drifts, spells of bitter, blue-white cold when timber-wolves, grown bold through hunger, howled in the clearing; long rains, a spring thaw and freshet, and the earliest arrival in the processional of the flowers; summer, with larks and bluebirds; and columbines a-sway to every breeze. . . until the time when the rosy mauve of fireweed ran up the slopes and the deer star hung low in the sky. And always-always-the faithful gentians had come back.

Remembering these, and all of nature's concern for flower, bird, and beast, Jem Brown wondered with sudden petulance why she was so unmindful of man. Now that his life was so nearly over he pondered-divided between elation and resentment-upon what had happened to man's invention, progress. . . that, for so long a period, his life's path had gone by unpunctuated by one of her devastating milestones. Progress would need to hurry if she held anything in wait for him now! "She's welcome to do her worst!" he muttered aloud.

Three days later he regretted his challenge; half-awakening from feverish slumber, he blinked incredulously at a strange far-away sound. Remote at first, then drawing slowly nearer, there was about its rhythmic, pulsing steadiness something appalling, threatening, and sinister. Jem Brown could not connect it with anything familiar. . . . A drum, perhaps? But what could a drum be doing, high up in the air? He listened more closely, craving reassurance. There was none . . . instead the steady beat was developing into a monstrous humming— into a dull roar. . . but not like the intermittent crashing with which, during a landslide the year of the big rains, the towering pines and the huge rocks had gone down the mountain. . .

Feverishly, he tossed and turned, trying to escape from the enveloping sound. Was this, perhaps, what was meant by illness: all sorts of breathless, groundless, vain imaginings bred in houses? Scornfully he derided himself for his cowardice in coming indoors. This noise at which he cowered was thunder-thunder, which had so often before volleyed and echoed in the mountains during fierce electrical storms. Defiantly he raised his head.

The sound was still there, steady, regular, insistent--and near!

Dully he wondered if this was deathbut why had he never been told what it would be like? Was death, then, a hideous, unending race through labyrinths of clamor and tumult? To him, who had spent his life in the stillness of the mountains, what purgatory could equal that! Jem Brown cowered down, moaning as the thunderous drumming came directly over the cabin, increased to a deafening roar, culminated in a series of shot-like explosions-and ceased. In the sudden uncanny quiet he could hear his own voice raised in a feeble whimper like a frightened child's. Of course it had been a dream, the feverish, half-consciousness of delirium . . . but how real for the moment, how hideously real. . . . "What?"

With terror the old man heard the sound of his first visitor, knocking; and saw the door swing back. . . .

A strange figure in leather clothes and a begoggled helmet stood in the opening, stared into the dim cabin, breathed an exclamation of relief: "I was afraid that this place was deserted-and I'm miles off my course! I've been trying for two hours to find a bare space to come down in; it was just by the merest chance that I saw this clearing-and none too good a landing field at that! Can you tell me where I am? What's the nearest town?” He stopped to look more closely at Jem Brown. "The light was so poor that I couldn't see you before! Are you sick? You look... ghastly!"

The old man could not answer.

The stranger stepped inside the cabin. "Isn't there something I could do for you? Water? Where can I get you a drink?"

Feebly Jem Brown pointed to the bucket, and indicated the direction of the spring. The young man returned with the brimming pail.

His decisive voice was clear: "If you can give me some idea of where I am, and the general direction, I think we'd better be on our way. I'll carry you out to the plane, and take you to a hospital. This is the last place for a sick man to be! Just now, by that spring, I saw a big bear and two cubs! You'd stand no chance-even if you were able to go for water!"

Jem Brown roused himself: "That's

Mollie-I found her four-five years ago; guess her mother'd been killed, 'cause the wolves were yappin' round the poor little cuss. . . . She comes back an' hangs 'bout, every summer now, with her cubs. Mollie'd steal bacon'n bread . . . but she wouldn't touch me!"

"Maybe not. But anyhow you're too sick to be left here all by yourself." "Did you . . . hear the roarin' .. overhead, jus' 'fore you come in? What was it?"

"An airplane."

There was no gleam of understanding in the old man's eyes.

