"Travels in Alaska 



edge of my sled, got hold of a small cedar stick that I 

 had been carrying, whittled a lot of thin shavings 

 from it, stored them on my breast, then set fire to a 

 piece of paper in a shallow tin can, added a pinch of 

 shavings, held the cup of water that always stood at 

 my bedside over the tiny blaze with one hand, and 

 fed the fire by adding little pinches of shavings until 

 the water boiled, then pulling my bread sack within 

 reach, made a good warm breakfast, cooked and eaten 

 in bed. Thus refreshed, I surveyed the wilderness of 

 crevassed, hummocky ice and concluded to try to 

 drag my little sled a mile or two farther, then, finding 

 encouragement, persevered, getting it across innu- 

 merable crevasses and streams and around several 

 lakes and over and through the midst of hummocks, 

 and at length reached the western shore between 

 five and six o'clock this evening, extremely fatigued. 

 This I consider a hard job well done, crossing so wildly 

 broken a glacier, fifteen miles of it from Snow Dome 

 Mountain, in two days with a sled weighing alto- 

 gether not less than a hundred pounds. I found in- 

 numerable crevasses, some of them brimful of water. 

 I crossed in most places just where the ice was close 

 pressed and welded after descending cascades and 

 was being shoved over an upward slope, thus closing 

 the crevasses at the bottom, leavingonly the upper sun- 

 melted beveled portion open for water to collect in. 

 Vast must be the drainage from this great basin. 

 The waste in sunshine must be enormous, while in 

 dark weather rains and winds also melt the ice and 

 add to the volume produced by the rain itself. The 



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