TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 297 



of the hermit thrush, and the lightsome touch of our 

 chatter and plans. 



It is on a night like this that one thanks God for 

 the wild, for thinking it, for making it, for keeping it. 

 He made the wild, as man the town, and the devil 

 Suburbia. The nights were vibrant with the weird 

 sounds of the wilderness. The forlorn cry of a loon, 

 matchless diver of lake and sea, his note an epitome 

 of indescribable desolation of solitude, the whirr of 

 wings from myriad ducks winging their way to 

 warmer countries " Summer has passed, summer has 

 passed !" sang in the musical rustle the furious clash 

 of horns as Greek met Greek in deadly forest combat, 

 the soft alluring call of the cause of all the trouble, 

 and once or twice on the cold night winds came the 

 prolonged discordant hunting yell of a wolf. Few 

 and far between are the wolves in the Alaskan woods, 

 the trapper and the native hunter have seen to that. 



In this forest of Arden one early morning I came 

 on the smoking embers of a fire, evidences of a just 

 moved camp, and a chill foreboding came to me that 

 our little world was our very own no more. The out- 

 fit of another hunter, perhaps. But our men from 

 Cook's Inlet. An investigation of the river, a walk 

 up stream, and a moving figure glided from between 

 the tree stems and hailed me. Sure enough, a 

 straggler from our expected servants, the others, 

 having pulled up the bidarkas, were wandering about 

 haphazard on the looking for a needle in a haystack 

 principle. So absurd, when we had provided strict 

 injunctions that the party should persevere to the head 



