d to
make a more decisive test. When there remained but one exposure on a
roll of film, the camera was set outdoors at a temperature of 55 deg. below
zero and left for an hour. Then an exposure was made and the film wound
up and withdrawn; while a new film, just brought from the house, was as
quickly as possible inserted in its place and a second exposure made.
The latter was appreciably stronger. Even this test is, of course, not
entirely conclusive; one would have to be quite sure that the emulsions
were identical; but it confirms the writer's impression that extreme
cold slows the film. It would be an easy matter for the manufacturers to
settle this point beyond question in a modern laboratory, and it is
certainly worth doing.

There is much sameness about winter scenes in Alaska, as the reader has
doubtless already remarked; yet the sameness is more due to a lack of
alertness in the photographer than to an absence of variety. If the
traveller had nothing to think about but his camera, if all other
considerations could be subordinated to the securing of negatives, then,
here as elsewhere, the average merit of pictures would be greater.
Sometimes the most interesting scenes occur in the midst of stress of
difficult travel when there is opportunity for no more than a fleeting
recognition of their pictorial interest. "Tight places" often make
attractive pictures, but most commonly do not get made into pictures at
all. The study of the aspects of nature is likely to languish amidst the
severe weather of the Northern winter, and the bright, clear, mild day
gets photographed into undue prominence. Snow is more or less white and
spruce-trees in the mass are more or less black; one dog team is very
like another; a native village has to be known very well, indeed, to be
distinguishable from another native village. Yet there is individuality,
there is distinction, there is variety, there is contrast, if a man have
but the grace to recognise them and the zeal to record them. Snow itself
has infinite variety; trees, all of them, have characters of their own.
Dogs differ as widely as men and Indians as widely as white men.

[Sidenote: INDIANS AND PHOTOGRAPHS]

The fear of the camera, or the dislike of the camera, that used to
affect the native mind is gone now, save, perhaps, in certain remote
quarters, and these interesting people are generally quite willing to
stand still and be snapped. They ask for a print, and upon one's n