Wilderness, A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska

an hour across that seeming

s had risen over the lower mountains of the shore astern. Steep spruce-clad slopes confronted us. All around was the

fisherman had built; the cabin, the grove, the sheltered beach, the spring or stream of fresh, cold water,-we could have drawn it even to the view that it must overlook, the s

on of the human drama that there is immanent. The grandeur of the ocean cliff is terrible with threat of shipwreck. To that high ledge the wave may lift you; there, where that storm-dwarfed spruce has found a hold for half a century, you perhaps could cling. A hundred times a day you think o

f that shore. But all at once there appeared as if from nowhere a little, motor-driven dory coming toward us. We

ointed oceanward where, straight in the path of the sun stood the huge, dark, mounta

ied we knew not where. And all the while the strange old man spoke never a word nor turned his head, driving us on as if he feared we might demand to be unloosed. At last his island towered above us. It w

IN ORDER TO SHOW HIM HIS IT-WORLD AND THE GREAT ROUN

th, dark-pebbled beach went all around the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band of brilliant green and then t

nto the level ground seeing and wondering, with beating hearts, and

e room, neat and comfortable; two windows south and west with the warm sun streaming through them; a stove, a table by the window with dishes piled neatly on it; some shelves of food and one of books and papers; a bunk with gaily striped blankets; boots, guns, tools, to

sh-faced Angoras, father, mother, and child, nosing among us or overturning what they could in search of food. He took us to the fox corral a few yards from the house. There

oper way and I will get my title from Washington soon. I have staked fifty acres. It is all

rt of roofed tablet or shrine to house the precious document. But, ah look! th

nd he shook his fist at the foolish looking culprits who regarded

lls; there lay the lake. It was a real lake, broad and clean, of many acres in extent, and the whole mountain side lay mirrored in it with the purple zenith sky at our feet. Not a breath disturbed the surface, not a ripple broke along the pebbly beach; it was d

ed back. "Show us that o

small doorway that you stooped to enter. Inside was dark but for a little opening to the west. There were the stalls for goats, coops for s

OWN

at we shook hands on this great, quick finding of the thing we'd sought and, since we could not stay then as he begged us to,

e we saw, too late, crossing the bay in search of us the small white sail of the party that had brought us part way from t