le. Mile
after mile we went along in this way. I do not know how many poles I hit
and how many I missed, but every pole on that stretch of coast was a
fresh and separate anxiety and menace to me. I think I would have been
perfectly willing to have abolished and wiped out the whole invention of
the telephone so I could be rid of those hateful poles. What were
telephone poles doing in the arctic regions anyway? Telephone poles
belonged with electric cars and interurban trolley-lines, not with dog
teams and sleds.

Then it grew dark and the wind increased. I did not know it, but I was
approaching that stretch of coast which is notorious as the windiest
place in all Alaska, a place the topography of which makes it a natural
funnel for the outlet of wind should any be blowing anywhere in the
interior of the peninsula. My companions were far ahead, long since out
of sight. I struggled along a little farther, and, just after a
particularly bad collision and an overturning, I saw a light glimmering
in the snow to my right. It was a little road-house, buried to the eaves
and over the roof in snow-drift, with window tunnels and a door tunnel
excavated in the snow. I was yet, I learned, five miles from Solomon's,
my destination, but I hailed this haven as my refuge for the night and
went no farther, more exhausted by the struggle of the last two or three
hours than by many an all-day tramp on snow-shoes. It was a miserable,
dirty little shack, but it was tight; it meant shelter from that
pitiless wind. That night the thermometer stood at 7 deg., the first plus
temperature in twenty-two days.

By morning the gale had greatly diminished, and by the time I reached
Solomon's and rejoined my companions it was calm, the first calm since
we left the middle Kobuk. We had some rough ice to cross to avoid a long
detour of the coast, and then we were back on the shore again and it
began to snow. The snow was soon done and the sun shone, but the new
coating of dazzling white gave such a glare that it was necessary to put
on the snow glasses for the first time of the winter--and that is always
a sign winter draws to a close.

[Sidenote: DOGS AND REINDEER]

On the approach to Nome we had our first encounter with reindeer, and at
once my dog team became unmanageable. I had had some trouble that
morning with a horse. A new dog I procured at Kikitaruk had never seen a
horse before, and made frantic efforts to get at him, leaping at his
haunch