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We Receive Visitors.

We arrived home yesterday, making in seven hours a distance that had taken us three days to go up. Charley gave us bear meat to last a month. It tastes fishy, as the bears live mostly on salmon in summer, but it is a welcome addition to our larder. During the trip I obtained two hawk owls and an Alaskan three-toed wood-pecker, both species being new to my collection.

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OCT. 15. 1898.—In looking over my diary I find that I have recorded no "bad weather." This comes of my having inherited a tendency to look on the bright side of things. I hear such complaints as "bad weather," "disagreeable day." "awfully cold." etc. Days when some are grumbling about its being "too hot" or "too cold," "too wet" or "too windy," I find some special reason for thinking it very pleasant. It is no virtue of mine, as I said. It is natural. Up till to-day there has been warm weather mostly. Now there is a sudden drop in the temperature. Seven degrees above zero this morning. The north wind is blowing and makes one's ears tingle. All standing water is frozen and the Kowak has begun to show patches of ice floating down with the current. The great river is choking. It is being filled with ice which can move but slowly, grinding and crunching and piling up into ridges where opposing fields meet. Suddenly it is at a standstill. In a day or two the ice will support us, as it does now on the margin.