nother day
of twenty-five miles of flats brought us to Knight's comfortable
road-house and ranch on the Toklat, a tributary of the Kantishna, the
only road-house this trail can now support. Several times during these
two days we had clear glimpses of the great mountain we were
approaching, and as we came out of the flat country, the "Sheephills," a
foot-hill range of Denali, much broken and deeply sculptured, rose
picturesquely before us. Our travel was now almost altogether on
"overflow" ice, upon the surface of swift streams that freeze solidly
over their riffles and shallows and thus deny passage under the ice to
the water of fountains and springs that never ceases flowing. So it
bursts forth and flows _over_ the ice with a continually renewing
surface of the smoothest texture. Carrying a mercurial barometer that
one dare not intrust to a sled on one's back over such footing is a
somewhat precarious proceeding, but there was no alternative, and many
miles were thus passed. Up the Toklat, then up its Clearwater Fork, then
up its tributary, Myrtle Creek, to its head, and so over a little divide
and down Willow Creek, we went, and from that divide and the upper
reaches of the last-named creek had fine, clear views not only of Denali
but of Denali's Wife as well, now come much nearer and looming much
larger.

[Illustration: One of the abandoned mining towns in the Kantishna.]

[Sidenote: The Faces of the Mountain]

But here it may be stated once for all that the view which this face of
the mountains presents is never a satisfying one. The same is true in
even greater degree of the southern face, all photographs agreeing with
all travellers as to its tameness. There is only one face of the Denali
group that is completely satisfying, that is adequate to the full
picturesque potentiality of a twenty-thousand-foot elevation. The writer
has seen no other view, no other aspect of it, comparable to that of the
northwest face from Lake Minchumina. There the two mountains rise side
by side, sheer, precipitous, pointed rocks, utterly inaccessible,
savage, and superb. The rounded shoulders, the receding slopes and
ridges of the other faces detract from the uplift and from the dignity,
but the northwestern face is stark.

One more run, of much the same character as the previous day, and we
were at Eureka, in the heart of the Kantishna country, on Friday, 21st
March, being Good Friday.

We arrived there at noon and "called it a