-nature's own larder stocked with her choicest supplies. But if,
attempting the mountain when they did, the Parker-Browne party had
remained two or three days longer in the Grand Basin, which they would
assuredly have done had their food been eatable, their bodies would be
lying up there yet or would be crushed beneath the debris of the
earthquake on the ridge.

CHAPTER IX

THE NAMES PLACED UPON THE MOUNTAIN BY THE AUTHOR

There was no intent of putting names at all upon any portions of this
mountain when the expedition was undertaken, save that the author had it
in his mind to honor the memory of a very noble and very notable
gentlewoman who gave ten years of her life to the Alaskan natives, set
on foot one of the most successful educational agencies in the interior,
and died suddenly and heroically at her post of duty a few years since,
leaving a broad and indelible mark upon the character of a generation of
Indians. Miss Farthing lies buried high up on the bluffs opposite the
school at Nenana, in a spot she was wont to visit for the fine view of
Denali it commands, and her brother, the present bishop of Montreal, and
some of her colleagues of the Alaskan mission, have set a concrete cross
there. When we entered the Alaskan range by Cache Creek there rose
directly before us a striking pyramidal peak, some twelve or thirteen
thousand feet high. Not knowing that any name had been bestowed upon it,
the author discharged himself of the duty that he conceived lay upon him
of associating Miss Farthing's name permanently with the mountain range
she loved and the country in which she labored. But he has since learned
that Professor Parker placed upon this mountain, a year before, the name
of Alfred Brooks, of the Alaskan Geological Survey. Apart from the
priority of naming, to which, of course, he would immediately yield, the
author knows of no one whose name should so fitly be placed upon a peak
of the Alaskan range, and he would himself resist any effort to change
it.

Having gratified this desire, as he supposed, there had meantime arisen
another desire,--upon reading the narrative of the Parker-Browne
expedition of the previous year, a copy of which we were fortunate
enough to procure just as we were starting for the mountain. It was the
feeling of our whole company that the names of Professor Parker and Mr.
Belmore Browne should be associated with the mountain they so very
nearly ascended.

When the eyes ar