CHAPTER IX 



LEAVING THE LONE LAND 



" The winter ! the brightness that blinds you, 

 The white land locked tight as a drum, 

 The cold fear that follows and finds you, 

 The silence that bludgeons you dumb. 

 The snows that are older than history, 



The woods where the weird shadows slant ; 

 The Stillness, the moonlight, the mystery — 

 I've bade 'em good-bye — but I can't." 



Robert W. Service. 1 



It was with many such feelings that I turned 

 finally into the South to depart from the strange 

 North land that was so desperately stern in its 

 character of wild overwhelming vastness and 

 rigour of elements, although forever alluringly 

 attractive withal. 



Unsettled in my ambition to go on by the news 

 of my country involved in war — which had, 

 perchance, come to me through a trapper about 

 a month before — and by food problems con- 

 fronting me at the edge of the Barren Grounds — 

 which would take months, if not longer, to 

 overcome — I had, on November 29, when I 

 and my two Indian companions were out of food 

 and losing our dogs and our courage, turned 

 at the edge of the Barren Grounds, and regret- 

 fully abandoned the fond hope that I had enter- 



1 In The Songs of a Sour-Dough, by Robert W. Service. 



192 



