[Illustration:  A Dog Pack Train.]

The party started over the mountains in June.  At this season of the year in that country the sun shines almost all night, and it is never dark.  Lieutenant Allen’s party traveled either by day or by night, as they pleased, as there was always light enough.

When they got to the foot of the last mountains they had to climb, they found a little lake.  Here they got some fish to eat, but the salmon had not come yet.  They hired some Indians to go with them, and divided the weight of everything into packs.  Every man carried a pack, and every dog carried as much as he could bear.  As they climbed the mountains, they could look back over the beautiful valley of the Copper River.  Still hungry and nearly tired out, they pushed on until they camped by a brook in the mountains.

Here they found that the salmon had come up the Copper River from the sea, and had run up this brook and overtaken them.  The fish were crowding up the brook to get to a little lake at the head of it, where they would lay their eggs.  In some places there was so little water in the stream that the fish had to get over the shallow places by lying on their sides.  In doing this, some of them threw themselves out of the water on the land.  The hungry men could catch them easily, and they now had all they wanted to eat.  One of the party ate three large salmon, heads and all, for his supper.  As the sun shines almost all the time in the Arctic regions, in the summer, the days become very hot.  On the last day of Lieutenant Allen’s journey up the mountains the heat was so great that the party did not start until five o’clock in the afternoon.  They reached the top of the mountains that divided the two rivers at half-past one o’clock that night.  Though it was what we should call the middle of the night, it was not dark.

The party were now nearly five thousand feet higher than the sea.  At half-past one in the morning the sun was just rising.  It rose almost in the north.  Behind them the men could still see the valley of the Copper River.  Before them lay the valley of one of the branches of the Yukon, with twenty beautiful lakes and a range of mountains in sight.  White and yellow buttercups were blooming about them, though the snow was within a few feet.  No white man had ever looked on this grand scene before.  The men forgot their hunger and their weariness.  They had done what hardly anybody thought could be done.

A mile further on they stopped to build a fire, and here they cooked the last bit of extract of beef that they had with them.  It was the end of all the provisions they had carried.  Having gone to bed at two or three o’clock in the morning, they did not start again until two in the afternoon; for day and night were all one to them, except that the light nights were cooler and pleasanter to travel in than the days.

They were told by the Indians that by marching all that night they could reach an Indian settlement, and, as they had no food, they determined to do this.  In this whole day’s march they killed but one little rabbit, which was all they had for nine starving men to eat.  But at three o’clock in the morning of the next day the tired and hungry men dragged themselves into the little Indian village.  Guns were fired to welcome them.