Each with a small pack, and sticking out above it the Klondyke shovel that had come all the way from San Francisco, Nig behind with provisions in his little saddle-bags, and tongue farther out than ever, they turned their backs on Dawson, crossed the lower corner of Lot 6, behind the Government Reserve, stared with fresh surprise at the young market-garden flourishing there, down to the many-islanded Klondyke, across in the scow-ferry, over the Corduroy, that cheers and deceives the new-comer for that first mile of the Bonanza Trail, on through pool and morass to the thicket of white birches, where the Colonel thought it well to rest awhile.

“Yes, he felt the heat,” he said, as he passed the time of day with other men going by with packs, pack-horses, or draught-dogs, cursing at the trail and at the Government that taxed the miners so cruelly and then did nothing for them, not even making a decent highway to the Dominion’s source of revenue.  But out of the direct rays of the sun the traveller found refreshment, and the mosquitoes were blown away by the keen breeze that seemed to come from off some glacier.  And the birds sang loud, and the wild-flowers starred the birch-grove, and the briar-roses wove a tangle on either side the swampy trail.

On again, dipping to a little valley—­Bonanza Creek!  They stood and looked.

“Well, here we are.”

“Yes, this is what we came for.”

And it was because of “this” that so vast a machinery of ships, engines, and complicated human lives had been set in motion.  What was it?  A dip in the hills where a little stream was caught up into sluices.  On either side of every line of boxes, heaps and windrows of gravel.  Above, high on log-cabin staging, windlasses.  Stretching away on either side, gentle slopes, mossed and flower starred.  Here and there upon this ancient moose pasture, tents and cabins set at random.  In the bed of the creek, up and down in every direction, squads of men sweating in the sun—­here, where for untold centuries herds of leisurely and majestic moose had come to quench their thirst.  In the older cabins their horns still lorded it.  Their bones were bleaching in the fire-weed.

On from claim to claim the new-comers to these rich pastures went, till they came to the junction of the El Dorado, where huddles the haphazard settlement of the Grand Forks, only twelve miles from Dawson.  And now they were at the heart of “the richest Placer Mining District the world has seen.”  But they knew well enough that every inch was owned, and that the best they could look for was work as unskilled labourers, day shift or night, on the claims of luckier men.

They had brought a letter from Ryan, of the North-West Mounted Police, to the Superintendent of No. 10, Above Discovery, a claim a little this side of the Forks.  Ryan had warned them to keep out of the way of the part-owner, Scoville Austin, a surly person naturally, so exasperated at the tax, and so enraged at the rumour of Government spies masquerading as workmen, checking his reports, that he was “a first-rate man to avoid.”  But Seymour, the Superintendent, was, in the words of the soothing motto of the whole American people, “All right.”