The lesser, coming in from the northwest, was little more than a deep
and narrow gash in the white-clad hills. On his right opened the
broader valley of the Toba River, up which he must go.

For a space of perhaps five minutes Hollister stood gazing about him.
Then he was reminded of his immediate necessities by the chill that
crept over his feet,--for several inches of snow overlaid the planked
surface of the landing float.

Knowing what he was about when he left Vancouver, Hollister had
brought with him a twenty-foot Hudson's Bay freight canoe, a capacious
shoal-water craft with high topsides. He slid this off the float,
loaded into it sundry boxes and packages, and taking his seat astern,
paddled inshore to where the rising tide was ruffled by the outsetting
current of a river.

Here, under the steep shoulder of a mountain, rows of piles stood
gaunt above the tide flats. When Hollister had last seen the mouth of
the Toba, those same piles had been the support of long boom-sticks,
within which floated hundreds of logs. On the flat beside the river
there had stood the rough shacks of a logging camp. 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