In Kadiak Village, we met a Captain Nelson, the first man down from the north that spring, who had sledded from Nome to Katmai on Shelikoff Straits in two months.

His record stands unbroken, and in villages from Katmai to the Kuskokwim the Indians tell of the tall white man with the team of fifteen huskies who raced through as if a demon were at his heels; how he bored headlong into the blizzards and braved January's fiercest rage; how his guides dropped and his dogs died in their collars.