Already the influence of the mission and the school was very marked. Given the native off by himself like this, in the hands of those in whom he has learned to place entire confidence, remote from debasing agencies, and his improvement is evident and his survival assured. [Illustration: THE DOUBLE INTERPRETATION AT THE ALLAKAKET.] [Illustration: THE WIND-SWEPT YUKON WITHIN THE RAMPARTS.] In two days the doctor and Arthur and the team came up, and so was brought to a happy conclusion a perilous journey over the first ice. One is often glad to have had experiences that one would by no means repeat, and this is a case in point. We had learned a good deal about ice; we had taken liberties with ice that none of us had ever thought before could be taken with impunity; we had learned to trust ice and at the same time to distrust it and in some measure to discriminate about it. The "last ice" is bad, but the "first ice" is much worse, and all three of us were agreed that we wanted no more travelling over it and no more pulling of a sled "by the back of the face." Then followed a very happy, busy time of several weeks while the river ice was consolidating and the land trails establishing; happy with its manifold evidences of the rapid advance the natives were making under Miss Carter's able and beneficent sway, busy with the instruction of people eager to learn. It was busy and happy for Doctor Burke also; busy with the many ailments he relieved, happy with the beginnings of an attachment which two years later culminated in his marriage to Miss Carter's colleague at this mission. CHAPTER VII THE KOYUKUK TO THE YUKON AND TO TANANA--CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS AT SAINT JOHN'S-IN-THE-WILDERNESS LEAVING Fort Yukon on the 26th of November, 1909, and going again over almost the same route we followed during the first journey described in this volume, we reached the new mission at the Allakaket on the Koyukuk River on the 14th of December, after a period of almost continual cold. The climate of the interior of Alaska varies as much as any climate. The previous year, continuing the journey described in "The First Ice," I had passed over this same route in the opposite direction, between the same dates, with the thermometer well above zero the whole time. This trip the _mean_ of the minimum reading at night, the noon reading, and the reading at start and finish of each day's journey was -38 1/4°. Many days in that three weeks we travelled all day at 45° and 50° below zero, and we spent one night in camp at 49° below. It was the beginning of a severe winter, with much snow north of the Yukon and long periods of great cold. [Sidenote: BIRTH, BURIAL, AND DANCING]