240 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



Bill, Alex and Fritz took loads the next morning and 

 packed them about six miles over the table land to a 

 cabin at the head of King County Creek, while I spent 

 all of the time that they were gone in skinning out the 

 thick lips and ears of the moose scalp. They returned 

 to our tent about the middle of the afternoon and we had 

 some lunch. Then all of us took the rest of the duffle 

 and toiled up the hills to the dike from which we had 

 obtained our first glimpse of the Killey River. Leaning 

 against a great rock here were the horns of my moose, 

 which Fritz had carried up to this point the day before, 

 instead of bringing them into camp. 



Our trail led across the level plateau, diverging 

 shghtly to the leftward from the trail which we had 

 followed in coming from the lake to the dike. Several 

 old fragments of horns of the Kenai caribou lay along the 

 path, but we saw no other sign of this nearly extinct 

 animal during our stay in the peninsula. 



There was three inches of ice on the two small lakes 

 which we traversed and we could see by layers of bubbles 

 which rose at the same place that it had frozen an inch 

 on each of the past three nights. The ice was perfectly 

 clear. Small fish were swimming about in the waters 

 beneath it. We could see the bottom now coming into 

 view, now sinking to imknown depths, and the effect 

 was exactly as if we were walking on a vast sheet of plate 

 glass. A brilUant moon overhead, while we were going 

 the latter part of this march, reflected a clear Hght on the 

 frosty ground. 



We descended but a little way from the table land to 

 reach the cabin at the timber line near the head of King 

 County Creek. This stream rose at the foot of the hills 

 adjoining the plateau on the north, flowed south and 



I 



