They struggled on, under the aurora
borealis or the midnight sun, through temperatures that ranged from
one hundred degrees above zero to eighty degrees below, living, in
the grim humour of the land, on "rabbit tracks and salmon bellies."
To-day, a man may wander away from the trail for a hundred days, and
just as he is congratulating himself that at last he is treading
virgin soil, he will come upon some ancient and dilapidated cabin,
and forget his disappointment in wonder at the man who reared the
logs. Still, if one wanders from the trail far enough and deviously
enough, he may chance upon a few thousand square miles which he may
have all to himself. On the other hand, no matter how far and how
deviously he may wander, the possibility always remains that he may
stumble, not alone upon a deserted cabin, but upon an occupied one.
As an instance of this, and of the vastness of the land, no better
case need be cited than that of Harry Maxwell. An able seaman,
hailing from New Bedford, Massachusetts, his ship, the brig Fannie E.
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