ning to tell on us. We suffered from
rheumatism, we barked with cold. Oh, we were weary, weary, yet the trail
was nearing its end.

One sunlit Sabbath evening I remember well. We were drifting along and
we came on a lovely glade where a creek joined the river. It was a
green, velvety, sparkling place, and by the creek were two men
whipsawing lumber. We hailed them jauntily and asked them if they had
found prospects. Were they getting out lumber for sluice-boxes?

One of the men came forward. He was very tired, very quiet, very solemn.
"No," he said, "we are sawing out a coffin for our dead."

Then we saw a limp shape in their boat and we hurried on, awed and
abashed.

The river was mud colour now, swirling in great eddies or convulsed from
below with sudden upheavals. Drifting on that oily current one seemed to
be quite motionless, and only the gliding banks assured us of progress.
The country seemed terrible to me, sinister, guilty, God-forsaken. At
the horizon, jagged mountains stabbed viciously at the sky.

The river overwhelmed me. Sometimes it was a stream of blood, running
into the eye of the setting sun, beautiful, yet weird and menacing. It
broadened, deepened, and every day countless streams swelled its volume.
Islands waded in it greenly. Always we heard it _singing_, a seething,
hissing noise supposed to be the pebbles shuffling on the bottom.

The days were insufferably hot and mosquito-curst; the nights chilly,
damp and mosquito-haunted. I suffered agonies from neuralgia. Never
mind, it would soon be over. We were on our last lap. The trail was near
its end.

Yes, it was indeed the homestretch. Suddenly sweeping round a bend we
raised a shout of joy. There was that great livid scar on the mountain
face--the "Slide," and clustered below it like shells on the seashore,
an army of tents. It was the gold-born city.

Trembling with eagerness we pulled ashore. Our troubles were over. At
last we had gained our Eldorado, thank God, thank God!

A number of loafers were coming to meet us. They were strangely calm.

"How about the gold?" said the Prodigal; "lots of ground left to stake?"

One of them looked at us contemptuously. He chewed a moment ere he
spoke.

"You Cheechakers better git right home. There ain't a foot of ground to
stake. Everything in sight was staked last Fall. The rest is all mud.
There's nothing doin' an' there's ten men for every job! The whole
thing's a fake. You Cheechakers bette