Within the memory of the writer there
lingers the picture of a sheltered nook on the shores of Lake Le
Barge, in which half a thousand gold seekers lay storm-bound. Day
after day they struggled against the seas in the teeth of a northerly
gale, and night after night returned to their camps, repulsed but not
disheartened. At the rapids they ran their boats through, hit or
miss, and after infinite toil and hardship, on the breast of a
jarring ice flood, arrived at the Klondike. From the beach at Dyea
to the eddy below the Barracks at Dawson, they had paid for their
temerity the tax of human life demanded by the elements. A year
later, so greatly had the country shrunk, the tourist, on
disembarking from the ocean steamship, took his seat in a modern
railway coach. A few hours later, at Lake Bennet, he stepped aboard
a commodious river steamer. At the rapids he rode around on a
tramway to take passage on another steamer below. And in a few hours
more he was in Dawson, without having once soiled the lustre of his
civilized foot-gear.
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