ind of match, and the blocks
may be freely carried in any as they are commonly carried in every
pocket without fear of accidental ignition. The only fire producer that
it is worth while supplementing the sulphur match with is the even
older-fashioned flint and steel, which to a man who smokes is a
convenience in a wind. All the modern alcohol and gasoline pocket
devices are extinguished by the lightest puff of wind, but the tinder,
once ignited, burns the fiercer for the blast. With dry, shredded
birch-bark I have made a fire upon occasion from the flint and steel.
One resource may here be mentioned, since we are on the subject, which
is always carried in the hind-sack of my sled against difficulty in fire
making. It is a tin tobacco-box filled with strips of cotton cloth cut
to the size of the box and the whole saturated with kerosene. One or two
of these strips will help very greatly in kindling a fire when damp
twigs or shavings are all that are at hand. A few camphor balls (the
ordinary "moth balls") will serve equally well; and there may come a
time, on any long journey, when the forethought that has provided such
aid will be looked back upon with very great satisfaction.

* * * * *

The mail trail from Tanana to Fairbanks touches the Tanana River only at
one point, a few miles beyond the Hot Springs; but, as we wished to
visit Nenana, we had to leave the mail trail after two days more of
uneventful travel and strike out to the river and over its surface for
seventeen or eighteen miles.

[Sidenote: A NOTABLE GENTLEWOMAN]

Nenana is a native village situated on the left bank of the Tanana, a
little above the confluence of the Nenana River with that stream, and we
have established an important and flourishing school there which
receives its forty pupils from many points on the Yukon and Tanana
Rivers. None but thoroughly sound and healthy children of promise, full
natives or half-breeds, are received at the school, and we seek to give
both boys and girls opportunity for the cultivation of the native arts
and for some of the white man's industrial training, in addition to the
ordinary work of the schoolroom. The school was started and had the good
fortune of its first four years' life under the care of a notable
gentlewoman, Miss Annie Cragg Farthing, who was yet at its head at the
time of this visit, but who died suddenly, a martyr to her devotion to
the children, a year later; and