I had lived in the old Oregon country forty-four years and had never
seen a mine. Mining had had no attraction for me. But when my
accumulations had all been swallowed up, I decided to take a chance. In
the spring of 1898 I made my first trip over the Chilkoot Pass, went
down the Yukon river to Dawson in a flatboat, and ran the famous White
Horse Rapids with my load of vegetables for the Klondike miners.

One may read most graphic descriptions of Chilkoot Pass; but the
difficulties met by those earlier fortune-seekers who tried it were
worse than the wildest fancy can picture. I started in with fifteen tons
of freight and got through with nine. On one stretch of two thousand
feet, I paid forty dollars a ton. Some others paid even more.

The trip part of the way reminded me of the scenes on the Plains in
1852, when the people and teams crowded each other on the several
parallel trails. At the pass, most of the travel came upon one track,
and that so steep the ascent could be made only by cutting steps in the
ice and snow--fifteen hundred steps in all. Frequently every step would
be full, while crowds jostled each other at the foot of the ascent to
get into the single file, each man carrying a hundred-pound pack on his
back.

After all sorts of trying experiences, I finally arrived in Dawson,
where I sold my fresh potatoes at thirty-six dollars a bushel and other
things at proportionate prices. In two weeks I started up the river,
homeward bound, with two hundred ounces of Klondike gold in my belt. But
four round trips in two years satisfied me that I did not want any more
of such experiences.

Once, fortunately, I was detained for a couple of days, and thereby
escaped an avalanche that buried fifty-two other people in the snow. I
passed by the morgue the second day after the catastrophe on my way to
the summit, doubtless over the bodies of many unknown dead, embedded so
deeply in the snow that it was utterly impossible to recover them.

The good ducking I received in my first passage through the White Horse
Rapids made me resolve I would not go through there again. But I did it
on the very next trip that same year, and came out of it dry. Again,
when going down the Thirty-Mile River, it did seem that we could not
escape being dashed upon the rocks. But somehow or other we got through
safely, though the bank was strewn with wrecks and the waters had
swallowed up many victims.

When the Yukon proper was reached, th