through that jam
than we had to hew and smash it across to the other side again in our
search for passage.

[Sidenote: "BY THE BACK OF THE FACE"]

Then we came to a place where, in order to cut off a long sweeping curve
of the river with open water and bad shore ice, we went through a dry
slough and had to drag those iron runners over gravel and stones, where
sometimes it was all the three of us could do to move the sled a few
feet at a time. Yet all along the banks were willows, and if we had only
known then what we know now we would have cut down and split some
saplings and bound them over the iron, and so have saved three fourths
of that labour.

[Sidenote: BEAR MEAT AND BEANS]

So the day's run was short, though the most exhausting yet, and we were
all thoroughly tired out when we pitched the tent. I have note of a
great supper of bear meat and beans, the meat the spoil of our friend
the prospector's gun. It is one of the compensations of human nature
that the satisfaction of appetite increases in pleasure in proportion to
the bodily labour that is done. With food abundant and at choice, I do
not like bear meat and will not eat beans. Yet my diary bears special
note of the delicious meal they furnished on this occasion. Put any
philosopher in the traces, or set him ahead of the dog team on
show-shoes, breaking trail all day, and towards evening it is odds that
his mind is not occupied with deep speculations about the infinite and
the absolute, but rather with the question of what he will have for
supper. Particularly should the grub be a little short, should fresh
meat give out, or, above all, should sugar be "shy," it is astonishing
how one's mind runs on eating and what elaborate imaginary repasts one
partakes of. Yet of all food that a man ever eats there is none that is
so relished and gives such clear gustatory pleasure as the plain, rough
fare of the camp--provided it be well cooked. Greatly as we were in need
of sleep, we got little, for the doctor's knee pained him all night and
poor Arthur developed a raging toothache that did not yield until
carbolic acid had been thrice applied.

Soon after we started the next day, the river narrowed and swept round a
series of mountain bluffs and we began to have the gloomiest
expectations of trouble. It seemed certain that ice would fail us for
passage, and we would have to pack our sled and its load by slow relays
over the mountain. But to our delight we passed