the rain.

Where the desert flames with furnace heat,
I have trod.
Where the horned toad's tiny feet
In a land
Of burning sand
Leave a mark,
I have ridden in the noon and in the dark.
Now I go to see the snows,
Where the mossy mountains rise
Wild and bleak--and the rose
And pink of morning fill the skies
With a color that is singing,
And the lights
Of polar nights
Utter cries
As they sweep from star to star,
Swinging, ringing,
Where the sunless middays are.

THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS

CHAPTER I

COMING OF THE SHIPS

I

A little over a year ago a small steamer swung to at a Seattle wharf,
and emptied a flood of eager passengers upon the dock. It was an
obscure craft, making infrequent trips round the Aleutian Islands
(which form the farthest western point of the United States) to the
mouth of a practically unknown river called the Yukon, which empties
into the ocean near the post of St. Michaels, on the northwestern
coast of Alaska.

The passengers on this boat were not distinguished citizens, nor fair
to look upon. They were roughly dressed, and some of them were pale
and worn as if with long sickness or exhausting toil. Yet this ship
and these passengers startled the whole English-speaking world. Swift
as electricity could fly, the magical word GOLD went forth like a
brazen eagle across the continent to turn the faces of millions of
earth's toilers toward a region which, up to that time, had been
unknown or of ill report. For this ship contained a million dollars
in gold: these seedy passengers carried great bags of nuggets and
bottles of shining dust which they had burned, at risk of their
lives, out of the perpetually frozen ground, so far in the north that
the winter had no sun and the summer midnight had no dusk.

The world was instantly filled with the stories of these men and of
their tons of bullion. There was a moment of arrested attention--then
the listeners smiled and nodded knowingly to each other, and went
about their daily affairs.

But other ships similarly laden crept laggardly through the gates of
Puget Sound, bringing other miners with bags and bottles, and then
the world believed. Thereafter the journals of all Christendom had to
do with the "Klondike" and "The Golden River." Men could not hear
e