horizon,
reminds one of Switzerland. Le Barge has an evil reputation for storms,
and only recently a river steamer had gone down with all hands in one of
the sudden and violent squalls peculiar to this region. To-day, however,
a brazen sun blazed down upon a liquid mirror, and I sat on the bridge
under an awning with a cool drink and a cigar, and complacently watched
the glassy surface where five years before we had to battle in an open
skiff against a stiff gale, drenched by the waves and worn out by hard
work at the oars. To-day the _White Horse_ accomplished the passage from
river to river in about three hours, while on the former occasion it
took us as many days!

[Footnote 86: Lake Le Barge was named after Mike Le Barge, of the
"Western Union Telegraph Company," who was employed in constructing the
overland telegraph line from America to Europe (_via_ Bering Straits) in
1867. The completion of the Atlantic cable about this period put an end
to the project.]

There is, on portions of Lake Le Barge, a curiously loud and resonant
echo. A cry is repeated quite a dozen times, and a rifle shot awakens
quite a salvo of artillery. This is especially noticeable near an island
about four miles long near the centre of the lake, which for some
obscure reason is shown on Schwatka's charts as a peninsula. The
American explorer named it the "Richtofen Rocks," but as the nearest
point of this unmistakable island to the western shore is but half a
mile distant, and as the extreme width of the lake is only five miles, I
cannot conceive how the error arose.

Towards evening we reached the Fifty Mile River, noted for the abundance
and excellence of its fish. A few miles above the lake the Takheena
flows in from the west. This river, which rises in Lake Askell, derives
its name from the Indian words, "Taka," a mosquito, and "Heena," a
stream, and it is aptly named, for from here on to White Horse City we
were assailed by myriads of these pests. Indeed the spot where the town
now stands was once a mosquito swamp in which I can recall passing a
night of abject misery. It was past midnight before the _White Horse_
was safely moored alongside her wharf, but electric light blazed
everywhere, and here, for the first time since leaving Irkutsk, more
than seven months before, clanking buffers and the shriek of a
locomotive struck pleasantly upon the ear.

White Horse City is a cheerful little town rendered doubly attractive by
light-colou