Some coarse black hairs clung here and there to his upper lip; his fine brown eyes were embedded in wrinkles, and his swarthy features, though clumsy, were kindly--a good-humoured face, which, at a cheerful word or glance, lit up at once with the grotesque grin of an animated gargoyle.

This was the typical old-time tracker of the North; the toiler who brought in the products of man's art in the East, and took out Nature's returns--the Indian's output--ever since the trade first penetrated these endless solitudes.
The forest scenery now became very striking; primeval masses of poplar and birch foliage, which spread away and upward in smoothest slopes, like vast lawns, studded with the sombre green of the pine tops which towered above them.

Here and there the bends of the river crossed at such angles as to enclose a lake-like expanse of water.

The river also took a fine colouring from its tributaries, a sort of greenish-yellow tinge, and now became flecked with bubbles and thin foam, so that we feared the freshet, which would have been disastrous.
At mid-day we reached Shoal Island--Pakwao Ministic--and here the poles were got out and the trackers took the middle of the river for nearly a mile, until deep water was reached.

Placer miners had evidently been at work here, but with poor results, we were told.