Two days from Tanana we were luxuriating in the natural hot springs near Baker Creek, wallowing in the crude wooden vat, when "Daddy Karstner" had shovelled enough snow in to make entering the water possible, and emerging ruddy as boiled lobsters. It was a beautiful and interesting spot then, with noble groves of birch and the finest grove of cottonwood-trees in Alaska--all cut down now--all ruined in a plunging and bounding and quite unsuccessful attempt to make a "Health Resort" of the place for the "smart set" of Fairbanks. It is a scurvy trick of Fortune when she gives large wealth to a man with no feeling for trees. We spent Sunday there and roamed over the curious domain, snow-free amidst all the surrounding snow, rank in vegetation amidst the yet-lingering winter death; and then we wallowed again. Tolovana, Nenana, and then one long run of fifty-four miles, the longest and last run of the winter, and--Chena and Fairbanks. But just before we reached Chena, as we passed the fish camp where the dogs had been boarded the previous summer, Nanook stopped the whole team, looked up at the bank and gave utterance to his pronounced five barks on the descending scale. None of the other dogs seemed to notice or recognise the place, but Nanook said as plainly as if he had uttered speech: "Well, well! there's where I spent last summer!" We reached Fairbanks on the 11th of April, in time for Good Friday and Easter, after an absence of four months and a half--with the accumulated mail of all that period awaiting me. The distance covered was about twenty-two hundred miles, three fourths of it on foot, more than half of it on snow-shoes. At Chena I had called up the hospital at Fairbanks on the telephone, and the exchange operator had immediately recognised my voice and bidden me welcome; but when I reached Fairbanks, a light beard that I had suffered to grow during the winter made me unrecognisable by those who knew me best. So effectually does a beard disguise a man and so surely may his voice identify him. FOOTNOTE: [A] This was written before the writer learned the superior protection afforded by _amber_ glass. CHAPTER VI THE "FIRST ICE"--AN AUTUMN ADVENTURE ON THE KOYUKUK