w, where the stiffest pull had been, was a
claw from a dog's foot frozen into bloody snow.

So far as there is anything heroic about the Alaskan trail, the
mail-carriers are the real heroes. They must start out in all weathers,
at all temperatures; they have a certain specified time in which to make
their trips and they must keep within that time or there is trouble. The
bordering country of the Canadian Yukon has a more humane government
than ours. There neither mail-carrier nor any one else, save in some
life-or-death emergency, with licence from the Northwest Mounted Police,
may take out horse or dogs to start a journey when the temperature is
lower than 45 deg. below zero; but I have seen a reluctant mail-carrier
chased out at 60 deg. below zero, on pain of losing his job, on the American
side. Moreover, between the seasons, when travel on the rivers is
positively dangerous to life, the mail must still be despatched and
received, although so great is the known risk to the mail, as well as to
the carrier, that no one will send any letter that he cares at all about
reaching its destination until the trails are established or the
steamboats run. But the virtually empty pouches must be transported from
office to office through the running, or over the rotting ice, just the
same, on pain of the high displeasure and penalty of a department
without brains and without bowels. I have often wished since I came to
Alaska that I could be postmaster-general for one week, and so I suppose
has almost every other resident of the country.

The week following my arrival at Tanana was a solid week of cold
weather, the thermometer ranging around 50 deg. and 60 deg. below zero, and that
means keeping pretty close to the house. Even the sentries at the army
post are withdrawn and the protection of the garrison is confided to a
man who watches the grounds from a glass-walled cupola above the
headquarters building. Yet a week of confinement and inaction grows
tiresome after life in the open.

Sunday is always a busy day here. The mission and native village are
three miles away from the town, and service must be held at both. The
mission at Tanana is not a happy place to visit for one who has the
welfare of the natives at heart. Despite faithful and devoted effort to
check it, the demoralisation goes on apace and the outlook is dark.

[Sidenote: SINGLE MEN IN BARRACKS]

"Single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints," we are tol