job. You've got to tackle a thing like that to
get the heartbreak of it. It's bad enough to have to run ahead of a dog
team on the level, but in mountain country it's something fierce."

"Do you have to run ahead of the dogs?" Eric said in surprise. "What
for? To break a trail?"

"Sure. A dog team can trot faster than a man can walk but not as fast as
he can run. So a fellow's got to run in the deep snow a hundred yards or
so, then walk, then run, an' so on. I met Alexis a year or two after the
expedition an' he told me all his troubles. They got to the top of the
mountain, he said, in the midst of a furious snowstorm. It was so thick
that the natives could not decide on the road an' it was impossible to
stay up on the crest without freezin' to death. At last they decided to
chance it. The side of the mountain was so steep that the dogs couldn't
keep up with the sleds an' there was nothing to do but toboggan to the
bottom of the hill.

"What fun," exclaimed Eric.

"Ye-es," the other said dubiously, "but it was a two-thousand-foot
slide! They wound small chains around the runners of the sleds to try
an' check their speed a little, an' hoping that they wouldn't hit
anything, let 'em go. Just as the first sled had begun slidin', Alexis
told me he called out that he thought they were a little too much to the
north an' all the sleds would go off a precipice into the sea. It was
too late to stop, then. It took three hours to climb one side of the
mountain, an' less than three minutes to go down the other side.

"From there they went straight along the coast to Kiyilieugamute, where
they had reckoned on gettin' dogs to replace the young dogs on the
'scratch teams' Alexis had made up. All the dogs had gone on a trip for
fish an' the natives said it would be two days before they arrived. So
Jarvis went ahead with the two good teams, leavin' Bertholf to follow as
soon as the native dogs arrived. Four days of hard traveling, stoppin'
at Akoolukpugamute, Chukwoktulieugamute, Kogerchtehmute, and
Chukwoktulik brought 'em to the Yukon at the old Russian trading post of
Andreavski.

"On the Yukon, I guess they made good time. You know, in the fall, when
there are sou'westerly gales in the Bering Sea, the water rises in the
lower Yukon, an' as it freezes quickly, there may be a trail of smooth
glare ice for miles. Then there's prime traveling. But, often as not,
the water flows back again before the ice is thick enough to travel o