boy, Walter Harper, the author's attendant and
interpreter, dog driver in the winter and boat engineer in the summer
for three years previous, no more need be said than that he ran Karstens
close in strength, pluck, and endurance. Of the best that the mixed
blood can produce, twenty-one years old and six feet tall, he took
gleefully to high mountaineering, while his kindliness and invincible
amiability endeared him to every member of the party.

The men were thus all volunteers, experienced in snow and ice, though
not in high-mountain work. But the nature of snow and ice is not
radically changed by lifting them ten or fifteen or even twenty thousand
feet up in the air.

A volunteer expedition was the only one within the resources of the
writer, and even that strained them. The cost of the food supplies, the
equipment, and the incidental expenses was not far short of a thousand
dollars--a mere fraction of the cost of previous expeditions, it is
true, but a matter of long scraping together for a missionary. Yet if
there had been unlimited funds at his disposal--and the financial aspect
of the affair is alluded to only that this may be said--it would have
been impossible to assemble a more desirable party.

Mention of two Indian boys of fourteen or fifteen, who were of great
help to us, must not be omitted. They were picked out from the elder
boys of the school at Nenana, all of whom were most eager to go, and
were good specimens of mission-bred native youths. "Johnny" was with the
expedition from start to finish, keeping the base camp while the rest of
the party was above; Esaias was with us as far as the base camp and then
went back to Nenana with one of the dog teams.

[Sidenote: Methods of Approach]

The resolution to attempt the ascent of Denali was reached a year and a
half before it was put into execution: so much time was necessary for
preparation. Almost any Alaskan enterprise that calls for supplies or
equipment from the outside must be entered upon at least a year in
advance. The plan followed had been adopted long before as the only wise
one: that the supplies to be used upon the ascent be carried by water as
near to the base of the mountain as could be reached and cached there in
the summer, and that the climbing party go in with the dog teams as near
the 1st March as practicable. Strangely enough, of all the expeditions
that have essayed this ascent, the first, that of Judge Wickersham in
1903, and the l