TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 259 



last she gives, not half, or some with reservations, but 

 all, everything on earth she possesses, and if she had 

 her soul to bestow she would add that without a 

 thought. 



The forest scenery around our camp was exquisitely 

 beautiful, but there was a chilling solemnity in these 

 Northern woods absent in those of sunnier countries. 

 Perhaps the frequent finds of skeletons of trees, 

 burnt, or decayed to the heart, turned the woodlands 

 to a charnel house, or it may be that such deep, un- 

 fathomable tangles overshadow one, being so entirely 

 different to the calm uniformity of the horizons in our 

 English forest glades. 



In the heart of a wanton maze of green, by a 

 mighty shaft of granite, Ralph and I, hot on the track 

 of a never-to-be-come-up-with-moose, discovered the 

 whitened bones of a man, mouldering at the base of 

 the wild monument. By the shape of the skull we 

 saw that this was no Indian, Aleut, or member of 

 countless other tribes, but some one of our own race, 

 fallen by the way some one, perchance, whose love 

 for the lode had been his death, or lonely trapper, 

 overtaken by the cold of the chill solitudes wherein 

 he hunted. It was a saddening moment in our day. 

 I am as easily made sad as glad, I cannot go hum- 

 drum through life. I must take things intensely or 

 not at all. 



I wanted the piteous bones buried,, far from the 

 tearing winter winds, or hurtling forest branches. 

 Ralph, too, might read a few words from the Burial 

 Service, because " it " was a white man. 



