Another old-timer, out of the bitterness of a “home-mood,” imagined himself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth.  “There are the continents,” he indicated; “and up there near the polar cap is a country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska.  Now, in other countries and states there are great insane asylums, but, though crowded, they are insufficient; so there is Alaska given over to the worst cases.  Now and then some poor insane creature comes to his senses in those awful solitudes, and, in wondering joy, escapes from the land and hastens back to his home.  But most cases are incurable.  They just suffer along, poor devils, forgetting their former life quite, or recalling it like a dream.”  Again the grip of the North, which will not let one go—­for “Most cases are incurable.”

For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on.  The very severity of the struggle with Nature seemed to make the gold hunters kindly toward one another.  The latch-string was always out, and the open hand was the order of the day.  Distrust was unknown, and it was no hyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off his back for a comrade.  Most significant of all, perhaps, in this connection, was the custom of the old days, that when August the first came around, the prospectors who had failed to locate “pay dirt” were permitted to go upon the ground of their more fortunate comrades and take out enough for the next year’s grub-stake.

In 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the Stewart River, and in 1886 Cassiar Bar was struck just below the mouth of the Hootalinqua.  It was at this time that the first moderate strike was made on Forty Mile Creek, so called because it was judged to be that distance below Fort Reliance of Jack McQuestion fame.  A prospector named Williams started for the outside with dogs and Indians to carry the news, but suffered such hardship on the summit of Chilcoot that he was carried dying into the store of Captain John Healy at Dyea.  But he had brought the news through—­coarse gold!  Within three months more than two hundred miners had passed in over Chilcoot, stampeding for Forty Mile.  Find followed find—­Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier, Birch, Franklin, and the Koyokuk.  But they were all moderate discoveries, and the miners still dreamed and searched for the fabled stream, “Too Much Gold,” where gold was so plentiful that gravel had to be shovelled into the sluice-boxes in order to wash it.

And all the time the Northland was preparing to play its own huge joke.  It was a great joke, albeit an exceeding bitter one, and it has led the old-timers to believe that the land is left in darkness the better part of the year because God goes away and leaves it to itself.  After all the risk and toil and faithful endeavour, it was destined that few of the heroes should be in at the finish when Too Much Gold turned its yellow-treasure to the stars.