l of ten pounds of blubber and feels a better man. By imitative methods
the white man survives the awful cold and the pitiless conditions.

To Angela it seemed that every single discomfort to which human life was
subject was epitomized in these appalling wastes. The ice was yet new and
river trails were unsafe. Day after day they plowed through the deep snow,
ever Northward, with the wind in their teeth, and the sun but a mere
spectre mounting the horizon, with an effort, to sink again but a few
hours later. The dogs frightened her. They were fierce, untamed brutes who
snarled at each other and fought on occasion, until the stinging lash
descended on their thick coats to remind them of the terrible master
behind the sled. She came to see how necessary was the whip. They
responded to that and that alone. Some of them were half wolf--creatures
that were the result of inter-breeding on the part of Athabaskan Indians.
Like their wolf parent their energy was immense. They ate but twice
daily--enormous meals of pulped fish and nondescript material which filled
two of the sacks on the sled.

They camped on bleak mountains and along frozen creeks. In the latter case
Jim made double use of the camp-fire. Before retiring into the snow-banked
tent for the night the fire was heaped high with branches. In the morning
the thawed ground beneath it was excavated and washed with snow-water,
lest it harbor the much desired red mineral.

Muck! Always muck! It seemed to her amazing that he should continue this
heartbreaking quest. Much as she had prized the things that money could
buy, she began to hate it now. As they penetrated farther North, so the
conditions grew more appalling. No longer the sun mounted the horizon.
Night and day were much the same thing--a mysterious luminiferousness,
merging into the fantastic lights of the great Aurora Borealis, that
occasionally leapt across the Northern sky in spectrumatic beauty, to
flicker and die, and rise again.

Day after day the journey went on. The ice being now strong, they skimmed
across rivers and creeks, raising the snow in clouds and "switchbacking"
over hummocks in a fashion that under other conditions might have been
exhilarating. Then came the monotonous digging and washing, with its
inevitable unsuccessful issue.

Striking the Yukon River at the "flats"--where it is reputed to be thirty
miles wide--they followed its course for three weary days, until Fort
Yukon was passed and