he set out for the Black Hills, to return East broke and to
write _The Claim Jumpers_ and _The Westerners_. He followed Roosevelt into
Africa, _The Land of Footprints_ and of _Simba_. He has, more recently,
seen service in France as a Major in the U. S. Field Artillery. Though
(certainly) no Ishmael, he has for years been a wanderer upon the face of
the earth, observant and curious of the arresting and strange--and his
novels and short stories mark a journey such as but few have gone upon, a
trailing of rainbows, a search for gold beyond the further hills and a
finding of those campfires (left behind when Mr. Kipling's _Explorer_
crossed the ranges beyond the edge of cultivation) round which the
resolute sit to swap lies while the tenderfoot makes a fair--and
forced--pretence at belief."

=ii=

Spring, 1922, having advanced to that stage where one could feel
confidence that summer would follow--a confidence one cannot always feel
in March--a short letter came from Mr. White. He enclosed two photographs.
One of them showed a trim-looking man with eyeglasses and moustache,
sitting shirt-sleeved in a frail-looking craft. The letter explained that
this was a collapsible canvas boat. My deduction was that the picture had
been taken before the boat collapsed.

There was also a picture of another and much sturdier boat. I think the
name Seattle was painted on her stern. She lay on a calm surface that
stretched off to a background of towering mountains--Lake Louise Inlet.
The much sturdier boat, I understood, was also the property of S. E.
White.

[Illustration: STEWART EDWARD WHITE]

The letter made all these things very clear. It said: "Fifteen tons, fifty
feet, sleeps five, thirty-seven horsepower, heavy duty engine, built
sea-going, speed nine knots. No phonograph! No wine cellar.

"We are going north, that is all the plans we have. We two are all there
are on board, though we are thinking of getting a cat. On second thought,
here is the crew in the canvas boat we carry to the inland lakes to fish
from. Her name is the _Wreckless_; be careful how you spell it."

As stated, the crew in the about-to-collapse boat was Stewart Edward
White. On his way north it was his intention to revise what will be, in
his judgment, the most important novel he has written. But I must not say
anything about that yet. Let me say something, rather, about his new book
which you who read this have a more immediate prospect of enjoying. _On