ady. The next day we advanced
the camp so far as the trail was broken. A moose had used the trail for
some distance, however, since the boys left it, and his great plunging
hoofs had torn up the snow worse than a horse would have done.

A driving wind and heavy snowfall had drifted the new trail in the night
so badly, moreover, that we were not able to cover the full stretch
that had been snow-shoed, but camped in the dusk after we had gone eight
miles. Eight miles in two days was certainly very poor travel, and at
this rate our supplies would never take us down to the forks of the
Kuskokwim. Yet there was no other way in which we could proceed. The
weather was exceedingly mild, too mild for comfort--the thermometer
ranging from 20 deg. to 25 deg. above--and the dogs felt the unseasonable
warmth. It took us all that week to make the watershed between the
drainage of the Tanana and the drainage of the Kuskokwim, a point about
half-way to Lake Minchumina. One day trail was broken, the next day the
loads went forward. Tie the dogs as securely as one would, it was not
safe to go off and leave our supplies exposed to the ravages that a
broken chain or a slipped collar might bring, so two went forward and I
sat down in camp. The boys on their return usually brought with them a
few brace of ptarmigan or grouse or spruce hen or, at the least, a
rabbit or so.

[Sidenote: THE CAMP-ROBBERS]

The camp-robbers, to my mind the most interesting of Alaskan birds,
became very friendly and tame on these vigils. They stay in the country
all the winter, when most birds have migrated, like prosperous mine
owners, to less rigorous climates; they turn up everywhere, in the most
mysterious way, so soon as one begins to make any preparation for
camping, and they are bold and fearless and take all sorts of chances.
On this journey more than once they alighted on a moving sled and pecked
at the dried fish that happened to be exposed. Yet they are so alert and
so quick in their movements that it would be difficult to catch them
were they actually under one's hand. One of them, during a long day in
camp, grew so tame that it pecked crumbs off the toe of my moccasin, and
in another day or two would, one feels sure, have eaten out of the hand.
There is a curious belief, strongly intrenched in the Alaskan mind, that
the nest of this most common bird has never been found, and that the
Smithsonian Institution has a standing offer of a large sum of mon