The stream was now very high from the rain which had just ceased. The freighters had their hardest work ahead of them; for the sloughs became more frequent, the water extended well up to the brush and spruce, and until we reached a point a few miles below Council there was but little footing for the dogs. The rest of us, leaving the meanderings of the river, struck out overland as straight as possible for Council. I caught some of them eying me like a hawk, and knew that they suspected that I had a retainer from the gentlemen with whom I had so agreeably passed the night. Having made a wide detour inland through mossy swamp and brush, we came to Mystery Creek, which was adorned in places with deep banks of solid snow and glaciers. This crossed, and having gained the open, that weird, familiar landscape presented itself--the bleak hills back of Council, rising to the dignity of mountains, fringed at the base with a growth of small timber, and approached by a plain of tundra. As Sam Dunham, in one of his matchless Alaskan poems, with fine alliteration says:
"We traversed the toe-twisting tundra, Where reindeer root round for their feed";
and if there is any contrivance of mother earth's which is calculated to sap man's remaining energy, it is this plodding over the Russian moss, avoiding the stagnant pools upon its surface, and stepping and reaching from hassock to hassock,
Sometimes as soggy as sawdust, More frequently soft as a sponge.
[Mr. Dunham will, I trust, pardon this imitation of his "alliteration's artful aid."]
Inspired, perhaps, by the nearness of the goal, and possibly by a desire to show them I could do it, I then proceeded to cut loose from the "hardy miners"; and, not long afterward, in the cool and sunny forenoon, stood high on the brow of the precipitous palisades leading into Council, which looked very attractive in what it promised and in its own strangely picturesque surroundings. Then followed a hurried descent to Melsing Creek, a fording of that little tributary, and, now in town, a search for the edifice which should bear the firm insignia. There it was, my name staring me in the face! Hastily mounting the three steps, if you please, which led to the front entrance of the new log cabin, I pounded the door, heard a familiar "Come in," and burst in upon my partner, looking as fine as a fiddle and in the very act of laying down the law to an unsuspecting client. Thus then, at last, after not a few vicissitudes, some seven thousand miles had been traversed and the _au revoir_ of the year before realized in the present. It had been, of course, an easier undertaking than before, and at no time lacking in interest; but the writer believes that, as regards the trip from Golovin Bay to Council City, the physical labor of the previous year was preferable to the lack of companionship in its successor.