gest and most faithful of the
bunch. One's heart goes out to them with gratitude and love--old
"Lingo," "Nig," "Snowball," "Wolf," and "Doc"--as one realises what
loyal, cheerful service they give.

[Sidenote: VIOLENT FLUCTUATIONS]

Arthur was so unwell with a violent cold and cough, that had been
growing worse for a couple of days, that I decided on two things: to
leave him in the tent while I snow-shoed ahead the next day, and to send
back the boy I had brought from the mission to secure a fresh supply of
food; for the back trail was, of course, comparatively easy. Arthur's
condition threatened pneumonia, to my notion, and I believe he was saved
from an attack of that disease which is so often fatal in this country
by long rubbing all over the neck and the chest with a remedy that was
new then--a menthol balm. I have used it again and again since and I am
now never without it. A second application made in the morning, I
started out, show-shoeing up the long hill and then down into the flat,
and so to the mail-carrier's little hut that is reached under good
conditions of trail the first day from Moses' Village, and then back
again to the tent. That day a tendon in my right leg behind the knee
became increasingly troublesome, and in climbing the hill on the return
was acutely painful. I recognised it as "mal-de-raquet," well known in
the Northwest, where the snow is commonly much deeper than in Alaska,
and I found relief in the application of the same analgesic menthol balm
that I was rejoiced to find had wrought a great improvement in Arthur's
condition.

Meanwhile the warm weather of the past three or four days was over and
another period of violent fluctuations of temperature similar to that
around Christmastide was upon us. We went to bed with the thermometer at
10 deg. below zero and were wakened by the cold at two in the morning to
find it at 40 deg. below, so we had to keep a fire going the rest of the
night; for as soon as the fire in the stove goes out a tent becomes just
as cold as outdoors.

We moved forward the next morning, but the trail we had broken was too
narrow and had to be widened, which meant one snow-shoe in the deep snow
all the time, a very fatiguing process that brought into painful play
again the tendon strained with five days' heavy snow-shoeing.

The temperature was around 40 deg. below all day, and our progress was so
slow that it was not easy to keep warm, and the dogs whined at the
i