Thomas Stevens’s veracity³ may have been indeterminate as x, and his imagination the imagination of ordinary men increased to the nth power, but this, at least, must be said: never did he deliver himself of word nor deed that could be branded as a lie outright⁴. . . He may have played with probability, and verged⁵ on the extremest edge of possibility, but in his tales the machinery⁶ never creaked.  That he knew the Northland like a book, not a soul can deny.  That he was a great traveller, and had set foot on countless⁷ unknown trails, many evidences affirm.  Outside of my own personal knowledge, I knew men that had met him everywhere, but principally on the confines of Nowhere.  There was Johnson, the ex-Hudson Bay Company factor, who had housed him in a Labrador factory until his dogs rested up a bit, and he was able to strike out again.  There was McMahon, agent for the Alaska Commercial Company, who had run across him in Dutch Harbour, and later on, among the outlying islands of the Aleutian group.  It was indisputable that he had guided one of the earlier United States surveys, and history states positively⁸ that in a similar capacity he served the Western union when it attempted to put through its trans-Alaskan and Siberian telegraph to Europe.  Further, there was Joe Lamson, the whaling captain, who, when ice-bound off the mouth of the Mackenzie, had had him come aboard after tobacco.  This last touch proves Thomas Stevens’s identity conclusively⁹.  His quest for tobacco was perennial¹⁰ and untiring.  Ere we became fairly acquainted, I learned to greet him with one hand, and pass the

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