ftieth, that
there was little hope of securing a picture; the air was yet faintly
hazy with thin vapour; the early sun made too acute an angle with the
peaks; and the yellow lens screen was left in the hind-sack of the sled.
It was even as I feared. When developed some months later, the film held
absolutely no trace of the mighty mountains that had risen so proudly
before it. I promised myself that at noon, when the sun had removed to a
greater distance from the mountains and made a more favourable angle
with them, I would return and try again; but by noon had come another
sudden, violent change of the weather, and snow was falling once more.

[Sidenote: THE MINCHUMINA FOLK]

So I got no picture, save the picture indelibly impressed upon my
memory, of the noblest mountain scene I had ever gazed upon which made
memorable this 1st of March; perhaps one of the noblest mountain scenes
in the whole world, for one does not recall another so great uplift from
so low a base. The marshy, flat country that stretches from Minchumina
to the mountains cannot be much more than one thousand feet above the
sea. Those awful precipices dropping thousands of feet at a leap, those
peaks rising serene and everlasting into the highest heaven, the
overwhelming size and strength and solidity of their rocky bulk, all
this sank into my heart, and there sprang up once again the passionate
desire of exploring the bowels of them, of creeping along their glaciers
and up their icy ridges, of penetrating their hidden chambers, inviolate
since the foundation of the world, and maybe scaling their ultimate
summits and looking down upon all the earth even as they look down!

Men, however, and not mountains, made the immediate demand upon one's
interest and attention, and I returned to breakfast and the duties of
the day. The Minchumina people are a very feeble folk, some sixteen all
told at the time of our visit, greatly reduced by the epidemics of the
last decade, living remote from all others on the verge of their race's
habitat. They trade chiefly at Tanana, a hundred and thirty miles or so
away, walking an annual trip thither with their furs, and owning a
nominal allegiance to our mission at that place. It was the first time
that any clergyman had ever visited them, and the whole of the day was
spent with them, discovering what they knew and trying to teach them a
little more. The people sat around on the floor and hung upon the lips
of the interpre