So far as he and Bruce Otto could discover, no other white man had ever preceded them.

It was a country shut in by tremendous ranges, through which it had taken them twenty days of sweating toil to make a hundred miles.
That afternoon they had crossed the summit of the Great Divide that split the skies north and south, and through their glasses they were looking now upon the first green slopes and wonderful peaks of the Firepan Mountains.
To the northward--and they had been travelling north--was the Skeena River; on the west and south were the Babine range and waterways; eastward, over the Divide, was the Driftwood, and still farther eastward the Ominica range and the tributaries of the Finley.

They had started from civilization on the tenth day of May and this was the thirtieth of June.
As Langdon looked through his glasses he believed that at last they had reached the bourne of their desires.

For nearly two months they had worked to get beyond the trails of men, and they had succeeded.

There were no hunters here.