little patches of scattering spruce, had great trouble in finding the
trail at all.

At last we could find it no longer, and when there was no hope of
reaching the cabin that night we made a camp. We had now no tent or
stove with us, so a "Siwash camp" in the open was the best we could do,
and a wet, miserable camp it was. By inexcusable carelessness on my
part, candles had been altogether forgotten in the replenishing of the
supplies, and a little piece an inch long which we found loose in the
grub box was all that we possessed. Dogs and men alike exhausted with
the long day's sweating struggle through the deep snow, sleep should
have come soundly and soon. It did to the rest, but I lay awake the
night through. The easy, riding travel of the preceding week had been a
poor preparation for to-day's incessant toil, and I was too tired to
sleep. In the morning our bedding was covered with a couple of inches
of new snow. My companion got up at daylight and made a journey of
investigation ahead, following the trail better, but not finding the
cabin. We had thought ourselves within a mile or two of it, but
evidently were farther away. However, when we had eaten a hasty
breakfast and hitched up and had gone along the trail that had been
broken that morning to its end, ten yards beyond the place where my
companion had turned back, we came in sight of the cabin, and there we
lay and rested and dried things out all day and spent the next night.
During the day there came a team from Kaltag, and once again we enjoyed
the delight of receiving, and at the same time conferring, the richest
gift and greatest possible benefit to the traveller--a trail.

[Sidenote: THE YUKON ONCE MORE]

The next evening as it drew towards dark, after another day of soft,
warm disagreeable travel, we reached the end of the portage, and the
broad white Yukon stretched before us once more. Our hearts leaped up
and I think the dogs' hearts leaped up also at the sight. I called to
Nanook as we stopped on the bank, "Nanook, there's the good old Yukon
again!" and he lifted his voice in that intelligent, significant bark
that surely meant that he saw and understood. We had left the Yukon on
the 15th of December at Fort Yukon; we reached it again on the 23d of
March at Kaltag, more than six hundred miles lower down. We had two
hundred and fifty miles of travel on its surface before us, and then
close to another two hundred and fifty up the Tanana River to Fair