ave all-together the severe
hardships, if we loose like many others, our funerels will be tearless,
and inexpensive, If we win then each shall share a like in the spoils.
We had an elegent supply of foods.

Of Flour, Salt, sugar, rice, corn-starch, block-matches, candles, We had
forty pounds of chewing tobacco, and eighty pounds of smoking, we had
six bottles of Paroxide--six bottles of Lemon-extract, Blue ointment,
Castor oil, ten Irish potatoes, and other medicines in our chest, But I
wish the reader to notice that on no trip did I ever allow one drop of
liquor in any form to be packed in my load. The worst thing for any man
who is fighting cold to do; is to bowl up on red-eye. he is only the
worse for it. I was bragging one day on this when a fellow said "I have
heard this but how do you get allong when your whole crew are dam
drunkards except the Kidd. Well I said I cannot keep them from it in
town; but Black Beaver can keep it off the sleigh and when men are where
it cannot be secured they do not drink.

And further I argued that I never tasted intoxicants. That The Kidd Tom
Bardine and Old Ed Scott were also tetotalers--so the only chance he had
for argument was that Black Dave, And a few other lads from Alaska were
the only drinkers I ever had.

In addition to our rations we had a great deal of dried fish for our
dogs, we had severel candle fish for lights, and a large quantity of
dried fish for fuel.

Early in September We started out for Point Barrow through the interior
overland where to my present knowledge man has never traveled. After we
reached the head of Mullen river we started up the Arctic divide; and on
fifteenth day of October we gained the top of the divide. This was many
miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Now I had looked upon many charming scenes in my wild and wandering
life; but while standing on the ridge of this great divide which seems
to separate the green world and the land of sunshine and birds and
flowers from the land of almost intolerable cold crisp snow, giant
Iceburgs glaciers and snow-slides--I saw the fairest sight I had ever
looked upon. Far westward the dying sun was painting the lofty
snow-capped mountains, Northward the borrowed beams were shimering on
the polar ice-bergs, in the Arctic Sea, Eastward were the last broken
prongs of the defiant mountains known to the world as the rockies; and
southward in all its modest beauty lay the mammoth valley of earths
greatest river