ursts upon the eye when the summit is actually gained--the great mass
of "Denali's Wife," or Mount Foraker, filling all the middle distance.
We were all agreed that no one who had ever stood on the top of Denali
in clear weather could fail to mention the sudden splendid sight of this
great mountain.

But it is not worth while to pursue the subject further. The present
writer feels confident that any man who climbs to the top of Denali, and
then reads Doctor Cook's account of his ascent, will not need Edward
Barrille's affidavit to convince him that Cook's narrative is untrue.
Indignation is, however, swallowed up in pity when one thinks upon the
really excellent pioneering and exploring work done by this man, and
realizes that the immediate success of the imposition about the ascent
of Denali doubtless led to the more audacious imposition about the
discovery of the North Pole--and that to his discredit and downfall.

THE PIONEER ASCENT

Although Cook's claim to have reached the summit of Denali met with
general acceptance outside, or at least was not openly scouted, it was
otherwise in Alaska. The men, in particular, who lived and worked in the
placer-mining regions about the base of the mountain, and were, perhaps,
more familiar with the orography of the range than any surveyor or
professed topographer, were openly incredulous. Upon the appearance of
Doctor Cook's book, "To the Top of the Continent," in 1908, the writer
well remembers the eagerness with which his copy (the only one in
Fairbanks) was perused by man after man from the Kantishna diggings, and
the acute way in which they detected the place where vague "fine
writing" began to be substituted for definite description.

Some of these men, convinced that the ascent had never been made,
conceived the purpose of proving it in the only way in which it could be
proved--by making the ascent themselves. They were confident that an
enterprise which had now baffled several parties of "scientists,"
equipped with all sorts of special apparatus, could be accomplished by
Alaskan "sourdoughs" with no special equipment at all. There seems also
to have entered into the undertaking a naive notion that in some way or
other large money reward would follow a successful ascent.

The enterprise took form under Thomas Lloyd, who managed to secure the
financial backing of McPhee and Petersen, saloon-keepers of Fairbanks,
and Griffin, a wholesale liquor dealer of Chena. These th