period awaiting me. The distance covered was about
twenty-two hundred miles, three fourths of it on foot, more than half of
it on snow-shoes. At Chena I had called up the hospital at Fairbanks on
the telephone, and the exchange operator had immediately recognised my
voice and bidden me welcome; but when I reached Fairbanks, a light beard
that I had suffered to grow during the winter made me unrecognisable by
those who knew me best. So effectually does a beard disguise a man and
so surely may his voice identify him.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] This was written before the writer learned the superior protection
afforded by _amber_ glass.

CHAPTER VI

THE "FIRST ICE"--AN AUTUMN ADVENTURE ON THE KOYUKUK

IT is not attempted in this narrative to give separate account of all
the journeys with which it deals. That would involve much repetition and
tedious detail. Our long journey has been described from start to
finish, taking the reader far north of the Yukon, then almost to the
extreme west of Alaska, and then round by the Yukon to mid-Alaska again.
It is proposed now to give sketches of such parts of other journeys as
do not cover the same ground, and they will lie, with one exception,
south of the Yukon. While visiting many of the same points every winter,
it has been within the author's good fortune and contrivance to include
each year some new stretch of country, sometimes searching out and
visiting a new tribe of natives, and blazing the way for the
establishment of permanent missionary work amongst them. To these
initial journeys belongs a zest that no subsequent travels in the same
region ever have; there is a keen interest in what every new turn of a
trail shall bring, every new bend of a river; there is eagerness rising
with one's rising steps to excitement for the view from a new mountain
pass; above all, there is deep satisfaction coupled with a sense of
solemn responsibility in being the first to reach some remote band of
Indians and preach to them the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There
are few men nowadays on the North American continent to whom that
privilege remains.

A period of nearly three years elapses between the beginning of the
journey that has already been described and the short sketch of a
journey that follows. Many things had happened in those three years. It
had been the happy duty of the writer to return to the Koyukuk late in
the winter of 1906-7, empowered to build the promised mission for