CAMP FIRES IN THE YUKON 151 



the Indian, traveling ahead, was certainly keeping 

 the vow of silence made the previous evening. Ar- 

 rived at Harris River, flowing through the middle 

 of the valley, we looked at the three-feet-deep icy 

 stream for a moment until the Indian announced: 

 " Us take off boots and sox, not get feet wet," so 

 we removed these items of footwear, tied them 

 around our necks, and waded across to the other 

 side, where we dried our feet and replacing our sox 

 and boots continued through the marshy valley. 

 Two miles farther we pressed on in silence when 

 the Indian stopped and, turning to me, said: " Big 

 boots make big noise, scare him moose; us take off 

 big boots and sox, walk in bare feet in snow; easy 

 walk, come close, not scare him moose," and, suiting 

 the action to precept, the Indian began to remove his 

 own boots. 



I looked a moment at the eight-inch-deep snow, 

 soft and wet, and decided to play up to any hunting 

 game the Indian would propose, so with boots dan- 

 gling around our necks and trousers rolled above 

 our knees we took our barefoot and bare-legged way 

 through the snow. After an hour's mushing in this 

 manner I had gotten over the amusement of hunting 

 barefoot in the snow and decided to put on my sox, 

 at least for warmth, but soon discovered that the sox 

 held a large amount of icy water, as they sank into 

 the marsh, and the extremities were colder than they 

 had been without the sox, so I came back to the 



