OVER THE ARCTIC MOUNTAINS 215 



advanced enough so that we now had severe frosts at 

 night which had a quieting effect on the insect world, 

 although the temperature in the daytime still rose to 

 about 80 °. 



The first day and a part of the second the road led 

 mainly through a spruce forest; then we began to cross 

 ridges covered with grass. This was my first real ex- 

 perience with the "nigger heads" that are described by 

 so many travelers who have dealt with the northern part 

 of the American mainland. Essentially the ground is 

 covered with hummocks, varying between the size of an 

 orange and that of a man's head, or sometimes larger. 

 These hummocks are really shaped like mushrooms. 

 There is a wobbly head to them, covered with vegeta- 

 tion, and between are deep crevices. You try to step 

 from the middle of one hummock to the middle of 

 another and about once in three times your foot slips off 

 and you go halfway to the knee in mud. I know no 

 experience more heartbreaking than the struggle towards 

 the evening of a long day if you are carrying sixty or 

 eighty pounds. 



Were it not for my great respect for Firth's general 

 veracity I should doubt whether any Indians or other 

 human beings could carry loads of three hundred pounds 

 across such country at the rate of twenty miles a day. 

 It was all I could do to carry eighty pounds twenty 

 miles. I judge from my later experience, however, that 

 part of my trouble was due to inexperience in handling 

 a back load. 



The third day from Macpherson we crossed the ridge 

 of the mountains. I do not know how high above sea 

 level this took us — probably not over two or three thou- 

 sand feet. Still, we were above the treeline. There was 



