dful of natives on the Sushitna River, who
never approach nearer than a hundred miles to the mountain, have another
name for it. They call it _Traleika_, which, in their wholly different
language, has the same signification. It is probably true of every great
mountain that it bears diverse native names as one tribe or another, on
this side or on that of its mighty bulk, speaks of it. But the area in
which, and the people by whom, this mountain is known as Denali,
preponderate so greatly as to leave no question which native name it
should bear. The bold front of the mountain is so placed on the
returning curve of the Alaskan range that from the interior its snows
are visible far and wide, over many thousands of square miles; and the
Indians of the Tanana and of the Yukon, as well as of the Kuskokwim,
hunt the caribou well up on its foot-hills. Its southern slopes are
stern and forbidding through depth of snow and violence of glacial
stream, and are devoid of game; its slopes toward the interior of the
country are mild and amene, with light snowfall and game in abundance.

Should the reader ever be privileged, as the author was a few years ago,
to stand on the frozen surface of Lake Minchumina and see these
mountains revealed as the clouds of a passing snow-storm swept away, he
would be overwhelmed by the majesty of the scene and at the same time
deeply moved with the appropriateness of the simple native names; for
simplicity is always a quality of true majesty. Perhaps nowhere else in
the world is so abrupt and great an uplift from so low a base. The
marshes and forests of the upper Kuskokwim, from which these mountains
rise, cannot be more than one thousand five hundred feet above the sea.
The rough approximation by the author's aneroid in the journey from the
Tanana to the Kuskokwim would indicate a still lower level--would make
this wide plain little more than one thousand feet high. And they rise
sheer, the tremendous cliffs of them apparently unbroken, soaring
superbly to more than twenty thousand and seventeen thousand feet
respectively: Denali, "the great one," and Denali's Wife. And the little
peaks in between the natives call the "children." It was on that
occasion, standing spellbound at the sublimity of the scene, that the
author resolved that if it were in his power he would restore these
ancient mountains to the ancient people among whom they rear their
heads. Savages they are, if the reader please, since "sa