2,000 MILES DOWN THE YUKON 19 



through Bering Strait into the fastnesses of the western 

 Arctic and hunted in Alaska in one summer. 



Now at the right moment came Captain Kleinschmidt 

 from Seattle with the charter of a suitable ship, with 

 some personal experience, and with very dazzling plans 

 for a full summer and autumn among the big game of 

 Alaska as well as the frozen north. 



We were to shoot walrus and polar bear in the Arctic, 

 look for a wild sheep in easternmost Siberia as yet 

 unknown to science, try to get tundra caribou and great 

 brown bear on the Alaska Peninsula, and hunt the giant 

 moose, the white sheep and the black and brown bear of 

 the Kenai Peninsula — four distinct hunting trips in a 

 space of five months. We were to furnish the funds for 

 the hire of ship and crew and purchase of all necessary 

 stores up to a fixed sum, and could share the expense 

 with not more than two other hunters. Kleinschmidt 

 would be responsible for unforeseen extras. His interest 

 lay in obtaining motion pictures to complete a series 

 begun two years before. 



It did not take long to make a contract on these 

 terms. It was then late in April. Kleinschmidt hurried 

 west and we telegraphed the money ahead of him to pay 

 for the outfitting. He had to sail from Seattle at the 

 first of May and work up the coast, where we were to 

 join the ship at Nome, in northwestern Alaska, by the 

 middle of July. 



How should we go to Nome? A fast steamer from 

 Seattle would deposit us there after a voyage of eight 

 days, to be sure, but it would be purely a sea trip, over 

 much of the same route that we would take in our own 

 vessel. Happily we made arrangements to travel down 

 the long Yukon River, through the heart of "the great 



