And it
was his timber. The possessive sense was fairly strong in Hollister,
as it usually is in men who have ever possessed any considerable
property. He did not like the idea of being cheated or robbed. In this
case there was superficial evidence that both these things had
happened to him.
So when he had cooked himself a meal and smoked a pipe, he took to the
high ground again to verify or disprove these unwelcome conclusions.
In that huge and largely inaccessible region which is embraced within
the boundaries of British Columbia, in a land where the industrial
life-blood flows chiefly along 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 land and timber which they have never seen, sources
of material wealth acquired cheaply, with an eye to the future. Beyond
the railway belts, the navigable streams, the coastwise passages where
steamers come and go, there lies a vast hinterland where canoe and
pack-sack are still the mainstay of the traveler.
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