s and costly artificial heat had been needed for their
production. Hot-house flowers are now grown here and also sold at a
ruinous cost, but the lucky prospector will cheerfully part with $5 for
a rose, or five times the amount for a puny gardenia, and some of the
market gardens around Dawson are almost as profitable as a fairly rich
claim. High prices here even extended to the commonest furs judging from
the price I obtained for a tattered deerskin coat which had cost me only
eighty roubles at Moscow. But although the garment was now almost
unpresentable I sold it to a bar-tender for its original price, and
heard, on the same evening, that it had again been disposed of to a
"Chechako" from up country for over $200!

Klondike is generally associated in the public mind with intense cold.
We suffered from a perpetual and stifling heat which necessitated the
wearing of tropical tweeds, a sartorial luxury here where a summer
suiting costs about six times as much as in Savile Row. Once there was a
sharp thunderstorm and the rain came down in sheets, somewhat cooling
the atmosphere, but only for a short time, for when the sky cleared a
dense mist arose from the swampy ground, and the air became as heavy and
oppressive as I have known it during the hottest season of the year in
Central Borneo. But the nights were always cool and delicious, and these
moreover were now gradually darkening, an ineffable blessing which can
only be duly appreciated by those who have experienced the miseries of
eternal day. The English tourist who in July races northwards in the
"Argonaut" to behold the midnight sun should pass a summer or two in
Northern Alaska. He would never wish to see it again!

CHAPTER XVIII

THE UPPER YUKON AND LEWES RIVERS.
THE WHITE PASS RAILWAY.

The steamer _White Horse_, in which we travelled from Dawson City up the
Yukon to the terminus of the White Pass Railway was, although much
smaller than the _Hannah_, quite as luxuriously fitted as that palatial
river boat. There is now, in the open season, daily communication
between Dawson and the coast, and the journey to Vancouver may now be
accomplished under six days. In winter-time closed and comfortable
sleighs, drawn by horses, convey the traveller to rail-head. There are
post-houses with good accommodation every twenty miles or so, and this
trip, once so replete with hardships, may now be undertaken at any time
of the year by the most inexperienced traveller.