The Hidden Places

le, pointed her bluff bow down the Inlet, and presently all that he could see of her was the tip of her mas

rrow arm of the sea carries it thirty miles into the glacial fastnesses of the Coast Range. The rain that drenched Vancouver became snow here. The lower slopes were green with timber which concealed the drifts that covered the rocky soil. A little higher certain clear spaces bared the whiteness, and all the tree tops, the drooping boughs, carried a burden

d. Except the faint slapping of little waves against the ice-encrusted, rocky shore, and the distant

fle and clatter of crowds, he had forgotten what it was like to be alone,-and in the most crowded places he had suffered the most grievous loneliness. For the time being he was unconscious of his mutilation, since there was no one by to remind him by look or

lt water for its floor. On past frowning points, around slow curves, boring farther and farther into the mainland through a passage like a huge tunnel, the roof of which has been blown away. Then suddenly there is an end to the sea. Abruptly, a bend is t

the land in his mind. He had never seen it in midwinter, but the snow,

g in from the northwest, was little more than a deep and narrow gash in the white-cla

was reminded of his immediate necessities by the chill that crept over his fee

e, a capacious shoal-water craft with high topsides. He slid this off the float, loaded into it sundry boxes and package

Now the booming ground was empty, save for those decaying, teredo-eaten sticks, and the camp was a tumbledown ruin when he passed. He wondered if the valley of the Toba were wholly deserted, if the forests of virgin timber covering the delta of that watercourse had been left to their ancient solitude. But he did not stop to puzzle over this. In ten minutes he was over the sandy

turned a bend and passed a Siwash rancheria. The bright eyes of little brown-faced children peered shyly out at him from behind stumps. He could see rows of split salmon hung by the tail to the beams of

upper limit of the tidal reach he found in this deep, slack water new-driven piling and freshly strung boom-sticks and acres of logs confined the

se in the cities of two continents had left him for the time being. For that hour he was himself, sufficient unto himself. Here probably a sc

ided his actions. Through long, bitter months he had rebelled against spiritual isolation. The silent woods, the gray river, th

in the wilderness, not because

allows where he must wade and lead his craft by hand. So he came at last to the Big Bend of the Toba River, a great S curve where the stream dou

e projecting eave. Between two stumps a string of laundered clothes waved in the down-river breeze. By the garments Hollister knew a woman must be there. But none appeared to watch him pass. He did not halt, although the short afternoon was merging into dusk and he knew the hospitality of those

ig Bend and hauled his canoe out on the bank. A small flat ran back to the

of a six-foot fir. He set up his tent, made his bed, cooke

d spot with a yellow nimbus. Beyond that ruddy circle, valley and cliff and clouded sky merged into an impenetrable blackness. Hollister had been cold and wet and hungry. Now he was warm

ngth at nine in the morning. Hollister had finished his breakfast before the first gleam of light touched the east. When day let him see the Alpine crevasses that notched t

s lone adventure into the outlying places. Nevertheless, something about it had given a fillip to his spirits. He felt that he would better not inquire too closely into this; that too keen self-analysis was the evil from which he had suffered and

naccountably went begging a purchaser, lay south and a bit west from where he set up his camp. He satisfied himself of that b

f, at one extreme of which he should find a rock cairn with a squared post in its center. From that

here so steeply as to be stiff climbing. It bore here and there a massive tree, rough-barked pillars rising to a branchy head two hundred feet in the air. But for t

nst the dusky green of the surrounding timber. He perceived that a considerable settlement had arisen in the lower valley, that the forest was being logged off, that land was being cleared and cultivated. There was nothing strange in that. All over the earth the growing pressure of population forced men continually to invade the strongholds of the wilderness. Here lay fertile acres, water, forests to supply timber, the highw

s to come upon when he seeks with method and intent he stumbles upon by accident, so now Hollister, coming heedlessly downhill, found

y broke clear the following morning he was on the hill, compass in hand, bearing due west from the original stake. He found the second without much

Lewis and Company, Specialists in B.C. Timber." The second was that someone, within recent years, had cut timber on his limit. And it was his timber. The possessive sense was fairly strong in Hollister, as it

two railways and three navigable streams, there are many great areas where the facilities of transportation are much as they were when British Columbia was a field exploited only by trappers and traders. Settlement is still but a fringe upon the borders of the wilderness. Individuals and corporations own la

raded "sight unseen" as small boys swap jackknives. There flourishes in connection with this, on the Pacific coast, the business of cruising timber, a vocation followed by hardy men prepared to go anywhere, any time, in fair weather or foul. Commission such a man to fare into such a place, cruise such and such areas of timber land, described by metes

e category as a bank statement or a chartered accountant's audit of book

cedar. The Douglas fir covered the rocky slopes and the cedar lined the gut of a deep hollow which split the limit midway. It was classed as a fair logging chance, since from that corner which dippe

ion that it would resell at a profit, or that it could ultimately be logged at a still greater profit. And this persuasion

Douglas fir should have lifted in brown ranks. He had looked into the bisecting hollow from different angles and marked magnificent cedars,-but too few of them. Taken with the fact that Lewis had failed to resell even at a

dals. No matter that despair had recently colored his mental vision; the sense of property right still functioned unimpaired. To be marred and impoverished and shunned as if he were a monstrosity were accomplished fact

debouched from the middle of his limit and dipped towards the river bottom apparently somewhere above his camp. He knew that this shallow trough built of slender poles was a means of conveying shingle-bolts from

or three years had elapsed since the last tree was felled. Nor had there ever been much inroad on the standing timber. Some one had

ting those hoary old cedars had been neatly cleared from a small level space. A

ivided into two rooms. There was no stove and there had never been a stove. A rough fireplace of stone served for cooking. An iron bar crossed the fireplace and on this bar still hung the fire-blackened pothooks. On nails and shelves against the w

dows, as well as by a skirt and sunbonnet which still hung from a nail. Here, too, was a bedstead with a rat-ruined mattress. And upon a shelf o

. Fancy finding the contes of August Strindberg, the dramatist, that genius of subtle perception and abysmal gloom, here in

eveland-

ers with a California poet who sang of gibbous moons, "The Ancient Lowly" cheek by jowl with "Two Years Before the Mast." A catholic collection, with strong meat

stood staring at the row. Who was Doris Clevel

About the slashed area where the cedars had fallen, over stumps and broken branches and the low roof of the cabin, the virgin snow laid its softening whiteness, and the tall trees enclosed the spot with living green. A hidden squi

's impermanence, and turned downhill lest dark catc