John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the wilderness and fare wherever he plead and as long as he plead. Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the cour of the day''s travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on travelling, cure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would e to it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.
To Bubsp;it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen mubsp;and gravel and washing tless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all acc to the abundanbsp;of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, and desded or asded unknown rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the wilderness and fare wherever he plead and as long as he plead. Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the cour of the day''s travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on travelling, cure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would e to it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.
To Bubsp;it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen mubsp;and gravel and washing tless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all acc to the abundanbsp;of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, and desded or asded unknown rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest.
The months came and went, and babsp;and forth they twisted through the uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost were true. They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. In the fall of the year they peed a weird lake try, sad and silent, where wildfowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of life—only the blowing of chill winds, the f of i sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.