ed with the outside world by a cable to Seattle, and by other parts
of Alaska by telegraph, and has electric lights and a telephone system. A
fine school building and several churches that reminded the young Scouts
of many Hudson river towns, and wiped out the last remaining evidences of
homesickness, were among the attractions, and the sight of a real railroad
equipped with locomotives, cars, shops and station were among the marvels
found where they had expected to find a wilderness.

It was from this town that thousands of prospectors and adventurers
started in 1897 and 1898 in the rush to the Klondike, and Swiftwater told
them many stories of the terrible winter trip over the White Pass in those
years in which hundreds of men lost their lives and thousands of horses
were killed.

With Colonel Snow they made one or two trips into the surrounding country,
visiting the nearby Chilkat and Chilkoot villages, during two days that
Swiftwater had gone over to White Horse in Yukon territory, at the other
end of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, a distance of 112 miles, to make
arrangements for boats and Indian guides and boatmen to carry their
machinery into the wilderness. The boys were greatly interested in this
first near view of Alaskan Indian life in the two villages which they
visited, and in comparing the natives with the Indians with whom they had
been associated in their trip to the Canadian Rockies. The Alaskan Indians
were shorter in build, more squatty in figure and broader faced than the
Crees and the other Southern red men. Jack, who had been poking about into
the various corners of the first village, which were composed of huts and
sod houses, came back with a look very like disgust in his face.

"I say, Don," he exclaimed, "for goodness sake don't do anything to get
adopted into this tribe," referring to an episode of their journey in
search of the lost mine, when Don had for obvious bravery been made a
fullfledged Indian.

"Sure, I'll na do anything to deserve it; it would be naething to be proud
of. They do not look much like our friends in Canada."

"There are two points in which I find they are identical," said Jack.

"What are those?" asked Rand, "color and clothes?"

"No," replied Jack, "dirt and dogs. The dirt must have been here when the
Indian came onto this continent, but I've wondered whether the Indian
found the dog when he came here or the dog found the Indian. They seem to
have been insepa