They staggered beneath the unwonted effort, and legs became
drunken with weariness and titubated in divers directions till the
sunlight darkened and bearer and burden fell by the way. Other men,
exulting secretly, piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled
out blithely enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great
round boulders invaded the trail. Whereat they generalized anew upon
the principles of Alaskan travel, discarded the go-cart, or trundled it
back to the beach and sold it at fabulous price to the last man landed.
Tenderfeet, with ten pounds of Colt's revolvers, cartridges, and
hunting-knives belted about them, wandered valiantly up the trail, and
crept back softly, shedding revolvers, cartridges, and knives in
despairing showers. And so, in gasping and bitter sweat, these sons of
Adam suffered for Adam's sin.

Frona felt vaguely disturbed by this great throbbing rush of gold-mad
men, and the old scene with its clustering associations seemed blotted
out by these toiling aliens. Even the old landmarks appeared strangely
unfamiliar. It was the same, yet not the same. Here, on the grassy
flat, where she had played as a child and shrunk back at the sound of
her voice echoing from glacier to glacier, ten thousand men tramped
ceaselessly up and down, grinding the tender herbage into the soil and
mocking the stony silence. And just up the trail were ten thousand men
who had passed by, and over the Chilcoot were ten thousand more. And
behind, all down the island-studded Alaskan coast, even to the Horn,
were yet ten thousand more, harnessers of wind and steam, hasteners
from the ends of the earth. The Dyea River as of old roared
turbulently down to the sea; but its ancient banks were gored by the
feet of many men, and these men labored in surging rows at the dripping
tow-lines, and the deep-laden boats followed them as they fought their
upward way. And the will of man strove with the will of the water, and
the men laughed at the old Dyea River and gored its banks deeper for
the men who were to follow.

The doorway of the store, through which she had once run out and in,
and where she had looked with awe at the unusual sight of a stray
trapper or fur-trader, was now packed with a clamorous throng of men.
Where of old one letter waiting a claimant was a thing of wonder, she
now saw, by peering through the window, the mail heaped up from floor
to ceiling. And it was for this mail the men we