hither and thither when open stretches are crossed; no more three
times back and forth to beat the snow down--twenty miles a day instead
of ten or twelve--the boys' trail meant all that to us. And our trail
meant almost as much to them. So we were rejoiced to see them, sturdy
youths of sixteen or seventeen, making the journey all by themselves. My
heart goes out to these adventurous Kobuks, amiable, light-hearted,
industrious; keen hunters, following the mountain-sheep far up where the
Indian will not go; adepts in all the wilderness arts; heirs of the
uncharted arctic wastes, and occupying their heritage. If I were not a
white man I would far rather be one of these nomadic inland Esquimaux
than any other native I know of.

That same day we crossed two headwater forks of the Kokochatna, as the
Kobuks call it, or the Hogatzitna as the Koyukuks call it, or the Hog
River, as the white men call it, a tributary of the Koyukuk that comes
in about one hundred and fifty miles below the Alatna. As we came down a
steep descent to the little east fork, it showed so picturesque and
attractive, with clumps of fine open timber on an island, that it
remains in my mind one of the many places from the Grand Canon of the
Colorado almost to the Grand Canon of the Noatak, where I should like to
have a lodge in the vast wilderness.

We had but crossed the west fork when we knew that we were close to the
watershed between the Kobuk and the Koyukuk, between the streams that
fall into Kotzebue Sound and those that fall by the Koyukuk and the
Yukon Rivers into Bering Sea; and because it seemed a capital geographic
feature, it was disappointing that it was so inconspicuous. Indeed, we
were not sure which of two ridges was the actual divide. Beyond those
ridges there was no question, for the ground sloped down to Lake
Noyutak, a body of water some three and a half miles in length and of
varying breadth that drains into the Kobuk. Here in a cabin we found
three more young Kobuks, and spent the night, getting our first view of
the Kobuk River next day, not from an eminence, as I had hoped, but only
as we came down a bank through thick timber and opened suddenly upon it.
By the pedometer I made the portage forty-six miles.

[Sidenote: THE KOBUK RIVER]

The upper Kobuk is a picturesque river, the timber being especially
large and handsome for interior Alaska. We reached it just above the
mouth of the Reed River, tributary from the north. The weat