The aviator stared at him. "Can't you understand me? A flying machine! Don't you know what that means? . . . The invention which makes it possible for men to travel through the air like birds! The greatest achievement of modern progress!"

"You mean that . . . even here on the mountain tops. . . . I can't get away?" "Away' from what? A plane can go anywhere!"

Jem Brown clambered weakly to his feet and stumbled to the doorway. In the centre of the clearing a strange, huge, grasshopper-like object stood at rest. It was silent now-but around it everything seemed changed and troubled-and at what moment might it not come to life again, hideously challenging the protesting echoes? How-how-could he get rid of it and of its master? Determinedly he faced the aviator: "I'm all right . . . have them set-backs real often-!" He gasped as a stab of pain brought beads of perspiration to his forehead. With visible effort he stifled a groan. "I've got a map. . . of this distric'; if I give it to you.. will you go away?"

leave you here alone. The remembrance of how you look would haunt me! You're too sick to realize that—you need medical attention."

Jem Brown was driven to desperation: "If you'll go away-an' not come back for a month-I'll give you the deeds to the Guayule. . . an' on 'em I'll mark plain where the lost lode takes up again! I've knowed it for forty year . . . but I learnt long since that money don't buy you nothin' but confusion . . . an' I wasn't a-goin' to have folks a-spoilin' this mountain like they spoiled the rest!”

Then, as the aviator stared at him, the old man's eyes filled with tears: “There'll be plenty... so's you can buy all the things you've ever wanted. . . . But now that I've seen your machine. and know that never, any more . . . will there be a place where I can get away. I'd like for to have this last month alone on Guayule, to say good-by. Then you can take it

"You'll do better than I expect if you live another week!" The aviator's voice was troubled, perplexed: "I really can't leave you; it wouldn't be decent!"

Jem Brown dropped down on the pine branches and stared helplessly in front of him. For a second the narrow window framed a stretch of desert, paved in tawny gold, dotted with sage-brush; through it a camel train wound into the settlement-and his mother was gone.

Followed, then, a shimmer of heatwaves above shining metal rails where great locomotives thundered upon their scheduled way. . . . Soon Jenny's place knew her no more.

With a feeble gesture of resignation Jem Brown turned toward the stranger: "I guess. . . maybe . . . this is my signal!" he whispered.

Progress had caught up with him.

HIS is a "doosid hard country to write letters from," and being a contemporary ancestor is a mighty absorbing business. For that is what Alaska's people are, to-day living phase for phase in your American overseas Colony of the North all that our ancestors experienced in early-day New England. Yet we have now one huge advantage over those men of old, for the Georges never visited Plymouth or Boston or Salem, personally, to see what was really going on there. But President Harding and three Cabinet officers came to spy out our land last summer and see if it indeed flowed, not with Canaanitish milk and honey but with more up-to-date richness such as oil and "quintals of fish," and if there were possible wide grain-fields and future grazing-lands for cattle upon our thousand-and-one untouched hills.

Did you ever stop to think that here is a territory the size of five hundred States of Rhode Island? Alaska is not only larger than the old New England, but larger than the whole original thirteenso very much larger that New England could be dropped down into it and lost out of sight completely.

But in spite of this raw-boned size of hers, there was no shred of welcome for Alaska whatsoever when she came into the sisterhood back there in '68. She came as an unwanted alien, an adoption forced by circumstances, an unloved acquisition to the family circle. It was freely admitted that she was nothing to write home about, that her "keep" was grudged as an added expense during times that were hard at best; and every one in the household knew and said frankly that she would never turn out to be a credit to them.

That was not the truth, and I suppose you wonder why it is so impossible even to-day to tell the truth about Alaska. It is because the whole truth is too big, too paradoxical, to be comprehended in one piece. The whole truth about Alaska would be a mosaic of a million disparate bits, and though the total must indeed be awesome, one would need the vast perspective of a god, looking before and after, to get the full effect. The whole truth about so big a thing is something you will not get in a sentence, or a book, or a whole library of books; and any one who pretends to give it to you is a quack. Alaska was bought as a unit, and is thought of to this day as a unit, but is no more united than were the original thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard before the Revolution. Isolated spots, scattered over an immense area sparsely inhabited by semiwandering Indians, have been settled, haphazardly and by tricks of fate rather than with design, by colonists of various antecedents and lineage.

