Donkey engines
were puffing and grunting in the woods. 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 bar at the river's mouth. The sea was hidden behind him. He
passed up a sluggish waterway lined by alder and maple, covered with
dense thickets, a jungle in which flourished the stalwart salmonberry
and the thorny sticks of the devil's club. Out of this maze of
undergrowth rose the tall brown columns of Douglas fir, of red cedar,
of spruce and hemlock with their drooping boughs.
Sloughs branched off in narrow laterals, sheeted with thin ice, except
where the current kept it open, and out of these open patches flocks
of wild duck scattered with a whir of wings. A mile up-stream he
turned a bend and passed a Siwash rancheria.
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