aska is so remote," said the Travelling Priest, as if in apology for
popular ignorance, "and people think of it so... inadequately, shall we
say? In trying to explain the conditions up here, I have my chief
difficulty in making them realise the great distances we have to cover.
You tell them that in the Indian tongue Alaska means "the great
country," they smile, and think condescendingly of savage imagery. It
is vain to say we have an area of six hundred thousand square miles. We
talk much in these days of education; but few men and no women can
count! Our Eastern friends get some idea of what we mean, when we tell
them Alaska is bigger than all the Atlantic States from Maine to
Louisiana with half of great Texas thrown in. With a coast-line of
twenty six thousand miles, this Alaska of ours turns to the sea a
greater frontage than all the shores of all the United States combined.
It extends so far out towards Asia that it carries the dominions of the
Great Republic as far west of San Francisco as New York is east of it,
making California a central state. I try to give Europeans some idea of
it by saying that if you add England, Ireland, and Scotland together,
and to that add France, and to that add Italy, you still lack enough to
make a country the size of Alaska. I do not speak of our mountains,
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen thousand feet high, and our Yukon,
flowing for more than two thousand miles through a country almost
virgin still."

"You travel about up here a good deal?"

"He travels _all_ ze time. He will not rest," said Father Brachet as
one airing an ancient grievance.

"Yes, I will rest now--a little. I have been eight hundred miles over
the ice, with dogs, since January 1."

The Boy looked at him with something very like reverence. Here was a
man who could give you tips!

"You have travelled abroad, too," the Colonel rather stated than asked.

"I spent a good deal of my youth in France and Germany."

"Educated over there?"

"Well, I am a Johns Hopkins man, but I may say I found my education in
Rome. Speaking of education"--he turned to the other priests--"I have
greatly advanced my grammar since we parted." Father Brachet answered
with animation in French, and the conversation went forward for some
minutes in that tongue. The discussion was interrupted to introduce the
other new face, at the bottom of the table, to the Big Chimney men:
"Resident Fazzer Roget of ze Kuskoquim mission."

"That is t