d
zero all day when we left Minchumina to pursue our journey. The welcome
change in the weather had brought a still more welcome change in travel.
The decided and continued thaw followed by sharp cold had put a crust on
the snow that would hold up the dogs and the sled and a man on small
trail snow-shoes anywhere. Trail making was no longer necessary, and in
two days we made upward of fifty miles. So much difference does surface
make.

[Sidenote: TALIDA]

Across the end of Lake Minchumina, across Tsormina and Sishwoymina and a
number of lesser lakes we went, following a faint show-shoe trail
towards a distant mountain group to the southwest, the Talida Mountains,
at the foot of which lay the Talida village. On the other hand, to the
east and southeast, we had tantalising glimpses through haze and cloud
of the two great mountains, and presently of the lesser peaks of the
whole Alaskan range, sweeping its proud curve to the coast. For a long
way on the second day we travelled on the flat top of a narrow ridge
that must surely have been a lateral moraine of a glacier, what time the
ice poured down from the heights and stretched far over this
valley--then through scattered timber, increasing in size and thickness
and already displaying character that differed somewhat from the
familiar forests of the Yukon. The show-shoe trail we were following was
made by a messenger despatched by the Minchumina people to invite the
Talida people to a potlatch; for the caches were filled with moose meat
beyond local consumption. Early on the second day we met him returning
and learned that he had gone on to yet another village a day's journey
farther, still on our route.

The people were all gone hunting from the tiny native hamlet of Talida,
but we entered a cabin and made ourselves at home. We had passed into
the region where the Greek Church holds nominal sway, of which the icons
with little candles before them on the walls gave token. No priest ever
visits them, but a native at a village on the south fork where is a
church holds some position analogous to that of a lay reader. The
nearest priest is a half-breed, ill spoken of for irregularity of life,
some two hundred miles farther down the river. The Greek Church is
relaxing its hold in Alaska, perhaps inevitably, and suffers sadly since
the removal of the bishop from Sitka from lack of supervision. Also we
had passed out of Indian country into the land of the Esquimaux, for
these