Every steamer
that could be made use of was booked to its full capacity,
while many ardent gold-seekers were turned away. Every
passenger and every pound of cargo that could be taken on
these steamers was loaded and the hegira was almost
instantly in full blast.
As it proved, the new find was in Canadian territory, a few
miles east of the Alaskan boundary, but the flood of men
that set in was mainly American. Many threw up good
positions or mortgaged their homes for funds to join the mad
migration, oblivious in most cases of the fact that they
were setting out to encounter hardships and arctic extremes
of temperature for which their home life had utterly
unfitted them. Warnings were published that those who joined
the pioneer flood faced starvation or death by freezing or
hardship, but the tide was on and could not be turned, and
before the autumn had far advanced thousands had landed at
the mushroom settlements of Skagway and Dyea, laden with the
effects they had brought with them and proposing to fight
their way against nature's obstacles over the difficult
mountain passes and along the little less difficult lakes
and streams to the promised land of gold. A village of log
houses and tents, known as Dawson, had sprung up at the
mouth of the Klondike, and this was the mecca towards which
the great pilgrimage set.
Pages:
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358