soft-shelled eggs. Even if caught in the act it will finish the laying, being unable to desist. The warden has often stood close beside them while laying, and says that the operation lasts about fifteen to twenty minutes. The eggs are left to hatch by the warmth of the sand. When the young hatch they wriggle out into the air and crawl down the beach to the sea. The same turtle, it is supposed, deposits her subsequent litters near the site of the first, regardless of the fact that this may have been stolen. The way to catch a turtle is to turn it over on its back, when it becomes helpless. It takes a powerful man to overturn a large one, or even two or three men. Naturally, I was anxious to go turtling. The eggs could be found by daylight, but in order to capture a turtle ashore, night was the time, especially the period just prior to dawn. We set the alarm clock for midnight, and turned in early, sleeping on deck uncanopied, as there were no insects so far out to sea to bother us. The uncanny hour of twelve-fifteen found us partaking of a lunch, shortly after which we were in the tender, on a long, hard pull for shore, for, owing to the shoalness of the water, we had anchored two miles off.

There was a strong head wind to buck against, but the phosphorescent beauty of the water made one forget the labor. Great numbers of fish scooted away at our approach, leaving silvery wakes behind them.

After landing, when we reached the part of the beach opposite the sand dunes, the warden soon discovered a trail by the feeble moonlight. Alas, the raccoons had found it first, and dug out the eggs, as the scattered shells showed. Just beyond was another trail which we followed with lively interest. The warden read every sign as I would a printed page. Here the turtle stopped, he said, to rest; then she went on; here she had a mind to lay, and had trampled the sand considerably, decided against the spot, and then crawled thirty yards along the beach. "She's laid," announced the warden, pointing out a sort of rude arena. Previously he had found a slender stick of driftwood, and with this he began to punch down into the sand, till at length he struck a soft spot where his rod readily sank away in. "Here it is," he cried, and dropping on our knees we all began pawing away like so many raccoons, till in a moment we were throw

ing out eggs. They were in a compact pile, and numbered just ninety, of the loggerhead, we were told. Only about one hundred yards further along we found, in similar fashion, the one hundred and twenty-four eggs of the green turtle. Then came various broken-up deposits, and it was not until we were away down at the further end of the lonely island, at sunrise, that we found another loggerhead deposit, of ninety-one eggs. I was lugging the large camera, but excitement made me tireless. The warden, too, was game, but it was hard on the youth who carried the plates. Poor boy, he was a mile behind, dragging himself wearily along. We had to wait till he caught up before I could

take photographs of the digging of the turtle's eggs. After this operation was finished it seemed a long journey back to the fine breakfast which the cook had ready for us on board.

Owing to the heavy surf raised by the on-shore wind, no turtles "crawled" that night, but for all that I had enjoyed the episode as one of "the times of my life." Digging turtle's eggs by moonlight, with a nap on the sand, and a nocturnal fourteenmile tramp on an uninhabited key, far off a wild coast, is a weird sort of experience. The turtle eggs made "bully" fritters, which, with the splendid oysters and various fish that we caught, added to our bill of fare, gave us a varied menu.

I

T took us seven days to work our way out to the Kootenay Plains. This rate of progress was very slow. Four days is the average allowance of time, and the trip has been made in three days, even two. But we were nowise in a hurry. When it rained one morning we did not break camp; but Mr. Weston and Mr. Cobell stretched the fly of the tent against the wind, and built a fire, and between these two defenses we sat, very warm and comfortable. Then in the afternoon we took a wonderful cloudy ride, up among the mists which were breaking and flying before the wind, wreathing the mountains fantastically, chasing the bursts of sunlight. The exhilaration of the hour or was it only the morning's rest and the abundance of feed?-possessed Mrs. Selwin's decorous Eva to such an extent on this afternoon ride that she paused in the trail and gave herself over to a fine little bucking performance. I regret to say that we laughed with delight, for, though Mrs. Selwin held her seat well, her hairpins strewed the waste, and, judging from the look on her face, her teeth shook in her head. I regarded the grave and anxious profile of my good Eagle Plume after this with a renewed appreciation of his solemnity. I should not have cared for bucking!

It was constantly a surprise to me that we saw so few signs of wild animals, even of the smaller varieties, here in the wilderness. Hardly a sound of a bird was heard, silent day after day. Once in a long time a chattering squirrel frisked away among the trees. A "fool hen" sat down now and then on a limb overhanging the trail

and waited politely for us to take her— "with gun or with stone, whichever you please; and pray don't hurry, I've plenty of time and nothing at all to do." Twice, I think, we saw porcupines. Once we saw fresh caribou tracks, once the print of a mountain lion. Of course, the desire of our eyes and the assumed fear of our night watches and our hopeless daily expectation was a bear. But bears are scarce and wary now; very few people see them. At last, late one afternoon, we were riding along through an open valley, comparatively wide. A lethargy of fatigue and dust had settled over the five of us; we were plodding in dullness and silence. Suddenly Mr. Weston was seen to fling his arm out toward the mountain side in a significant gesture. We looked; and Doe, the quick-eyed, cried at once, "Oh! it's a bear. See him! See him! He's coming! Down that second slope!"

