her told me--twenty years ago that was."

"They took a year for it," commented Rob, "and sometimes eighteen
months, to get across the mountains there. They built houses and
passed the winter, and so a great many of them got sick and died. But
twenty years ago is a long time nowadays. We can do easily what they
could hardly do at all. Uncle Dick has allowed us about three weeks to
cover that five hundred miles over the Rat Portage!"

"Well, surely if Sir Alexander Mackenzie could make that trip in
birch-bark canoes, over three thousand miles, with just a few men who
didn't know where they were going, we ought to be able to get through
now. That was a hundred and twenty-eight years ago, I figure it, and a
lot of things have happened since then." John spoke now with
considerable confidence.

"Well, Uncle Dick will take care of us," said Jesse, the youngest of
these adventurers.

"Yes, and we'll take care of ourselves all we can," added Rob. "Uncle
Dick tells me that the trouble with the Klondikers was that they
didn't know how to take care of themselves out of doors. A lot of them
were city people fresh to all kinds of wilderness work, and they
simply died because they didn't know how to do things. They were
tenderfeet when they started. A good many of them died before they got
through. Some of those who did get through are the prominent men of
Alaska to-day. But we're not tenderfeet. Are we, boys?"

"No, indeed," said Jesse, stoutly. "As I said, I'm ready to start."
And he again puffed out his chest with much show of bravery, although,
to be sure, the wild country in which he now found himself rather
worked on his imagination.

It had required all the persuasion of Uncle Dick, expert railway
engineer in wilderness countries, to persuade the parents of these
three boys to allow them to accompany him on this, his own first
exploration into the extreme North, under the Midnight Sun itself. He
had promised them--and something of a promise it was, too--to bring
the young travelers back safely to their home in Valdez, on the
Pacific Ocean, in three months from the time they left the head of the
railroad at Athabasca Landing.

"Well, now," said John, folding up his map and putting it back in his
pocket, "here comes Uncle Dick at last. I only hope that we won't have
to wait long, for it seems to me we'll have to hustle if we get
through on time--over five thousand miles it will be, and in less than
ninety days! I'll bet