them both"; and again, "When I reached the coast summit" are
reported in quotation marks as from his lips. As a matter of fact, Lloyd
himself reached neither summit, nor was much above the glacier floor;
and the south or coast summit, the higher of the two, was not attempted
by the party at all. There is no question that the party _could_ have
climbed the South Peak, though by reason of its greater distance it is
safe to say that it could not have been reached, as the North Peak was,
in one march from the ridge camp. It must have involved a camp in the
Grand Basin with all the delay and the labor of relaying the stuff up
there. But the men who accomplished the astonishing feat of climbing the
North Peak, in one almost superhuman march from the saddle of the
Northeast Ridge, could most certainly have climbed the South Peak too.

[Sidenote: The North Peak]

They did not attempt it for two reasons, first, because they wanted to
plant their fourteen-foot flagstaff where it could be seen through a
telescope from Fairbanks, one hundred and fifty miles away, as they
fondly supposed, and, second, because not until they had reached the
summit of the North Peak did they realize that the South Peak is higher.
They told the writer that upon their return to the floor of the _upper_
glacier they were greatly disappointed to find that their flagstaff was
not visible to them. It is, indeed, only just visible with the naked eye
from certain points on the upper glacier and quite invisible at any
lower or more distant point. Walter Harper has particularly keen sight,
and he was well up in the Grand Basin, at nearly seventeen thousand feet
altitude, sitting and scanning the sky-line of the North Peak, seeking
for the pole, when he caught sight of it and pointed it out. The writer
was never sure that he saw it with the naked eye, though Karstens and
Tatum did so as soon as Walter pointed it out, but through the
field-glasses it was plain and prominent and unmistakable.

When we came down to the Kantishna diggings and announced to the men who
planted it that we had seen the flagstaff, there was a feeling expressed
that the climbing party of the previous summer must have seen it also
and had suppressed mention of it; but there is no ground whatever for
such a damaging assumption. It would never be seen with the naked eye
save by those who were intently searching for it. Professor Parker and
Mr. Belmore Browne entertained the pretty general i