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No one has tried kyaking since, but as soon as we reach shallow water I mean to practice until I have revived the lost art.

We are now inside the Arctic Circle, about 67 degrees north latitude. That is pretty well north for Southern Californians who, at home, rub their ears when the frost nips the tomato plants in January.

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CAPE BLOSSOM, July 13, 1898.—The voyage is behind us. What is floating ice to a ship's crew safe on shore! We can laugh at whales, and unfriendly breezes that whisper tales of shipwreck on barren coasts. And we can walk at all hours of the day and night without holding on to the rail, and we don't have to cook breakfast and supper and dinner in an S x S galley. Oh, the charm of being on land again, a land without visible limit; a land where we are not crowded, and where we are not hindered from our work by newspaper reporters!

I am sitting at the camp-table in the dining-tent near the new "Penelope" ship-yards, and the sounds that greet my ears are varied. The incessant pounding gives evidence of vigorous work on our river boat; the hum of the forge and the ring of the anvil where Casey and Stevenson are making fittings for the engine, the wash of the surf close at hand, and last, but not least, the low, irritating, depressing, measly whine of the mosquito—this last word to mean the race. I would not intimate that there is one mosquito, or twenty: there are millions! We wear bobinet masks which protect our heads very well. To-night the wind is blowing fresh, and the winged plagues are using most of their force to keep their land legs. It is very warm, and a little exertion brings out a copious perspiration, but it is less fatiguing to keep hard at work with a will than to stop and think about it. No ice now in sight. Within two rods of camp is a deep snowdrift, where we obtain nice drinking water. Ice may be seen anywhere in Alaska all the hot days, but it is so mixed and grown in with the everlasting mosses that it is not fit to melt for drinking save in rare cases. Our ship-yards are located on the pebbly beach, and it all seems so roomy and clean after our long stay on the little "Penelope." though on account of the mosquitoes we still sleep on shipboard. The boat is anchored a mile from shore on account of the shallow water. As I look out to sea I bethink me that in all probability Kotzebue, the Russian explorer, stood on this exact spot and looked about him as long ago as July, 1816. And the mosquitoes were biting him, too!