For a week they travelled in this manner through the varied scenery of the Alsek valley, now traversing wide plains, now passing sublime mountains and frowning cliffs, and meeting with sundry new experiences. On one occasion they enjoyed the novel sensation of feeling their high-piled sleds blown merrily over glare ice by a strong south wind. When this impetuous ally took hold, Roly longed for a pair of skates, that he might glide easily in front of his sled. As it was, his spiked ice-creepers dug in at every step, the sled was continually on his heels, and all the gliding he could do was in his imagination. David had imprudently neglected to wear his dark snow-glasses, and the sun being now high and the snow dazzling, he was attacked with snow-blindness,--a malady no doubt aggravated by the pungent smoke of the camp-fires. When he sat down to supper one evening, he found it difficult to keep his eyes open. Prickly pains darted through the eyeballs, and the vision was seriously impaired. On the following day he could hardly see to walk, in spite of the glasses which now--too late--he wore. Fortunately Mr. Bradford had included in the medical stores an eye-wash for this painful affection, and after two or three days' treatment the inflammation subsided, and normal vision returned. Hardly a day passed in which the travellers succeeded in keeping entirely dry. To go to sleep in wet stockings was the customary thing; they were sure to dry during the night from the bodily warmth, and no one thought of taking cold. On one memorable march a damp, clinging snow fell in enormous flakes, which melted upon their coats, soaked through, and finally ran down into their shoes, and it required a roaring fire that night to restore the little company to a fair degree of comfort. None too soon they arrived at Dalton's Post, one hundred and twenty miles from the coast, for signs had not been wanting that the ice was about to go out of the streams. How novel it seemed to stand under a roof once more! How delightful to sit down in a chair beside a roaring stove and bid defiance to the elements! This little settlement, so far from anywhere in particular, was a very oasis of civilization. The storekeeper, Mr. Martin, usually called "Ike," was a small, wiry man, whose black hair was sprinkled with gray. He was very glad to see the new-comers, and welcomed them hospitably, inquiring whence they came and what was the news in the outside world. For months he had been the only white man at the trading-post, Jack Dalton, the owner, being absent on a journey to the coast. The advent of prospectors now and then was the only break in his monotonous existence.