There is probably no other view of North America's greatest mountain group comparable to that from Lake Minchúmina. From almost every other coign of vantage in the interior I had seen it and found it more or less unsatisfying. Only from distant points like the Pedro Dome or the summit between Rampart and Glen Gulch does the whole mass and uplift of it come into view with dignity and impressiveness. At close range the peaks seem stunted and inconspicuous, their rounded, retreating slopes lacking strong lines and decided character. But from the lake the precipitous western face of Denali and Denali's Wife rise sheer, revealed by the level foreground of the snow from base to summit. It was, indeed, a glorious scene. There stood the master peak, seeming a stupendous vertical wall of rock rising twenty thousand feet to a splendid sharp crest perhaps some forty or fifty miles away; there, a little farther to the south, rose the companion mass, a smaller but still enormous elevation of equally savage inaccessibility; while between them, near the base, little sharp peaks stretched like a corridor of ruined arches from mass to mass. One was struck at once by the simple appropriateness of the native names for these mountains. The master peak is Denali--the great one; the lesser peak is Denali's Wife; and the little peaks between are the children. And my indignation kindled at the substitution of modern names for these ancient mountain names bestowed immemorially by the original inhabitants of the land! Is it too late to strike Mount McKinley and Mount Foraker from the map? The names were given fifteen or sixteen years ago only, by one who saw them no nearer than a hundred miles. Is it too late to restore the native names contemptuously displaced? The majesty of the scene grew upon me as I gazed, and presently hand went to camera that some record of it might be attempted. But alas for the limitations of photography! I knew, even as I made the exposures, first at one one-hundredth of a second and then at one-fiftieth, that there was little hope of securing a picture; the air was yet faintly hazy with thin vapour; the early sun made too acute an angle with the peaks; and the yellow lens screen was left in the hind-sack of the sled. It was even as I feared. When developed some months later, the film held absolutely no trace of the mighty mountains that had risen so proudly before it. I promised myself that at noon, when the sun had removed to a greater distance from the mountains and made a more favourable angle with them, I would return and try again; but by noon had come another sudden, violent change of the weather, and snow was falling once more. [Sidenote: THE MINCHÚMINA FOLK]