and
cold, and the approaching return of the sun was welcomed like a
prodigal. Is it a wonder then that the Eskimo worships the sun? It seems
his only hope, his only comfort; and it would seem to him, more than to
any other, the source of all life, his only friend in his dire need. The
Eskimo offered the two strangers some meat, which they devoured
greedily; and then they told a long, pitiful story. They were explorers.
Their ship had been crushed hopelessly between masses of ice. Fifty had
started on the long journey south. Provisions gave out. Men had dropped
off daily. The trail was one long line of frozen corpses stretched out
in the dark and silent night. They two alone had survived, so far as the
strangers were able to tell. It was the usual tale of woe which befalls
the Arctic or Antarctic explorers. Beginning happily, hopefully,
buoyantly; ending in misery, sorrow and death. The strangers wanted a
guide to lead them to the south--to civilization and warmth. They had
not known what it was to be comfortable for two years; and they had not
seen one square inch of bare ground during that period.

"Oh, for a sight of mother earth!" they shouted. "We would gladly eat
the soil, and chew the bark from the trees." Thus one does not
appreciate the most trivial and simple but indispensable things until
one is deprived of them for a period of more or less duration.

Our hero agreed to guide them so far as his knowledge extended--even to
the very gateway between the north and south lands--if they would
guarantee to guide him from that point into their own big, beautiful
world further on; they taking the helm when his usefulness as a guide
would be exhausted; and he explained his ambition to them.

So, one morning when summer was approaching, and the sun, for the first
time in the year was sending her streamers above the horizon, and when
his sweetheart Lola stood with arms outstretched over the cold snow and
ice towards him, pleading and sending forth her last appeal to his stony
heart, he walked out across the white table-land towards the south, and
was soon a small black speck in the far horizon.

When the strange expedition reached Dawson they discarded their
hibernating costumes and substituted more modern ones, not so much
because they were out of fashion, but because they rendered them
somewhat uncomfortable. At this point the white men grasped the helm and
the Eskimo followed. At Fort Fraser our hero discarded more