morning instead of at two as we had planned. This gave us insufficient
time to make the day's march before the sun softened the snow, and
moccasins grew wet, and snow-shoe strings began to stretch, and the
webbing underfoot to yield and sag--and we had to content ourselves with
half a stage. By nine P. M. we were off again and did pretty well until
the night grew so dark that we could no longer distinguish our
landmarks. Then we went to the bank and built a big fire and made a pot
of tea and sat and dozed around it for a couple of hours or so until the
brief darkness of Alaskan spring was overpast, and the dawn began to
give light enough to see our way again.

When our course lay on the open river, the snow had crust enough to hold
us upon our snow-shoes; but when it took us through little sheltered
sloughs, the crust was too thin and we broke through all the time, and
that makes slow, painful travel. At last we came to a portage that cuts
off a number of miles, but the snow slope by which the top of the bank
should be reached had a southern exposure and was entirely melted and
gone. The dogs had to be unhitched, the sled to be unloaded, the stuff
packed in repeated journeys up the steep bank, and the sled hauled up
with a rope. Then came the repacking and reloading and the rehitching;
and when the portage was crossed the same thing had to be done to get
down to the river bed again. Twice more on that day the process was gone
through, and each time it took nigh an hour to get up the bank, so that
it was around noon, and the snow miserably wet and mushy again, when we
reached Beaver and went to bed at the only road-house between Fort Yukon
and Tanana.

"Beaver City" owes its existence to quartz prospects in the Chandalar,
in which men of money and influence in the East were interested. The
Alaska Road Commission had built a trail some years before from the
Chandalar diggings out to the Yukon, striking the river at this point,
and on the opposite side of the river another trail is projected and
"swamped out" direct to Fairbanks. The opening up of this route was
expected to bring much travel through Beaver, and a town site was staked
and many cabins built. But "Chandalar quartz" remains an interesting
prospect, and the Chandalar placers have not proved productive, and all
but a few of the cabins at "Beaver City" are unoccupied. If "the
Chandalar" should ever make good, "Beaver City" will be its river port.

[Sidenote: L