sincerity."

"Sincerity be danged. He's about as sincere as a tame rattlesnake. Put
his letter in the creek."

But no! I refused to listen to the old man.

"Well, go your own gait," he said; "but don't say that I didn't warn
you."

We had crossed over the Klondike to its left limit, and were on a
hillside trail beaten down by the feet of miners and packers. Cabins
clustered on the flat, and from them plumes of violet smoke mounted into
the golden air. Already the camp was astir. Men were chopping their
wood, carrying their water. The long, long day was beginning.

Following the trail, we struck up Bonanza, a small muddy stream in a
narrow valley. Down in the creek-bed we could see ever-increasing signs
of an intense mining activity. On every claim were dozens of cabins, and
many high cones of greyish muck. We saw men standing on raised platforms
turning windlasses. We saw buckets come up filled with the same dark
grey dirt, to be dumped over the edge of the platform. Sometimes, where
the dump had gradually arisen around man and windlass, the platform in
the centre of that dark-greyish cone was twenty feet high.

Every mile the dumps grew more numerous, till some claims seemed covered
with them. Looking down from the trail, they were like innumerable
anthills blocking up the narrow channel, and around them swarmed the
little ant-men in never-resting activity. The golden valley opened out
to us in a vista of green curves, and the cleft of it was packed with
tents, cabins, dumps and tailing piles, all bedded in a blue haze of
wood fires.

"Look at that great centipede striding across the valley," I said.

"Yes," said Jim, "it's a long line of sluice-boxes. See the water
a-shinin' in the sun. Looks like some big golden-backed caterpillar."

The little ants were shovelling into it from one of their heaps, and
from that point it swirled on into the stream, a current of mud and
stone.

"Seems to me that stream would wash away all the gold," I said. "I know
it's all caught in the riffles, but I think if that dump was mine I
would want sluice-boxes a mile long and about sixteen hundred riffles.
But I guess they know what they are doing."

About noon we descended into the creek-bed and came to the Forks. It was
a little town, a Dawson in miniature, with all its sordid aspects
infinitely accentuated. It had dance-halls, gambling dens and many
saloons: every convenience to ease the miner of the plethoric poke.
There i