MARKING THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY 



607 



must get out as best they may. 

 This is usually done on rafts. 

 Dry logs are cut and pinned 

 or lashed together, a sweep is 

 put on each end, the outfit is 

 secured in the middle, one man 

 takes his place at the bow, 

 another at the stern, the others 

 distribute themselves over the 

 cargo, and the voyage com- 

 mences. No one knows the con- 

 dition of the streams to be floated 

 down. Rapids and shallows may 

 exist; a log jam may close up 

 the channel ; overhanging "sweep- 

 ers" or low bending trees line 

 the banks and must be avoided. 

 To change the course of a raft, 

 it must be rowed sidswise away 

 from the direction the current 

 is setting it. Sometimes it runs 

 aground, and then all must pile 

 overboard into the icy water and 

 work with pries until it is shoved 

 into the deeper water of another 

 current. 



While one naturally first speaks 

 of the hardships or seeming hard- 

 ships, still camp life has its pleas- 

 ures and compensations for the 

 surveyor. 



When day by day the work in 

 hand shows another step toward 

 completion, another stream zig 

 zags across the map, another 

 mountain is shown, another sta- 

 tion occupied, something ac- 

 complished ; when at night he 

 lounges at ease before the blaz- 

 ing camp fire, watching the sparks snakily 

 flashing against the dark foliage ; when 

 he wanders over the mountains and 

 breathes the fresh air and quenches his 

 thirst in some pure and ice-cold spring ; 

 when the inhabitants of some virgin 

 stream are lured from their hiding 

 places by the makeshift fly of ptarmi- 

 gan feathers and string; when a juicy 

 venison steak repays a well-directed bul- 

 let — then the small conventions and petty 

 jealousies of civilized life fade away, and 

 his labors are requited, and through his 

 own exertions he is getting the best out 

 of the life assigned to him. 



On the maps, the boundary is shown 

 all along by nice little dotted lines, but 



' 



A MOSQUITO VEIL Phot0 h Y T - Ri Sgs, Jr. 



When mosquitoes and gnats are particularly bad, every 

 one must wear veils, otherwise life would be unbearable. 

 These veils are made so as to fasten down tightly 

 around the body. The wide-brimmed hat keeps the veil 

 from touching the face. 



the 



ground 



work of putting this line on the 

 is still in progress, and both 

 American and Canadian surveyors are 

 putting forth their best efforts to estab- 

 lish a boundary which will stand the test 

 of time; so that when a hundred years 

 hence the engineer of the period throws 

 in his equilibrium clutch, turns on the 

 gravity and air current absorber and 

 brings his huge "dirigible" to a stop 

 above some one of our stations, he may 

 look through his improved surveying in- 

 struments along the vista from the Arctic 

 to Mount Saint Klias and pronounce the 

 line laid out by the old-timers straight 

 and good. 



