City, a mining center eight hundred and fifty miles from Juneau.
On April 22, the bishop, with one companion, left the seaport for his first journey in the land of his adoption. Sometimes he was climbing steep mountains where he had to dig out with his stick a foothold for each step; sometimes he was walking through narrow cañons not more than twelve or fourteen feet in width, where overhanging rocks and snow slides threatened to crush him; sometimes he was creeping along the edge of cliffs so high and sheer that he dared not trust himself to look down; sometimes he was treading warily over the frozen crust of a stream whose waters seethed and roared ominously beneath the icy bridge.
As he pushed on, hauling his heavy sled (it weighed, with the camping outfit and provisions, four hundred and fifty pounds), you can imagine that he had an appetite for his dinner of toasted bacon and steaming beans. Sometimes his gun would bring down a wild duck to vary this hearty fare.
He knew what it was, however, to be too tired to eat or sleep. That was when he was felling trees and whipsawing the logs into boards for a boat. The men who had promised to furnish him with transportation as soon as the ice was broken up had not kept their agreement, and he faced the open season with no means of continuing his journey.
“If you’ll just camp here with us fellows for a spell, comrade,” said the men in whose company he found himself at Carabou Crossing, “we’ll all pitch in and give you a day’s help when we’ve got our own lumber sawed.”
Then the good-natured miners had a shock of genuine surprise. The preacher whom they proposed to pull out of his difficulty proved that he was neither a tenderfoot nor a shirker.
“I think I’ll see what I can do for myself before I ask you men to come to the rescue,” he said.