“That’s pretty well into June, to start with, and then you would have to pole up against the current all the way, and the currents of most of the rivers are very swift.  Did you ever pole a boat up against a swift mountain river?—­I thought not.  Suppose, by very hard work, you could make two or three miles an hour up stream,—­at that rate how long would it take you to go up to the highest settlement?  And then you would have to go all the way down again and ascend the next stream; and even then more than half the settlements would be on streams and creeks you could not get to with boats because of falls, of rapids, of long portages, and things of that kind.”

“I guess they couldn’t use a boat,” said Hamilton, “but still I don’t see why they couldn’t ride!”

“Ride what?  Dogs?  Or reindeer?  I suppose you mean to take a horse up there?”

“That’s what I was thinking of,” Hamilton admitted.

“How would you get him up there?  Take him in a dog-sled the preceding winter?  You know a horse couldn’t travel on the snow like a dog-team.  And if you did get him up to the starting point during the winter, on what would you feed him?  Dried salmon?  That’s all there is, and while it makes good enough dog-feed, a horse isn’t built that way.  There’s no hay-cutting section up there, and your horse would starve to death before you had a chance to ride him.  And even supposing that you could keep him alive,—­I don’t believe you could ride him over the tundra swamps; there is no horse made that could keep his footing on those marshy tussocks.”

“I see you’re right,” said Hamilton, “I hadn’t thought of all that.”

The older man continued:  “There are horses in the towns of southern Alaska, because, you know, there is one narrow strip that runs a long way south, and there the weather is not severe.  But the north is another matter entirely.  The pay that you would have to offer in order to lure the men away from the gold-diggings would be enormous.  No, it had to be a winter job, and in the Geography section—­where I was last year—­it took us all our time to estimate satisfactory enumeration districts for Alaska.”

[Illustration:  OVER THE TRACKLESS SNOW WITH DOG-TEAM.  Census agents in Alaska starting on perilous journeys in the most severe winter ever known in sub-Arctic regions. (Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census.)]

“The Geography section?” queried Hamilton in surprise.  “I hadn’t heard of that.  What is that part of the census work for?”

“To map out the enumeration districts,” his superior explained.  “That is a most important part of the work.  You remember that the enumeration district was supposed to provide exactly a month’s work for each man?”

“Yes,” Hamilton answered, “I know I had to hustle in order to get mine done in the month.”

“Supposing,” said the other, “that all the people that were on your schedule had lived in villages close together, would it have taken you as long to do?”