It rained all night, but the Edgington tent stood it well, very little coming through, and that, I fancy, only where carelessness had left some article touching the canvas. With a view to assisting the commissariat department, we separated in the morning, E. and H. going up to the top of Edgcumbe, and securing two more ptarmigan on the way. They found the bottom of the shallow crater covered with snow, and on the summit itself encountered the tracks of one of the enormous Alaska brown bears (_Ursus Richardsonii_). I took Dick towards the Camelsback, but we never saw a sign of deer or bear, and so about two o’clock I turned to come home, giving him the rifle that he might make a last effort to procure venison. I had no doubt about being able to find my way back, for I had taken my bearings carefully, and a fair-sized dead tree standing in the middle of our small clearing afforded a capital landmark. I went at a fair pace, and though all the ravines were very much alike, I presently felt pretty sure I was nearing camp, an opinion confirmed in a minute or two by hearing, as I thought, the crooning song of the Indian we had left behind. Still no dead tree appeared, and thinking I must have been mistaken, I pushed on for another quarter of an hour, by which time I felt sure I had gone far enough. I struggled up the mountain, I scrambled down, I shouted and yelled, I had an exciting chase after a couple of ptarmigan, one of which I managed to bag with my revolver, but nowhere could I see this mangy tree, and began to feel very unhappy, as it was gradually borne in on me that I was very decidedly lost. At last I saw far below me two tiny lakes which we had passed on the previous day, and decided to go down to them, as I felt pretty sure I could make camp from there. Hardly had I descended a hundred yards, when I came into the corner of a clearing, and heard E.’s voice. And then the mystery was explained; the other Indian, with praiseworthy but most mistaken industry, had cut down the dead tree for firewood. It had rained all day, and in the night a tremendous south-west gale came on which proved the last straw, and we settled to return to Sitka, where we were going to dismiss the Dude, with whom we had had a row. He had accidentally left his blankets on the beach by the canoe, and though we had lent him one of ours, he was very dissatisfied, and apparently coming to the conclusion that serving us was not likely to be all beer and skittles, announced that he was not coming to Yakutat. We made no attempt to get him to change his mind, for we had already come to the conclusion that he had much too good an opinion of himself, and was more than a little lazy, though he was an entertaining conversationalist, and gave us interesting scraps of information, either social, such as the number of slaves he had till quite recently possessed, or geographical, such as that twenty-one miles up the Copper River a glacier stretches across its whole width, a phenomenon which existed on the Stickheen till comparatively lately. He added that the river was two miles wide at this point, and that a portage of fifteen miles across the ice was made by the Indians with skin canoes, or bidarkies, but as he had never been there I am inclined to doubt his details. Although we were unanimous as to the expediency of dismissing him, we were not at all so united as to how he was to be replaced, and became, indeed, a little despondent as to whether we should get further than Yakutat, so that had we been able to communicate by telegraph with W., I am not at all sure that the expedition would not have then and there come to an end, and the members of it taken refuge in the Selkirks. Luckily we had to wait for him, and in the interval more cheerful counsels prevailed.