heir accustomed way among the beach
sands and shingle. No soothing lap of the waters against the sides of
the vessel consoled these unromantic men. There were no docks or wharves
at Skagway. The immense ship's cargo must be unloaded into small boats
or hastily built scows to be towed ashore over the shallow waters. It
was the beginning of a gigantic undertaking, and many, hearing of a more
desirable landing-spot and a quicker, easier mountain pass further on,
kept with the ship to Dyea. But the same low and lazily lapping waters
surrounded them as at Skagway. Tides rose and fell, and, at their own
will, fogs settled and lifted.

By turns rain came, winds blew, and the sun shone, the latter in a
subdued and apparently reluctant manner, as in winter on the shores of
old Puget.

At this stage of affairs there was no further postponement of an evil
day possible, and the remaining voyagers with their freight were hustled
on shore with as much expedition as was permissible with a few barges,
flat-bottomed fishing boats, and Indian canoes.

With their faraway homes behind them, and the top of lowering mountains
often hidden by storm-clouds before them, these hundreds of daring
argonauts faced the hardships of a trail, and life in an Alaskan
mountain wilderness; their own backs and those of a few pack animals
being the only means of transporting many tons of necessary supplies
into the vast interior to which they journeyed.

To say that the courage of no man failed at the prospect would be
untrue; but none liked to appear to his fellows to weaken, and
notwithstanding the disheartening outlook, all set to work with a will
until the hold of the great ship was entirely empty and her waterline
had risen many feet above the ripples of Lynn.

The scene on shore was a repetition of that on the neighboring beach at
Skagway, separated from it, however, by glittering peaks, the snows of
which were melted daily by the sun and warm wind and found their way in
streams down ravines and canyons, across glaciers and around boulders,
dropping lower and still lower to the moraines near salt water.

Busy indeed was the scene now presented. Colonies of canvas tents were
grouped upon the beaches close above the high water mark where the
outfits of the travelers had been hastily dumped. Camp fires crackled
and Indian fishermen traded fresh salmon for tobacco; but the tired
and already mud-bedraggled prospectors slept heavily upon the damp, col