They were still forty miles away.

And Mac Veigh, the factor at Hudson's Hope, looked at David in a curious sort of way when David told him where he was going.
"You're the first white man to do it," he said--an inflection of doubt in his voice.

"It's not bad going up the Finly as far as the Kwadocha.
But from there...." He shook his head.

He was short and thick, and his jaw hung heavy with disapproval.
"You're still seventy miles from the Stikine when you end up at the Kwadocha," he went on, thumbing the map.

"Who the devil will you get to take you on from there?
Straight over the backbone of the Rockies.