h. "There are the
continents," he indicated; "and up there near the polar cap is a country,
frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska. Now, in other
countries and states there are great insane asylums, but, though crowded,
they are insufficient; so there is Alaska given over to the worst cases.
Now and then some poor insane creature comes to his senses in those awful
solitudes, and, in wondering joy, escapes from the land and hastens back
to his home. But most cases are incurable. They just suffer along, poor
devils, forgetting their former life quite, or recalling it like a
dream." Again the grip of the North, which will not let one go--for
"_most cases are incurable_."

For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on. The
very severity of the struggle with Nature seemed to make the gold hunters
kindly toward one another. The latch-string was always out, and the open
hand was the order of the day. Distrust was unknown, and it was no
hyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off his back for a comrade.
Most significant of all, perhaps, in this connection, was the custom of
the old days, that when August the first came around, the prospectors who
had failed to locate "pay dirt" were permitted to go upon the ground of
their more fortunate comrades and take out enough for the next year's
grub-stake.

In 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the Stewart River, and in 1886
Cassiar Bar was struck just below the mouth of the Hootalinqua. It was
at this time that the first moderate strike was made on Forty Mile Creek,
so called because it was judged to be that distance below Fort Reliance
of Jack McQuestion fame. A prospector named Williams started for the
outside with dogs and Indians to carry the news, but suffered such
hardship on the summit of Chilcoot that he was carried dying into the
store of Captain John Healy at Dyea. But he had brought the news
through--_coarse gold_! Within three months more than two hundred miners
had passed in over Chilcoot, stampeding for Forty Mile. Find followed
find--Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier, Birch, Franklin, and the Koyokuk. But
they were all moderate discoveries, and the miners still dreamed and
searched for the fabled stream, "Too Much Gold," where gold was so
plentiful that gravel had to be shovelled into the sluice-boxes in order
to wash it.

And all the time the Northland was preparing to play its own huge joke.
It was a great joke, albeit