speeded the
parting guest, which on the trail is certainly an essential part of true
hospitality, with all the honours; the natives lined up on the bank and
the younger ones running along with us for a few hundred yards.

[Sidenote: THE JADE MOUNTAINS]

Soon after we left the mission we went up a series of terraces to a
desolate, barren, wind-swept flat, the portage across which cut off a
great bend of the river and saved us many miles of travel. To our right
rose the Jade Mountains, whence the supply of this stone which used to
be of importance for arrow-heads and other implements was obtained and
carried far and wide. A light crust on the snow broke through at every
step, though the snow was not deep enough and the ground too uneven to
make snow-shoes useful; so we all had more or less sore feet that night
when we regained the river and made our camp near the mouth of the
Ambler, another tributary from the north.

The next day was an exceedingly long, tedious day. The Kobuk River,
which in its upper reaches is a very picturesque stream, began now to be
as monotonous as the lower Yukon. It had grown to considerable size, and
the bends to be great curves of many miles at a stretch, one of which,
a decided bend to the north of the general westerly direction of the
river, we were three full hours in passing down. It was while traversing
this bend that we witnessed a singular mirage that lent to the day all
the enlivenment it had. Before us for ten or twelve miles stretched the
broad white expanse of the river bed, shimmering in the mellow sunlight,
and far beyond, remote but clear, rose the sharp white peaks of the
mountains that divide the almost parallel valleys of the Kobuk and the
Noatak. As we travelled, these distant peaks began to take the most
fantastic shapes. They flattened into a level table-land, and then they
shot up into pinnacles and spires. Then they shrank together in the
middle and spread out on top till they looked like great domed
mushrooms. Then the broad convex tops separated themselves entirely from
their stalk-like bases and hung detached in the sky with daylight
underneath. And then these mushroom tops stretched out laterally and
threw up peaks of their own until there were distinct duplicate ranges,
one on the earth and one in the sky. It was fascinating to watch these
whimsical vagaries of nature that went on for hours. A change in one's
own position, from erect to stooping, caused the most co