“Well, we are nearer to being safe. By traveling all the time, fifteen and a half hours from Old Crow, we made Rampart House—not bad time if the distance is correct. Weather cold. Snow threatening again.
“Sunday, August 3d.—At Rampart House. One week from the summit. Two weeks from the mouth of the Rat. Rampart House looks mighty good to us all. Here there is a Hudson’s Bay post with some goods in stock and a young Englishman running it. Natives almost starving. No fish yet. The men are just starting out for caribou, which are now reported thirty miles north of here. Not much goods left in the trading-post. Our reception here very chilly. No one seems to care whether we live or not, and sometimes we have been so tired we hardly did ourselves.
“The trader tells us it is 240 miles from here to the Yukon, and it seems a long way. At least we can get warm and dry here.
“Next day. We slept eighteen hours out of twenty-four. Weather warming up. Hunters not back, but one Indian caught a king salmon in a net, so the village is more cheerful. Everybody shared the salmon, which was a large one, fifty pounds. These people are Loucheux. Sometimes squaw-men live in here at Rampart House. More dogs here than I ever saw. One ate my moccasins last night—the ones that I had extra soles on. I wish he hadn’t done it, because I needed them.
“This is an important post in the North. It is old and well known, and it has special interest because it is directly on the International Boundary-line. There is a monument here which the American surveyors put up not long ago. They were in here quite a while, but their work of marking out the International Boundary between Alaska and the Dominion of Canada is now done.
HUSKY DOG—RAMPART HOUSE
“All of us boys got gay and went over on the other side of the Boundary and took off our hats and gave three cheers for America. We were glad we were on American soil once more. We feel now as if we were getting out of the fur-trading country. Am not sorry. I don’t like the country or the people in it very much. Everything seems so shiftless. Still, they manage to get on. I suppose if I lived up here a hundred years things might look different.