up the Beluga and down the
Skwentna Rivers, they crossed the range by the Simpson Pass to the south
fork of the Kuskokwim, and then skirted the base of the mountains until
a southwesterly ridge was reached which it is not very easy to locate,
but which, as Doctor Brooks judges, must have been near the headwaters
of the Tatlathna, a tributary of the Kuskokwim. Here an attempt was made
to ascend the mountain, but at eight thousand feet a chasm cut them off
from further advance.

Pursuing their northeast course, they reached the Peters Glacier (which
Doctor Cook calls the Hanna Glacier) and stumbled across one of Judge
Wickersham's camps of a couple of months before. Here another attempt to
ascend was made, only to find progress stopped by the same stupendous
cliffs that had turned back the Wickersham party. "Over the glacier
which comes from the gap between the eastern and western peaks" (the
North and South Peaks as we speak of them), says Doctor Cook, "there was
a promising route." That is, indeed, part of the only route, but it can
be reached only by the Muldrow Glacier. "The walls of the main mountain
rise out of the Hanna (Peters) Glacier," Cook adds. The "main mountain"
has many walls; the walls by which the summit alone may be reached rise
out of the Muldrow Glacier, a circumstance that was not to be discovered
for some years yet.

The lateness of the season now compelled immediate return. Passing still
along the face of the range in the same direction, the party crossed the
terminal moraine of the Muldrow Glacier without recognizing that it
affords the only highway to the heart of the great mountain and
recrossed the range by an ice-covered pass to the waters of the Chulitna
River, down which they rafted after abandoning their horses. Doctor Cook
calls this pass "Harper Pass," and the name should stand, for Cook was
probably the first man ever to use it.

[Sidenote: Robert Dunn]

The chief result of this expedition, besides the exploration of about
one hundred miles of unknown country, was the publication by Robert Dunn
of an extraordinary narrative in several consecutive numbers of
_Outing_, afterward republished in book form, with some modifications,
as "The Shameless Diary of an Explorer," a vivid but unpleasant
production, for which every squabble and jealousy of the party furnishes
literary material. The book has a curious, undeniable power, despite its
brutal frankness and its striving after "the poor r