CAMP FIRES IN THE YUKON 153 



out all tracks, leaving us no trail to follow. In the 

 darkness we put on our footgear, and facing north- 

 ward into the driving snow began our weary and 

 slow journey back to the brush camp. Since four 

 o'clock in the morning we had eaten nothing except 

 a little hardtack and some strips of "jerkey"; we 

 had mushed over twenty miles through the snow- 

 covered bog, where every step involved the addi- 

 tional effort of pulling out of the clinging mire, and 

 as we toiled up the mountain slope in the darkness 

 and in the storm we were conscious of that gloomy 

 feeling of very weary, hungry men, who had played 

 the game to the limit of our abilities and had failed 

 because of supervening conditions beyond our con- 

 trol. 



We roasted the other hindquarter of our caribou 

 as we dried out beside a roaring fire ; we also roasted 

 a pile of marrow bones we had been collecting, and 

 after devouring all the cooked meat and marrow, 

 we are quite ready to start a new hunt to-morrow. 



September 10. This morning the blizzard con- 

 tinued with undiminished power, obscuring the view 

 and making hunting impossible, so we cleaned gun, 

 made our brush camp a bit more impervious to 

 snow, and collected trees for firewood. In the after- 

 noon the storm abated somewhat, and through the 

 scattering flakes we saw a herd of caribou feeding on 

 the sky line of the tundra three miles above us ; the 

 writer decided to get a calf for meat, while Albert 



