At noon we built a fire with considerable difficulty, but once it was started we plied it with fuel till we had a noble, roaring bonfire, and we hung our wet socks and moccasins and parkees and caps and mitts around it and stayed there until they were dry, though the resumption of our journey in the continuous melting snow soon wet everything through again.
At length, late in the evening of the 28th of February, we descended a long ridge and came upon the northeastern shore of Lake Minchúmina, one of the most considerable lakes of interior Alaska. It stretched its broad expanse away into the misty distance, the farther shore quite invisible, the snow driving slowly over it, and it looked as though we had stumbled by mistake upon the shores of the Arctic Ocean. There was no sort of trail upon it and the snow-shoes sank through the melting snow of its surface into the water that lay upon the ice and brought up a load of slush at every step; yet the going would have been still worse without them. The recollection of the six miles we trudged across that lake is a dismal recollection of utter fatigue, of mechanical lifting and falling of encumbered feet with the recurring feeling that it would be impossible to lift them any more. All across that lake I ate snow, and that and the back-ache legacy of an old strain are my signs of approaching exhaustion. Four hours passed ere we heard the noise of dogs and saw the glimmer of a light through the darkness, and the hearts of men and beasts alike leaped to the expectation of rest and shelter. We had feared the village might be deserted and were rejoiced that the Indians were still there.
Never was hospitality more grateful than that we had from the little remote band of natives at the Minchúmina village. They made a pot of tea and fried some flap-jacks for us, and that was our supper, though I think the boys ate some boiled moose meat from a pot on the stove. We had plenty of grub, but were too weary to cook it; we spread our bedding down on the floor amongst a dozen others and fell almost at once into a deep sleep. Almost at once; for the arrival of our eight dogs had made a commotion amongst the canine population of the place, that after repeated outbreaks of noisy animosity and defiance seemed to turn by common consent into a friendly and most protracted howling contest in which my malamute "Muk" plainly outdid all competitors. How much longer the noise would have kept up it is hard to say--dogs never seem too tired to howl--but when the limit of Indian patience was reached, an aged crone rolled out of the bed into which she had rolled "all standing," seized a staff and went outdoors to lay it impartially upon the backs of all the disturbers of the peace, domestic and foreign, with a screech that was as formidable as the blows. The rest was silence.
