper companions it meant a big harvest of peltry, for had not reliable Indians reported that the rivers and lakes of this, then practically unknown, region were teeming with beaver and otter? And, lastly, to the horses, poor brutes, it held out the promise of grass up to their bellies, good clear water, and complete rest, wherein to recuperate after the hardships of forced rides and heavy packs, endured upon a desperately meagre diet of sagebrush and alkali water.