revelry these
drinking places witnessed a few years ago. How high the hopes of sudden
riches burned in the breasts of the men who went in and out of them,
doomed to utter disappointment in the vast majority! What a rapscallion
crew, male and female, followed this great mob of gold seekers, and grew
richer as their victims grew poorer! What earned and borrowed and saved
and begged and stolen moneys were frittered away and flung away that
winter; what health and character were undermined! How the ribaldry and
valiant, stupid blasphemy rang out in these tumbling-down shanties! Go
out on the creeks and see the hills denuded of their timber, the
stream-beds punched with innumerable holes, filled up or filling up, the
cabins and sluice-boxes rotting into the moss, here and there a broken
pick and shovel, here and there a rusting boiler, and take notice that
this region has been "developed."

When the debit and credit sides of the ledger are balanced, what remains
to Alaska of all these thousands of men, of all the many hundreds of
thousands of dollars they brought with them? Those creeks, stripped,
gutted, and deserted; this town, waiting for a kindly fire with a
favouring breeze to wipe out its useless emptiness; a few half-breed
children at mission schools; a hardy native tribe, sophisticated,
diseased, demoralised, and largely dead--that seems the net result.

The portage trail from Rampart to the Tanana River goes up Minook Creek
and follows the valley to its head, then crosses a summit and passes
down through several small mining settlements to the Hot Springs. The
trail saves traversing two sides of the triangle which it makes with the
two rivers.

The dogs' feet and legs had suffered so much from the deep snow and the
heavy labour of the journey out of the Koyukuk and the rough ice of the
Yukon that I was compelled to have not merely moccasins but moose-hide
leggings made here, coming right up to the belly and tying over the
back. All the hair was worn away from the back of the legs and the skin
was in many places raw.

We had thought to cover the twenty-five or thirty miles up the valley
and over the summit to a road-house just beyond its foot, but rough
drifted trails and a high wind held us back until it was dark before the
ascent was reached, and we pitched our tent and reserved the climb for
the morrow.

It was a hard grind owing to the drifted snow and the wind that still
disputed our passage, but the view