il City. It had not been a pleasant evening. Perhaps
the night spent on the _Elmore_, the year before, was, on the whole, a
more disagreeable experience; but, nevertheless, the writer believes it
would require a combination of the genius of Poe and Kipling to paint a
fitting word-picture of that sojourn at Johnson's Camp, on the Neukluk.

The stream was now very high from the rain which had just ceased. The
freighters had their hardest work ahead of them; for the sloughs became
more frequent, the water extended well up to the brush and spruce, and
until we reached a point a few miles below Council there was but little
footing for the dogs. The rest of us, leaving the meanderings of the
river, struck out overland as straight as possible for Council. I caught
some of them eying me like a hawk, and knew that they suspected that I
had a retainer from the gentlemen with whom I had so agreeably passed
the night. Having made a wide detour inland through mossy swamp and
brush, we came to Mystery Creek, which was adorned in places with deep
banks of solid snow and glaciers. This crossed, and having gained the
open, that weird, familiar landscape presented itself--the bleak hills
back of Council, rising to the dignity of mountains, fringed at the base
with a growth of small timber, and approached by a plain of tundra. As
Sam Dunham, in one of his matchless Alaskan poems, with fine
alliteration says:

"We traversed the toe-twisting tundra,
Where reindeer root round for their feed";

and if there is any contrivance of mother earth's which is calculated to
sap man's remaining energy, it is this plodding over the Russian moss,
avoiding the stagnant pools upon its surface, and stepping and reaching
from hassock to hassock,

Sometimes as soggy as sawdust,
More frequently soft as a sponge.

[Mr. Dunham will, I trust, pardon this imitation of his "alliteration's
artful aid."]

Inspired, perhaps, by the nearness of the goal, and possibly by a desire
to show them I could do it, I then proceeded to cut loose from the
"hardy miners"; and, not long afterward, in the cool and sunny forenoon,
stood high on the brow of the precipitous palisades leading into
Council, which looked very attractive in what it promised and in its own
strangely picturesque surroundings. Then followed a hurried descent to
Melsing Creek, a fording of that little tributary, and, now in town, a
search for the edifice which should bear the firm insignia. There i