e frozen beaches of the Arctic
Ocean, and they shivered by driftwood fires on the ruby sands of Nome.

But first, in order that this colossal adventure may be fully grasped,
the recentness and the remoteness of Alaska must be emphasized. The
interior of Alaska and the contiguous Canadian territory was a vast
wilderness. Its hundreds of thousands of square miles were as dark and
chartless as Darkest Africa. In 1847, when the first Hudson Bay Company
agents crossed over the Rockies from the Mackenzie to poach on the
preserves of the Russian Bear, they thought that the Yukon flowed north
and emptied into the Arctic Ocean. Hundreds of miles below, however,
were the outposts of the Russian traders. They, in turn, did not know
where the Yukon had its source, and it was not till later that Russ and
Saxon learned that it was the same mighty stream they were occupying.
And a little over ten years later, Frederick Whymper voyaged up the Great
Bend to Fort Yukon under the Arctic Circle.

From fort to fort, from York Factory on Hudson's Bay to Fort Yukon in
Alaska, the English traders transported their goods--a round trip
requiring from a year to a year and a half. It was one of their
deserters, in 1867, escaping down the Yukon to Bering Sea, who was the
first white man to make the North-west Passage by land from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. It was at this time that the first accurate description
of a fair portion of the Yukon was given by Dr. W. H. Ball, of the
Smithsonian Institution. But even he had never seen its source, and it
was not given him to appreciate the marvel of that great natural highway.

No more remarkable river in this one particular is there in the world;
taking its rise in Crater Lake, thirty miles from the ocean, the Yukon
flows for twenty-five hundred miles, through the heart of the continent,
ere it empties into the sea. A portage of thirty miles, and then a
highway for traffic one tenth the girth of the earth!

As late as 1869, Frederick Whymper, fellow of the Royal Geographical
Society, stated on hearsay that the Chilcat Indians were believed
occasionally to make a short portage across the Coast Range from salt
water to the head-reaches of the Yukon. But it remained for a gold
hunter, questing north, ever north, to be first of all white men to cross
the terrible Chilcoot Pass, and tap the Yukon at its head. This happened
only the other day, but the man has become a dim legendary hero. Holt
w