o the sled. It was fortunate
that amidst the equipment on the launch were two pairs of ice-creepers.
Without them any sort of pulling and pushing on the glare ice would have
been impossible.

We soon found that the bend in which we had frozen was no sort of index
of the general condition of the river. Much of it was still wide open,
and every elbow between bends was piled high with rough ice from
pressure jams. There was shore ice, however, even in the open bends,
along which we were able to creep; and, though the ice-jams gave
considerable trouble, yet we did very well the first day and camped at
dark with eighteen or nineteen miles to our credit, in the presence of a
great, red, smoky sunset and a glorious alpenglow on a distant snow
mountain.

The next day was full of risks and difficulties. We were to learn more
about the varieties and vagaries of ice on that journey than many
winters' travel on older ice would teach.

[Illustration: THE START OVER THE "FIRST ICE."]

[Illustration: "ROUGH GOING."]

[Sidenote: THE START]

At times, for a few hundred yards, the sled would glide with little
effort over smooth, polished ice; then would come a long sand-bar, the
side of which we had to hug close, and the ice upon it was what is
called "shell-ice," through several layers of which we broke at every
step. As the river fell, each night had left a thin sheet of ice
underneath the preceding night's ice, and the foot crashed through the
layers and the sled runners cut through them down to the gravel and sand
at the bottom. Then would come another smooth stretch on which we made
good time. But as we advanced up the river the current was swifter and
swifter and the ice conditions grew steadily worse. Here was a steep-cut
bank with just about eighteen or twenty inches of ice adhering to it and
the black, rushing water beyond. We must either get our load along that
shelf or unload the sled and pack everything over the face of a rocky
bluff. Arthur passed over it first, testing gently with the axe, and
found it none too strong. But the alternative was so toilsome that we
resolved to take the chance. The doctor put the trace over his
shoulders, Arthur took the handle-bars, while I climbed to a ledge of
the rocks and, with a rope made of a pair of camel's-hair puttees
unwound for the purpose and fastened to the sled, took all the weight I
could and eased the sled over the worst place where the ice sloped to
the water. If the i