Well, I should think, of a truth, he was coming. My ponderous conception of bears had never admitted agility, and I was amazed to see how this creature sped down the mountain side. He was headed straight for the trail, and did not perceive our presence. That his line of progress and ours must meet before many moments was plainly apparent to the simplest calculation. Now, a bear is a harmless creature enough, in the fat summer time, but he is the one great terror of horses, provoking them to blind panic. If this Mr. Bruin dashed into our midst, there would probably be reckless stampede, with consequences very unpleasant, to put the matter mildly. So Mr. Weston rose in the stirrups, and shouted loud and long. Whereupon, if one ever saw a frightened bear, we were promptly permitted to see

the vanishing haunches of one. The lumbering creature wheeled in his course, hardly pausing an instant to meditate our appalling appearance, and fled away back. again up the hill even faster than he had come down. Our horses never suspected his presence; they continued their course undisturbed. Only Mr. Weston's Charley turned his head at his master's shouting, inquiring, "What's the nonsense now?" with a fine air of disgust. I have often wondered whither that bear was going in such a terrible hurry when we interrupted him, and if he missed his appointment altogether. That he had not some definite errand in mind, some goal to his energetic dispatch, I cannot consent to believe.

Two eagles wheeled over our heads one day, with a wide and powerful sweep of the wings. The mountains seemed to belong to them more than to any other creatures.

Finally, we rode high on the "benches" overlooking the Kootenay Plains. The opaline light was again abroad, brimming the valley at our feet, softening the sharp mountains into a grateful vagueness. Grateful, too, was the sense of space beneath us and around. The valley was not in truth very wide-a mile and a half or two miles, I suppose-but we had been so long accustomed to living in the notch of a V that we seemed to have all the earth spread before us. On either side the Saskatchewan River the level, grassy plains swept away down the valley for, perhaps, ten or fifteen miles till they lost themselves in blue, folding mountains. Ah! it was good to ride high and look off. I felt the lift of an impending weight from my cloudy brain. It might be enchantment which held us still-nothing could seem more world-remote than that wide, empty valley, guarded by its sheer mountainsbut it was enchantment tamed of its terror, gentle and dream-like and luring. I thought of the visions of William Morris, as we followed the trail along slowly down, those beyond-the-world vales of The Earthly Paradise, and it seemed to me that we must have strayed to The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon. A strong, soft wind was blowing down the valley, a periodic wind, as I found out later. There was strangeness in its breath, so steady and so purposeful. One expects ything but decision of a wind. It sang

a glorious kind of chant, which was not the sound of trees blowing-there were no trees where we were but the very voice of the wind itself, deep-toned and harmonious.

As we came down to the Plains, we found another touch of difference from our austere surroundings of the past week. There were some poplars growing here, in among the spruces. The softness of their delicate leafage, rippling, flowing in the wind, was a refreshment to sternnesswearied eyes of which I could not have enough. I drank those dear trees with my gaze, drank and drank again.

We made our camp by the side of the river, in the long dry grass. It was impossible to get out of the way of the conquering wind, so we had to treat our baby camp fire as a wild beast held in leash, watching it every moment lest it insidiously creep away from us and go ravaging down the valley, and extinguishing it as soon as supper was ready.

In the evening we sat on the bank of the river and marveled at its swiftness. Here still was the terror and strength of the mountains, the inscrutable, grim regardlessness of their direct proceedings. The deep onward rush of that opaque flood, milky from glacier sources, was a resistless power. Too deep for the rocks over which it flowed to give forth any voice, and bordered by grassy banks, its only manifestation in sound was the hiss and lap of the waves as they curled back from the cut of some cross-current, showing their teeth sullenly. It was not a lovely river at all, but a fierce and primitive thing. Our original plan had been to cross it, here at this very spot, and go on beyond it to the Wilcox Pass. But cross that river! Mr. Weston teased us amiably with cheerful word-pictures of ourselves cast abroad in that weltering flood, clinging to manes or tails of our horses, while the poor beasts swam their perilous way. "But perhaps we shall have a cold rain," he added, "and then the water will go down." That was a curious statement enough, from an eastern point of view. A rain to shrink a river! But, when one remembers that these mountain streams are all glacier-fed, it does not appear anomalous that a hot, dry summer should swell them mightily.

We went to sleep that night with two