There are at least three elements in Alaska making for confusion of statement: great size, a diversity of interest and resource and climate in the four main divisions, and combined with these a relatively short period of conscious history, which results in a lack of general, immediate, and authentic reference books and literature. When friends Outside have asked me to direct them to "a good book about Alaska" I have been embarrassed, for there is no book that I could recommend without explanation, addition, or correction. They are useless as fountains of truth (and I do not know of an exception to this, though I wish mightily that I did) for one at least of three reasons: written so long ago that conditions have utterly changed; written from within to

advance some special industry or section; written by a touring professional writer from without who has hit a few high spots and fills in with hearsay about the places he has not seen.

Here we have such a diversity of natural features that what may be closely descriptive of one section would appear wild fable to another. And yet it is all Alaska, and when people ask largely to have Alaska described to them you have to be New-England-ish and reply with more questions. "What part of Alaska? and what season? and do you mean Alaska as it was, or is, or is to be?" In a general way the main topographic features here correspond to those of the Western States, and Western people, perhaps for this reason, can best understand our problems. For we have a coastal mountain range upon the Pacific, a central plateau, a continuation of the Rocky Mountain system, and a region of great plains-four distinct geographical, aboriginal, vocational divisions with diverse history and resources, needs and aims. We have an older coast and a newer interior frontier, as in the States, and the one is apt to misjudge and be jealous of the other, politically and economically, as in the States. Though I have visited all the larger sections of this Great Country (that's what the word Alaska means, you know), I confess to that "wholesome prejudice of place" regarding Fairbanks, because it has been my home for years. I know much more about the Interior and I feel more in sympathy with it. There is my "slant."

Fairbanks is called "The Golden Heart of Alaska" for three reasons, no less! First, it is an historic placer camp-that's the "gold" part. Next, it is situated, by a curious chance, at the exact geographical centre of all Alaska-at the heart. And third and most vital of all, it has the good fortune to be one of those communities possessing personality and able to inspire loyalty and real feeling in all the people I have ever known who have either lived or visited here. It's just a tiny frontier town, and yet somehow it seems to have some inner quality that makes people long for it when absent. And what higher praise could one give to a city

enthroned?

This heart does not control the pulsebeat, however, for the head or capital resides, by a strange anatomical vagary, in the tail! That long stringer to the southeast is never, by solemn treaty, more than ten marine leagues wide, and often considerably less. Extending for miles up the coast, Canada and not American territory is its back country, for the mainland of Alaska lies many hundred miles distant. Even to mention this matter is political TNT, however, for Juneau is very touchy on the subject. When it is mentioned, she draws up with hauteur.

"Very well. If you do not like me as a capital, you crude Interior creatures, go off and play by yourselves," she announces. "We in the 'tail,' as you inelegantly call it, can very well get on by ourselves. We are more cultured, anyway, and older in civilization. We could be a State all by ourselves."

The intense local feeling engendered by different roots and fruits, the exaggerated sense of local importance due to the separateness and distance apart of the settlements, the lack of getting together between communities so that we could measure up and compare notes and knock off our mutual antisocial bumps, have all been inevitable so far because tides and watercourses and mountain ranges have pushed us apart. Only within the last very few years have we begun to use the machine-made tools provided by our generation-railroads, telegraphs, autos, and airplanes to cut away and pare down these spatial demarcations. In spite of this beginning we are still, in this part of Alaska, in the pioneer period of development. But, under present conditions at least, a Revolution will not be needed to bind and amalgamate us. Steady and wholesome commercial development (not a forced growth, as some would have it) will in due time draw together these Colonies of the North in a sane and natural way.

Álaska is, above all, a land of paradoxes. One is tempted to say that there is no statement of physical fact that can be made about Alaska of which the exact opposite cannot also be posited, and with equal truth. To phrase this in pure Alaskanese, you can play it straight or