dition to human knowledge was within the scope of our
powers and opportunities. Tatum took rounds of angles, in practice
against the good fortune of a clear day on top, on every possible
occasion. The sole personal credit the present writer takes concerning
the whole enterprise is the packing of that mercurial barometer on his
back, from the Tanana River nearly to the top of the mountain, a point
at which he was compelled to relinquish it to another. He has always had
his opinion about mountain climbers who put an aneroid in their pocket
and go to the top of a great, new peak and come down confidently
announcing its height. But when all this business is done as closely and
carefully as possible, and every observation taken that there are
instruments devised to record, surely the soul is dead that feels no
more and sees no further than the instruments do, that stirs with no
other emotion than the mercury in the tube or the dial at its point of
suspension, that is incapable of awe, of reverence, of worshipful
uplift, and does not feel that "the Lord even the most mighty God hath
spoken, and called the world from the rising of the sun even to the
going down of the same," in the wonders displayed before his eyes.

* * * * *

We reached our eighteen-thousand-foot camp about five o'clock, a weary
but happy crew. It was written in the diary that night: "I remember no
day in my life so full of toil, distress, and exhaustion, and yet so
full of happiness and keen gratification."

[Sidenote: The Amber Glasses Again]

The culminating day should not be allowed to pass without another
tribute to the efficiency of the amber glasses. Notwithstanding the
glare of the sun at twenty thousand feet and upward, no one had the
slightest irritation of the eyes. There has never been an April of
travel on the Yukon in eight years that the writer has not suffered from
inflammation of the eyes despite the darkest smoke-colored glasses that
could be procured. A naked candle at a road-house would give a stab of
pain every time the eyes encountered it, and reading would become almost
impossible. The amber glasses, however, while leaving vision almost as
bright as without them, filter out the rays that cause the irritation
and afford perfect protection against the consequences of sun and glare.
There is only one improvement to make in the amber glasses, and that is
some device of air-tight cells that shall prevent th