But once more our plans to spend Sunday were frustrated. The trail led through dry sloughs from which the advancing thaw had removed the snow in great patches. Sometimes the sled had to be hauled over bare sand; sometimes wide detours had to be made to avoid such sand; sometimes pools of open water covered with only that night's ice lay across our path. By eight o'clock in the morning we estimated that we were not more than seven or eight miles from Fort Yukon. But already the snow grew soft and our feet wet, and the dogs were very weary with the eleven hours' mushing. It would take a long time and much toil to plough through slush, even that seven or eight miles. So I gave the word to stop, and we made an open-air camp on a sunny bank, and after breakfast we covered our heads in the blankets from the glare of the sun, and slept till five. Then we ate our last trail meal, and were washed up and packed up and hitched up an hour and more before the snow was frozen enough for travel. A couple of hours' run took us to Fort Yukon, and so ended the winter journey of 1910-11, on the 23d of April, having been started on the 17th of November. We were back none too soon. Every day we should have found travelling decidedly worse. In a few more days the river would have begun to open in places, and only the middle would be safe for travel, with streams of water against either bank and no way of getting ashore. Seventeen days later the ice was gone out and the Yukon flowing bank full. FOOTNOTE: [G] The "claim" on a creek on which gold is first found is called "Discovery"; the claims above are numbered one, two, three, etc., "above" and the claims below, one, two, three, etc., "below." CHAPTER XI THE NATIVES OF ALASKA WHEN one contemplates the native people of the interior of Alaska in the mass, when, with the stories told by the old men and old women of the days before they saw the white man in mind, one reconstructs that primitive life, lacking any of the implements, the conveniences, the alleviations of civilisation, the chief feeling that arises is a feeling of admiration and respect.