r git right home."

Yes, after all our travail, all our torment, we had better go right
home. Already many were preparing to do so. Yet what of that great
oncoming horde of which we were but the vanguard? What of the eager
army, the host of the Cheechakos? For hundreds of miles were lake and
river white with their grotesque boats. Beyond them again were thousands
and thousands of others struggling on through mosquito-curst morasses,
bent under their inexorable burdens. Reckless, indomitable,
hope-inspired, they climbed the passes and shot the rapids; they drowned
in the rivers, they rotted in the swamps. Nothing could stay them. The
golden magnet was drawing them on; the spell of the gold-lust was in
their hearts.

And this was the end. For this they had mortgaged homes and broken
hearts. For this they had faced danger and borne suffering: to be told
to return.

The land was choosing its own. All along it had weeded out the
weaklings. Now let the fainthearted go back. This land was only for the
Strong.

Yet it was sad, so much weariness, and at the end disenchantment and
failure.

Verily the ways of the gold-trail were cruel.

BOOK III

THE CAMP

For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It's little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold;
You'd follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you're stiff and battened down let some one whisper "Gold,"
You're lief to rise and follow it again.

--"The Prospector."

CHAPTER I

I will always remember my first day in the gold-camp. We were well in
front of the Argonaut army, but already thousands were in advance of us.
The flat at the mouth of Bonanza was a congestion of cabins; shacks and
tents clustered the hillside, scattered on the heights and massed again
on the slope sweeping down to the Klondike. An intense vitality charged
the air. The camp was alive, ahum, vibrant with fierce, dynamic energy.

In effect the town was but one street stretching alongside the water
front. It was amazingly packed with men from side to side, from end to
end. They lounged in the doorways of oddly assorted buildings, and
jostled each other on the dislocated sidewalks. Stores of all kinds,
saloons, gambling joints flourished without number, and in one block
alone there were half