Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/183

Rh axe rang and woke the silence which seemed to lie like a pall on every surrounding object. So muffled and dark and still was this bit of primeval forest that no sign of life met us on the way; it seemed that with the passing of the Indian had passed the need for the little people of the wood; and yet, no doubt, bright, terror-stricken eyes were in every direction, watching the movements of the terrible and unaccountable enemy.

After long windings and turnings in the shadows, with no sign of the grass so necessary to our horses, we made our way to the banks of a tumbling torrent which seemed to come from the Lyell ice-fields. From the deathly silence of the forest, our serenade all that night was the rushing, pounding stream as it hurled itself along among the boulders of the river-bed scarce ten feet away. On each side of the very narrow valley avanachesavalanches [sic] had torn and ripped the trees from their roots in every direction, and amidst this havoc and desolation was the only feed our hungry horses could find, and very poor picking at that. As yet we had seen nothing of the lakes to which Outram had given the lovely name, the name which had lured us through those long, silent, weary hours in the deep, lonely forest.

In a rainy, misty sort of sunshine the next morning, we essayed a climb to look for the lakes. How hot it was when the sun beat down! How steep and tough the avalanche-scarred hillside! How bitter cold the wind from the ice-fields! And our reward, "the lakes like jewels," where were they? Toiling stubbornly onward to the bare cliffs above, we reached the loose unstable scree just beneath them, paused and looked eagerly to the valley below upon a chain of sloughs. Beautiful they were, too, lying in peaceful silence far below, like giant emeralds tossed there by mountain gnomes. From his height of several thousand feet above us the enthusiastic climber had beheld "lakes."