ed regions a
smouldering match dropped by a careless miner often sets hundreds of
square miles of timber ablaze. As the natives are also constantly
clearing and burning the woods for cultivation, the air was seldom
entirely clear, and often so thick as to cause irritation in the eyes,
especially after suffering, as most of us had, from snow blindness and
incipient ophthalmia. On still, sultry days the pain resulting from
smoke and the glare off the river was almost as severe as that which I
had experienced in the Arctic. Mosquitoes now attacked us in myriads,
and the heat was insupportable, but the cooler air of the upper deck was
rendered unattainable by showers of sparks which constantly issued from
the funnels of the hard-driven _Hannah_.

At Eagle City, consisting of about thirty log-huts, we reached for the
first time the end of a telegraph wire,[75] and I was able to cable home
the safe arrival in Alaska of the Expedition; and none too soon, for the
total loss of the latter had already been reported in London. How this
baseless rumour was spread remains a mystery, but fortunately the wire
announcing our safety was published in the London newspapers only three
days after the public had read of a probable disaster. Eagle City,
although even smaller than Rampart, also boasted of a newspaper, the
enterprising owner of which made me a tempting offer for the tiny silk
banner which had shared our fortunes all the way from France. But "the
flag which braved a thousand years" was not for sale, and it now adorns
the walls of the author's smoking-room, the only Union Jack which, so
far as I know, has safety accomplished the journey from Paris to New
York by land.

[Footnote 75: This has since been extended and telegraphic messages may
now be sent through from Europe to Nome City.]

Above Eagle City the journey was rendered even more weary by frequent
stoppages. Once we tugged for twenty-four hours at a stranded steamer,
and finally got her off a sand-bank at considerable risk to ourselves.
Every hundred miles or so the _Hannah_ would tie up to take in fuel at
some wood-cutter's shanty, where the cool, green forest, with its
flowers and ferns, looked inviting from the deck, but to land amongst
them was to be devoured by clouds of ferocious mosquitoes. De Clinchamp
was the happiest being on board, for his days were passed in developing
the hundreds of photographs taken since our departure from Yakutsk; and
Stepan was perhap