The Valley of Silent Men

Thus for nearly a century and a half the larger craft, with their great sweeps and their wild-throated crews, had gone DOWN the river toward the Arctic Ocean, and the smaller craft, with their still wilder crews, had come UP the river toward civilization. The River, as the Landing speaks of it, is the Athabasca, with its headwaters away off in the British Columbian mountains, where Baptiste and McLeod, explorers of old, gave up their lives to find where the cradle of it lay. And it sweeps past the Landing, a slow and mighty giant, unswervingly on its way to the northern sea. With it the river brigades set forth. For Pierre and Henri and Jacques it is going from one end to the other of the earth.