r been made. Singly they went, in groups, and by partnerships of two
and three. There was no route marked out by which they were to reach the
glittering streams of which they dreamed; the general direction of north
and west was all that guided them. Athabasca Landing was the portal
through which they passed, and by every northward stream they
travelled,--down the Athabasca toward the Mackenzie and up the Athabasca
to the Peace, leaving stranded men and stranded boats on every shore. By
raft and dug-out, scow and canoe, men essayed to travel rapid waterways
who had never handled craft before, and the Indians still point out to
you near Grand Rapids on the Athabasca the site of the Mounted Police
Station where Sergeant Anderson rescued a dozen tenderfoots from
drowning.

To the Indians of this vast country the unwonted inundation of the
whites was a revelation. Before this, their knowledge of Europeans had
been limited to men of the Hudson's Bay posts and the few black-robed
Fathers of the missions. The priests had told the Indians that in the
outside world French was the accepted language of the white man and that
only the degraded and debased spoke English. Most of the Northern
Indians who speak English will tell you that they got their first
lessons from the Klondike miners.

And what of the men who followed the gleam? Some reached Dawson. These
were few. Those who gained fortunes, were fewer still. In the old books
of the H.B. Co. a favourite phrase of the Factor is "a band of Indians
_cast up_ from the east," "the Express from the North _cast up_ at a
late hour last night." On the way to Dawson, and filtering backward from
that point, hundreds of gold-miners are "cast up" on every interior
shore. Acting as attaches to Hudson's Bay posts, engaging as free
traders, manipulating missionary boats for Protestant and Roman Catholic
seekers for souls, trapping off their own bat, and, in one instance at
least, marrying the missionary, they were constantly passing us. Round
the home hearths wives wonder about them, and the old bent mother still
prays for her absent son. A silence like this once entered upon is hard
to break, and the wanderer in the silence wraps tighter about him the
garment of the recluse. Outcropping from the strata in striking
individuality, they belong to a different race to the plodding people of
the Hudson's Bay posts, and are interesting men wherever you meet them.
Keen of vision, slow of speech, and