ruce, the prevailing wood, is black in the mass at a
little distance. Gaze where one will, there is naught but black and
white. The eye becomes tired of the monotony and longs for some warmer
tone. That is surely the reason why all those who live in the country
cherish some gay article of attire, why the natives love brilliant
handkerchiefs, why the white man also will choose a crimson scarf.
Trudging at the handle-bars, I have found pleasure in the red pompons of
the dogs' harness, in the gay beading of mitten and hind-sack. And that
is why a lavish feast of colour such as this dawn stirs one's spirit
with such keen delight. It gives life to a dead world.

But the wind is still bitter and interferes sadly with one's enjoyment.
All through the valley, up the creek by which we leave it, past the twin
lakes on the low summit, the wind grows in force, and when we leave
Slate Creek for the present and make a "portage" over a mountain
shoulder to strike the creek again much lower down, the wind has risen
to a gale that overturns the toboggans and makes the men fight for their
footing. The actual physical labour of it is enormous, and there can be
no rest; it is too bitterly cold in that blast to stop. For a mile or
two we struggle and slave to beat our way around that mountain shoulder
and then drop down to the creek again. The blessed relief it is to get
out of the fury of that wind into the comparative shelter of the creek,
to be done with the ceaseless toil of holding the heavy toboggans from
hurtling down the hillside, to be able to keep one's feet without
continually slipping and falling on the wind-hardened snow, no words can
adequately convey. We are all frozen again a little; this man's nose is
touched, that man's cheeks, and the other man's finger.

[Sidenote: THE KOYUKUK GOLD CAMP]

On the middle fork of the Koyukuk, at the mouth of Slate Creek, Coldfoot
sits within a cirque of rugged mountain peaks, the most northerly postal
town in the interior of Alaska, the most northerly gold-mining town in
the world, as it claims. It sprang into existence in 1900 and flourished
for a season or two with the usual accompaniments of such florification.
In 1906 it was already much decayed, and is now dead. Ever since its
start the Koyukuk camp has steadily produced gold and given occupation
to miners numbering from one hundred and fifty to three hundred, but the
scene of operations, and therefore the depot for supplies, has
con