id that a man must go
forth to the Salt Water and tell to the world our misery. At this all
eyes turned to me, for it was understood that I was a great traveler. 'It
is seven hundred miles,' said I, 'to Haines Mission by the sea, and every
inch of it snowshoe work. Give me the pick of your dogs and the best of
your grub, and I will go. And with me shall go Passuk.'

"To this they were agreed. But there arose one, Long Jeff, a Yankee-man,
big-boned and big-muscled. Also his talk was big. He, too, was a mighty
traveler, he said, born to the snowshoe and bred up on buffalo milk. He
would go with me, in case I fell by the trail, that he might carry the
word on to the Mission. I was young, and I knew not Yankee-men. How was
I to know that big talk betokened the streak of fat, or that Yankee-men
who did great things kept their teeth together? So we took the pick of
the dogs and the best of the grub, and struck the trail, we
three,--Passuk, Long Jeff, and I.

"Well, ye have broken virgin snow, labored at the gee-pole, and are not
unused to the packed river-jams; so I will talk little of the toil, save
that on some days we made ten miles, and on others thirty, but more often
ten. And the best of the grub was not good, while we went on stint from
the start. Likewise the pick of the dogs was poor, and we were hard put
to keep them on their legs. At the White River our three sleds became
two sleds, and we had only come two hundred miles. But we lost nothing;
the dogs that left the traces went into the bellies of those that
remained.

"Not a greeting, not a curl of smoke, till we made Pelly. Here I had
counted on grub; and here I had counted on leaving Long Jeff, who was
whining and trail-sore. But the factor's lungs were wheezing, his eyes
bright, his cache nigh empty; and he showed us the empty cache of the
missionary, also his grave with the rocks piled high to keep off the
dogs. There was a bunch of Indians there, but babies and old men there
were none, and it was clear that few would see the spring.

"So we pulled on, light-stomached and heavy-hearted, with half a thousand
miles of snow and silence between us and Haines Mission by the sea. The
darkness was at its worst, and at midday the sun could not clear the sky-
line to the south. But the ice-jams were smaller, the going better; so I
pushed the dogs hard and traveled late and early. As I said at Forty
Mile, every inch of it was snow-shoe work. And