Hollister stood looking about him. He was clad like a logger, in thick
mackinaws and heavy boots, and the texture of his garments was
appropriate to the temperature, the weather. He seemed to have stepped
into another latitude,--which in truth he had, for the head of Toba
Inlet lies a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Vancouver, and the
thrust of that narrow 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 of clinging snow. Higher
still lifted grim peaks capped with massive snow banks that even
midsummer heat could never quite dispel. But these upper heights were
now hidden in clouds and wraiths of frost fog, their faces shrouded in
this winter veil which--except for rare bursts of sunshine or sweeping
northwest wind--would not be lifted till the vernal equinox.
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