"HOW MUCH WILL YOU BET?'^ 167 



health on both" is a good invocation, but it 

 was never needed by any one in our outfit. 

 We had an undoubtedly good digestion, and, 

 as for health, it often seemed to me while up 

 there that I was back again in my boyhood 

 days living on frugal fare, with plenty of hard 

 work. In the west where the air is keen, 

 pure, and bracing, with nothing to worry 

 about, with an abundance of hope and "great 

 expectations," I was light-hearted and happy, 

 and the owner of a digestion that could make 

 a feast out of a raw turnip freshly plucked 

 from a farmer's field. 



It is an impossibility to make the reader ap- 

 preciate the beneficent effect of the rare at- 

 mosphere in this semi-arid territory so near 

 the edge of the Arctic circle. You may well 

 expect that it is exhilarating, that you would 

 want to run, to shout, to whistle, and to play 

 boyish pranks as of old. When you are 

 finally settled down for a period of weeks or 

 months, and all care is off your mind, you feci 

 like saying: "I cannot speak enough of this 

 content. It stops me here — it is too much 



joy." 



The next morning the Chief said to me: 

 "How much will you bet that you'll not kill a 

 bear to-day?" 



