in the mountains, was cheerful and invigorating after two months in
which we had seen no more than his gilding of the high snows. The sun
gives life to the dead landscape, colour to the oppressive monotony of
white and black, and man's heart leaps to the change as jubilantly as
does the face of nature.

[Sidenote: RAMPART AND ITS SALOON]

Rampart City differs from Circle City, the other decayed mining town of
the Yukon River, only in that the process is further advanced. Year by
year there are a few less men on the creeks behind it, a few less
residents in the town itself. Its long, straggling water-front consists
in the main of empty buildings, the windows boarded up, the snow drifted
high about the doors. One store now serves all ends of trade, one liquor
shop serves all the desire for drink of the whites, and slops over
through the agency of two or three dissolute squaw men and half-breeds
to the natives up and down the river.[C]

Rampart had one fat year, 1898, when many hundreds of gold seekers,
approaching the Klondike by Saint Michael and the lower Yukon were
attracted and halted by the gold discoveries on Big and Little Minook,
and spent the winter here. The next spring news was brought of the rich
discoveries on Anvil Creek, behind Cape Nome, and an exodus began which
grew into a veritable stampede in 1900, when the gold discoveries in the
beach itself were made. Rampart's large population faded away as surely
and as quickly to Nome as Circle City's population did to the Klondike.
The Indians are almost all gone from their village a mile above the
town; they dwindled away with the dwindling prosperity, some to Tanana,
some to other points down the river; and what used to be the worst small
native community in the interior of Alaska has almost ceased to exist.
Most of the little band of white folks still remaining were gathered
together at night, and appreciated, I thought, their semiannual
opportunity for Divine service.

[Sidenote: "DEVELOPED"]

There is no resisting the melancholy that hangs over a place like this.
As one treads the crazy, treacherous board sidewalks, full of holes and
rotten planks, now rising a step or two, now falling, and reads the
dimmed and dirty signs that once flaunted their gold and colours,
"Golden North," "Pioneer," "Reception," "The Senate" (why should every
town in Alaska have a "Senate" saloon and not one a "House of
Representatives"?), one conjures up the scenes of rude