of
the Force, Superintendents A. B. Perry, a masterly organizer, and S. B.
Steele, a determined enforcer of law, were called on to go up to the
north and meet the unprecedented situation. That these two superior
officers did not shirk any of the hardships could be demonstrated from
many an instance like the following related casually by Steele as to an
incident at the outset. "At Dyea I met Perry and together we returned to
Skagway in a small sailing boat. The weather was very cold and as the
tide was out we were obliged to wade through the pools in our moccasins.
When we embarked we were soaked to the hip and our clothes were frozen
like boards." And they came that way the whole distance to Skagway,
where they got no time to change as Perry had to leave for Vancouver
that night in regard to further arrangements.

With these two from the beginning, indeed some were in the country ahead
of them, was a group of very able officers, Superintendent Z. T. Wood,
Inspectors P. C. H. Primrose, C. Starnes, F. Harper, W. H. Scarth, A. E.
Strickland, R. Belcher, A. M. Jarvis, F. L. Cartwright, Surgeons W. E.
Thompson and S. M. Fraser. Non-commissioned officers like Tucker,
Macdonnell, Barker, Bates, Graham, Hyles, Corneil and Raven were amongst
those in charge of early detachments or attached to hospital bases in
the first year of the big rush, and these with the help of as able and
resolute a body of men as ever wore uniform led the way to a new world
record for policing a country in a paternal method of oversight which
guided and controlled but never resorted to shooting. The use of the
word paternal calls to mind the way they threw a cordon around the
country to prevent at the threshold the entrance of men who were
unprepared for the hardships with either clothing or supplies or
physique. And the manner in which the Police interposed against the
madness of inexpert men who were anxious to run the White Horse Rapids
and the Miles Canyon in crazy boats on the way to Dawson was admirable
in its quiet forcefulness. A good many of these people were men and
women from offices and stores in American cities who knew boats only by
hearsay. So when Steele arrived at the Rapids he gathered the stampeders
together and said:

"There are many of your countrymen who have said that the Mounted
Police make the laws as they go along, and I am going to do so now
for your own good, therefore the directions that I give shall be