or the greater part of
the distance by which the mule train reached the Tanana Crossing. The
first five miles was all up-hill, a long, stiff, steady climb to the
crest of the mountain that rises just behind the Crossing. We had to
take it slowly, with frequent stops, so steep was the grade, and every
now and then we got tantalising glimpses through the timber of the scene
that spread wider and wider below us. Bend after bend of the Tanana
River unfolded itself; the Alaskan range gave peak after peak; there
lay Lake Mansfield, deep in its amphitheatre of hills, with the Indian
village at its head.

At last my impatience for the view that promised made me leave the boys
(we still had Isaac's young men) and push on alone to the top. And it
was indeed by far the noblest view of the winter, one of the grandest
and most extensive panoramas I had ever seen in my life.

Perhaps three miles away, as the crow flies, from the river, and
seventeen hundred and fifty feet above it, as the aneroid gave it, we
were already on the watershed, and everywhere in the direction we were
travelling the wide-flung draws and gullies of the Fortymile River
stretched out, so clear and beautiful a display of the beginnings of a
great drainage system that my attention was arrested, notwithstanding my
eagerness for the sight that awaited my turning around. But it was upon
turning around and looking in the direction from which we had come that
the grandeur and sublimity entered into the scene. There was, indeed, no
one great dominating feature in this prospect as in the view of Denali
from the Rampart portage, but the whole background, bounding the vision
completely, was one vast wall of lofty white peaks, stretching without a
break for a hundred miles. Enormous cloud masses rose and fell about
this barrier, now unfolding to reveal dark chasms and glittering
glaciers, now enshrouding them again. In the middle distance the Tanana
River wound and twisted its firm white line amidst broken patches of
snow and timber far away to either hand, and, where glacial affluents
discharged into it, were finer, threadlike lines that marked the many
mouths. The thick spruce mantling the slope in the foreground gave a
sombre contrast to the fields of snow, and the yellow March sunshine was
poured over all the wide landscape save where the great clouds contended
with the great mountains.

The boys had stopped to build a fire and brew some tea before leaving
the timb