It is
impossible, even in Wyoming, to get fifty miles from settlement. I long
to undertake a journey which demands hardihood, and so, after careful
investigation, I have decided to go into the Yukon Valley by pack train
over the British Columbian Mountains, a route which offers a fine and
characteristic New World adventure."

To prepare myself for this expedition I ran up to Ottawa in February to
study maps and to talk with Canadian officials concerning the various
trails which were being surveyed and blazed. "No one knows much about
that country," said Dawson with a smile.

I returned to Washington quite determined on going to Teslin Lake over a
path which followed an abandoned telegraph survey from Quesnelle on the
Fraser River to the Stickeen, a distance estimated at about eight
hundred miles, and I quote these lines as indicating my mind at the
time:

The way is long and cold and lone--
But I go!
It leads where pines forever moan
Their weight of snow--
But I go!
There are voices in the wind which call
There are shapes which beckon to the plain
I must journey where the peaks are tall,
And lonely herons clamor in the rain.

One of my most valued friends in Washington at this time was young
Theodore Roosevelt, who had resigned his position as Police Commissioner
in New York City to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His life on
a Dakota ranch had not only filled him with a love for western trails
and sympathy with western men, but had created in him a special interest
in western writers. No doubt it was this regard for the historians of
the West which led him to invite me to his house; for during the winter
I occasionally lunched or dined with him. He also gave me the run of his
office, and there I sometimes saw him in action, steering the department
toward efficiency.

Though nominally Assistant Secretary he was in fact the Head of the
Navy, boldly pushing plans to increase its fighting power. This I know,
for one day as I sat in his office I heard him giving orders for gun
practice and discussing the higher armament of certain ships. I remember
his words as he showed me a sheet on which was indicated the relative
strength of the world's navies. "We must raise all our guns to a higher
power," he said with characteristic emphasis.

John Hay, Senator Lodge, Major Powell and Edward Eggleston were among my
most distinguished hosts during this winter and I have man