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The school was started and had the good fortune of its first four years' life under the care of a notable gentlewoman, Miss Annie Cragg Farthing, who was yet at its head at the time of this visit, but who died suddenly, a martyr to her devotion to the children, a year later; and a great Celtic cross in concrete, standing high on the bluff across the river, now marks the spot of her own selection a spot that gives a fine view of Denali where her body rests, and also the Alaskan mission's sense of the extraordinary value of her life.
This note is not intended to reflect upon the judge who granted the licence, although all his predecessors have not put that construction upon the law, but upon a law open to that construction. On the 7th of June, 1913, the writer and three companions reached the summit of Denali.
On that spot one understood why the view of Denali from Lake Minchúmina is the grand view, for the west face drops abruptly down with nothing but that vast void from the top to nigh the bottom of the mountain. Beyond stretched, blue and vague to the southwest, the wide valley of the Kuskokwim, with an end of all mountains.
Not until this book was in preparation and the author was digging into the literature of the mountain did he discover the interesting connection of Arthur Harper, father of Walter Harper, narrated in another place, with Denali, and not until that discovery did he think of suggesting the name Harper for any feature of the mountain, despite the distinction that fell to the young man of setting the first foot upon the summit.
One was struck at once by the simple appropriateness of the native names for these mountains. The master peak is Denali the great one; the lesser peak is Denali's Wife; and the little peaks between are the children. And my indignation kindled at the substitution of modern names for these ancient mountain names bestowed immemorially by the original inhabitants of the land!
While we sat resting awhile on our way to this camp, gazing at these pinnacles of the North Peak, we fell to talking about the pioneer climbers of this mountain who claimed to have set a flagstaff near the summit of the North Peak as to which feat a great deal of incredulity existed in Alaska for several reasons and we renewed our determination that, if the weather permitted when we had reached our goal and ascended the South Peak, we would climb the North Peak also to seek for traces of this earliest exploit on Denali, which is dealt with at length in another place in this book.
One cannot conceive grander burial than that which lofty mountains bend and crack and shatter to make, or a nobler tomb than the great upper basin of Denali; but life is sweet and all men are loath to leave it, and certainly never men who cling to life had more cause to be thankful. The difficulty of our task was very greatly increased; that was plain at a glance.
Always all day long, while we were on that ridge, the distant thunder of avalanches resounded from the great basin far above us, into which the two summits of Denali were continually discharging their snows. It sounded as though the King of Denmark were drinking healths all day long to the salvoes of his artillery that custom "more honored in the breach than in the observance."
Although Cook's claim to have reached the summit of Denali met with general acceptance outside, or at least was not openly scouted, it was otherwise in Alaska. The men, in particular, who lived and worked in the placer-mining regions about the base of the mountain, and were, perhaps, more familiar with the orography of the range than any surveyor or professed topographer, were openly incredulous.
And how eager and impatient we were to rise high enough, to progress far enough on that ridge that we might gaze into the great basin itself from which the thunderings came, the spacious hall of the two lords paramount of all the mountains of the continent the north and south peaks of Denali!
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