ge. This is set down here chiefly because it was the
first and only time in all his travels in Alaska that the writer heard
such language in such presence.

[Illustration: THE END OF THE PORTAGE TRAIL.]

[Illustration: ROUGH ICE ON THE YUKON.]

Another road-house was kept by a man who had been cook upon a recent
arctic expedition off the coast of Alaska, and he gave some interesting
inside information about an enterprise the published narrative of which
had always seemed unsatisfactory. It was just gossip from a drunken
scamp, but it filled several gaps in the book.

As we approached the Yukon we passed several meat caches where great
quarters of beef sewn up in burlap were piled on the side of the trail.
At one of these caches the camp-robbers had been at work industriously.
They had stripped the burlap from parts of several quarters, exposing
the fat, and had dug out and carried it away little by little until it
was all gone. The hard-frozen lean probably defied their best efforts;
at any rate, the fat offered less resistance. But where else in the
world could men dump quarters of beef beside the road and go off and
leave them for weeks with no more danger of depredation than the bills
of birds can effect?

A few miles from the river the rival road-house signs began to appear.
"Patronise Lewis; he cut this trail at his own expense," pleaded one.
"Why go five miles out of your way," sneered another. Lewis's
road-house _is_ across the wide Yukon, and there was no point in
crossing the river save one's determination to lend no countenance to
the spitefulness of these mail runners. So across the river we went and
were glad to be on the Yukon again. The next morning we encountered the
same rival signs at the point where the trail from Lewis's joined the
"mail trail."

[Sidenote: "TREASURE ISLAND"]

Most of our travelling was now upon the surface of the Yukon, and four
hundred and fifty miles of it stretched ahead of us ere our winter's
travel should end at Fort Yukon. Four hours brought us to the military
telegraph station at Melozi, and we were able to send word ahead that we
were safely out of the Kuskokwim wilderness. Then a portage was crossed
and then the river pursued again until with about thirty miles to our
credit we made camp. The days were lengthening out now, the weather
growing mild, although a keen, cold, down-river breeze was rarely
absent, and travel began to be pleasant and camping no hardship. We