When the cold weather of November covered the rivers, creeks and lakes with ice and carpeted the hills and valleys with snow, a big stampede occurred away from the town of log houses into which the camp of tents had grown. Almost every one who had a dog-team and sled packed up an outfit of food, blankets, tent and sheet-iron stove, and "mushed" away into the mountains, prospecting for gold. If no dogs were available, two men, or sometimes a man and his wife, would harness themselves to a sled with their outfit aboard, and, depending upon their guns for their meat supply, would cheerily set forth into the trackless wild, following the water-courses until they found a likely-looking creek, when they would halt and build a snug log cabin, and spend the winter prospecting. To those who had courage, some knowledge of woodcraft and love of nature, this adventurous life was very enticing. Thousands of men in Alaska, to this day, spend their summers in the towns, working at their trades or professions, and then, on the approach of winter, invest the money they have earned in an outfit of provisions, tools and ammunition, and bury themselves in the wilderness again. It is a great life; and I have often felt strongly tempted to leave everything and join these brave spirits for a winter's stay in the McKinley range of mountains. One day, about the middle of November of that year, little Nina came into our house and threw herself into our arms, crying as if her heart would break. "Why, Nina dear," asked my wife, "what is the matter? Is any one sick or dead?" "Oh, no," she sobbed, "but I can't come to Sunday-school any more. Papa and Mamma and I are going away off into the mountains to-morrow, and we'll never come back here again." We petted and soothed her, the best comfort I could give her being the thought of the great hunting adventures that were before her. So the wilderness swallowed up my brave little friend, and for eight years I had no word of her. By that time I was at another large gold camp, in a distant part of the great Yukon Valley. I was the only minister in a region larger than Pennsylvania. My parish extended from two to five hundred miles in different directions from the camp in which I wintered. That winter I traveled with my dogs between two and three thousand miles, in preaching and exploring trips. Magazines, papers and books sent me by churches, Sunday-schools, Boys' Scouts, and women's missionary societies, I found three hundred miles from my central reading room, in miners' and trappers' cabins and in roadhouses to which I had sent them.