reread Pepys's _Diary_ and the year before much
of the _Decline and Fall_. Certain places are for ever associated in my
mind with the rereading of certain old books. The Chandalar River is to
me as much the scene of _Lorna Doone_, which I read for the sixth or
seventh time on my first journey along it, as Exmoor itself; and _The
Cloister and the Hearth_, that noble historical romance, belongs in my
literary geography to the Alatna-Kobuk portage. So will Boswell always
bring back to me this trip across country from the Koyukuk to the Yukon
through the deep snow.

The boys came back after dark, having broken some nine miles of trail
and having suffered a good deal from the cold. I had supper cooked, and
when that was done and the dogs fed we fell to reading the Gospels and
Epistles for the Epiphany season, the boys reading aloud by turns. The
all-day fire had warmed the little hut thoroughly, and despite the cold
outside we were snug and comfortable within.

[Sidenote: SEVENTY BELOW ZERO]

That night the thermometer touched 70 deg. below zero, within 2 deg. of the
greatest cold I have recorded in seven years' winter travel; a greater
cold, I believe, than any arctic expedition has ever recorded, for it is
in a continental climate like Siberia or interior Alaska, and not in the
marine climate around the North Pole, that the thermometer falls lowest.

Save for an hour or two getting wood, we all lay close next day, for the
temperature at noon was no higher than 64 deg. below. It is impossible to
break trail at such temperature, or to travel as slowly as we were
travelling. In the strong cold one must travel fast if one travel at
all. Indeed, it is distinctly dangerous to be outdoors. As soon as one
leaves the hut the cold smites one in the face like a mailed fist. The
expiration of the breath makes a crackling sound, due, one judges, to
the sudden congealing of the moisture that is expelled. From every
cranny of the cabin a stream of smoke-like vapour pours into the air,
giving the appearance that the house is on fire within. However warmly
hands and feet may be clad, one cannot stand still for a minute without
feeling the heat steadily oozing out and the cold creeping in.

Notwithstanding the weather, that evening the mail came along, the
white man who is the carrier, two tall, strong natives, and nine dogs.
Only since descending to the flat had they suffered from the cold, for
they found as great a difference as we d