Across these he strung a web of
rawhide, thus furnishing himself with a pair of snowshoes which were a
necessity now that the snow lay everywhere knee-deep and in many
places engulfed him to the waist when he went into the woods.
It pleased him to go on long snowshoe hikes. He reached far up the
ridges that lifted one after another behind his timber. Once he gained
a pinnacle, a solitary outstanding hummock of snow-bound granite
rising above all the rest, rising above all the surrounding forest.
From this summit he gained an eagle's view. The long curve of Toba
Inlet wound like a strip of jade away down to where the islands of the
lower gulf spread with channels of the sea between. He could see the
twin Redondas, Cortez, Raza, the round blob that was Hernando,--a
picturesque nomenclature that was the inheritance of Spanish
exploration before the time of Drake. Beyond the flat reaches of
Valdez, Vancouver Island, an empire in itself, lifted its rocky
backbone, a misty purple against the western sky. He watched a
steamer, trailing a black banner of smoke, slide through Baker Pass.
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