nough or read enough of the mysterious Northwest.

In less than ten days after the landing of the second ship, all
trains westward-bound across America were heavily laden with
fiery-hearted adventurers, who set their faces to the new Eldorado
with exultant confidence, resolute to do and dare.

Miners from Colorado and cow-boys from Montana met and mingled with
civil engineers and tailors from New York City, and adventurous
merchants from Chicago set shoulder to shoemakers from Lynn. All
kinds and conditions of prospectors swarmed upon the boats at
Seattle, Vancouver, and other coast cities. Some entered upon new
routes to the gold fields, which were now known to be far in the
Yukon Valley, while others took the already well-known route by way
of St. Michaels, and thence up the sinuous and sinister stream whose
waters began on the eastern slope of the glacial peaks just inland
from Juneau, and swept to the north and west for more than two
thousand miles. It was understood that this way was long and hard and
cold, yet thousands eagerly embarked on keels of all designs and of
all conditions of unseaworthiness. By far the greater number
assaulted the mountain passes of Skagway.

As the autumn came on, the certainty of the gold deposits deepened;
but the tales of savage cliffs, of snow-walled trails, of swift and
icy rivers, grew more numerous, more definite, and more appalling.
Weak-hearted Jasons dropped out and returned to warn their friends of
the dread powers to be encountered in the northern mountains.

As the uncertainties of the river route and the sufferings and toils
of the Chilcoot and the White Pass became known, the adventurers cast
about to find other ways of reaching the gold fields, which had come
now to be called "The Klondike," because of the extreme richness of a
small river of that name which entered the Yukon, well on toward the
Arctic Circle.

From this attempt to avoid the perils of other routes, much talk
arose of the Dalton Trail, the Taku Trail, the Stikeen Route, the
Telegraph Route, and the Edmonton Overland Trail. Every town within
two thousand miles of the Klondike River advertised itself as "the
point of departure for the gold fields," and set forth the special
advantages of its entrance way, crying out meanwhile against the
cruel mendacity of those who dared to suggest other and "more
dangerous and costly" ways.

The winter was spent in urging these claims, and thousands of men
planned