Photograph by U.S.G.S.
The Only Bit of Rock for Miles.
A landmark in the vast treeless tundra. The chief of the division drawing in contour.
Five days after leaving the portage, having covered over one hundred miles of very easy going, the party made camp at Harper's Bend on the Tanana River. So far as buildings went, it was quite an imposing place, no less than nine huts being in evidence, but they were all vacant and deserted and a sense of loneliness and desolation hung over the place. The sight of human habitation, after so many weeks in the wild, ought to have given a sense of homelikeness, but instead the boy was conscious of an eerie sense of estrangement.
At supper that evening Roger mentioned this feeling, and added:
"Somehow I feel as if this place were haunted. It doesn't so much seem abandoned to nothingness as it does given to some uncanny ghost."
Magee crossed himself.
"Saints preserve us!" he said. "Don't talk like that, or ye'll bring the night-riders here."