a carrier. The messenger started with the message,
and he could not but avail himself of the prevailing modes of travel. If
the voyage to Australia required four months, four months were required
for communication; by no known means could this time be lessened. But
with the advent of the telegraph and telephone, communication and
locomotion were divorced. In a few hours, at most, there could be
performed what by the old way would have required months. In 1837 the
needle telegraph was invented, and nine years later the Electric
Telegraph Company was formed for the purpose of bringing it into general
use. Government postal systems also came into being, later to
consolidate into an international union and to group the nations of the
earth into a local neighbourhood. The effects of all this are obvious,
and no fitter illustration may be presented than the fact that to-day, in
the matter of communication, the Klondike is virtually nearer to Boston
than was Bunker Hill in the time of Warren.

A contemporaneous and remarkable shrinkage of a vast stretch of territory
may be instanced in the Northland. From its rise at Lake Linderman the
Yukon runs twenty-five hundred miles to Bering Sea, traversing an almost
unknown region, the remote recesses of which had never felt the
moccasined foot of the pathfinder. At occasional intervals men wallowed
into its dismal fastnesses, or emerged gaunt and famine-worn. But in the
fall of 1896 a great gold strike was made--greater than any since the
days of California and Australia; yet, so rude were the means of
communication, nearly a year elapsed before the news of it reached the
eager ear of the world. Passionate pilgrims disembarked their outfits at
Dyea. Over the terrible Chilcoot Pass the trail led to the lakes, thirty
miles away. Carriage was yet in its most primitive stage, the road
builder and bridge builder unheard of. With heavy packs upon their backs
men plunged waist-deep into hideous quagmires, bridged mountain torrents
by felling trees across them, toiled against the precipitous slopes of
the ice-worn mountains, and crossed the dizzy faces of innumerable
glaciers. When, after incalculable toil they reached the lakes, they
went into the woods, sawed pine trees into lumber by hand, and built it
into boats. In these, overloaded, unseaworthy, they battled down the
long chain of lakes. Within the memory of the writer there lingers the
picture of a sheltered nook on the