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

I78THE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATGeographical Society's meeting, he came down to Cornwall to stay with me. Hewas a fine fellow, with a great mind and a wide outlook on life.The most exciting tales that we heard came from a prospector who had beenseeking, and sometimes finding, gold for 22 years. Once he had made as much as$135,000, but it was soon lost in a futile venture. He told us of a volcanic basinin Alaska that was three and a half miles wide by seven miles long. It was so hotthere that the soil was cooked into a kind of crust and each year the melting of thesnow would form a river in that valley and the river, rushing down to opencountry, would throw up, to right and left, sandbanks that nearly smothered thetreetops. He had been in an unexplored part of the Chugach Range with no mapsand only the coast line to give him bearings. Once he came to a mountain thathad in its side a white line, perhaps half a mile long, which looked like a quartzreef."I just had to climb that mountain and see that reef," he said.When he got up there he found only the white bones of birds that had beenkilled by volcanic fumes escaping through a rift in the mountain.As we listened to such stories we could hardly bear to remind ourselves that wewere now homeward bound and would have to leave behind us all that wilduntravelled country. We felt a great longing to turn back and spend the rest ofour days wandering about the unknown, cruel, magnificent land. If destiny hadordered our sex, our background and our characters differently, we might haveindulged such longings and become, in due course, old-timers. However, as weadapted ourselves to the change from camp life to a crowded ship's routine, wesoon realised that the Fates had really been kind to us for among our fellow-travellerswe discovered many congenial persons. Moreover, during that journey byriver and rail through Alaska to the coast, and then by ocean-going steamerthrough the Pacific fjords to Seattle, there was beauty all the way and very often itwas spectacular on a scale that we had never yet imagined.Of course the pace and the noise of the Yukon steamer were such that we nevercould regain the deep sense of intimacy with a river that we had enjoyed on thePorcupine, when, alone with the Arctic silence, we had drifted down a goldenwaterway to an unknown land.When you walk beside a river, following its course from mountain cradle tothe sea, or dip your paddle in the water, keeping on the middle downwardcourse, after a while you are carried out of yourself, becoming subject to all themoods of your mighty companion, becoming also aware of a power that is self-