C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

At Fort Yukon 171told us much about his life and work and mountain climbing."A fme man," he said. "You couldn't hand him anything. He did his ownthinking."Later, when I came to possess and treasure the archdeacon's books, I realisedthat he was not only a fine man but also a fine writer.Among the new faces, I remember one man as a kindred spirit: Frank Foster,an old-timer and a rich man as riches go in Alaska. He was busy building a boat."He traps a little," Dr Burke told us, "and he loafs around and cannot leave theNorth."He had come in by our route during the gold rush ofr898, leaving Edmontonin April and reaching the Klondike in September. He had spent six weeks travellingup the Rat and had brought with him to Fort Yukon 1,300 pounds of foodand stores, only to find that there was plenty of everything there. The sand-flieson the Rat had been awful and the water very low.One evening when we were having supper at the Burkes, doing our best with acolossal joint of moose, I sat next to Frank Foster and we had a long talk. He was aYorkshireman, a great reader and also a thinker; he had a passion for the Brontesand we discussed books with fervour. He was going off next week to the upperPorcupine; he hated the summer weeks spent outfitting in Fort Yukon andlonged to get back to his cabin, his books and his solitude.Another evening, I left Gwen precariously perched on an old shanty that wasbuilt on sand, while she sketched the church and I wandered off to have a yarnwith him. He was on the shore, with a man named Tony who hailed from theAzores, working on his boat but he dropped his tools and led us into his cabinwhere we sat talking about life in Alaska. I could have listened for days.Tony's story of the rapids is the one that I remember best. He and Buffalo Jimof Crow River had rescued three men from the jaws of death in some canyonwhere a boat will shoot forward between two walls of rock, borne along like afeather on the foaming current. Way up the river you can hear that water roaringand once you are in it you know it is just mad, boiling over, but if you keep yourbows straight, balanced on the top of the combed -up crest of foam in the middleof the current, then your scow won't swing in to those "darned black rocks" andin five minutes it is all over."My God that water is swift," Tony went on. "We was half-way through wherethe rock on the left kinda opens out sideways and there's a back eddy. I saw threemen clinging to the rock in that eddy, just hanging by their finger tips that they'd