The Project Gutenberg eBook, Children of the Frost, by Jack London

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Title: Children of the Frost

Author: Jack London

Release Date: January 17, 2004 [eBook #10736]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

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CHILDREN OF THE FROST

BY JACK LONDON

1902

[Illustration: "And the girl, Kasaan, crept in, very timid and quiet,
and dropped a little bag upon the things for my journey."

CONTENTS

IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH

THE LAW OF LIFE

NAM-BOK THE UNVERACIOUS

THE MASTER OF MYSTERY

THE SUNLANDERS

THE SICKNESS OF LONE CHIEF

KEESH, THE SON OF KEESH

THE DEATH OF LIGOUN

LI WAN, THE FAIR

THE LEAGUE OF THE OLD MEN

IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH

A weary journey beyond the last scrub timber and straggling copses,
into the heart of the Barrens where the niggard North is supposed to
deny the Earth, are to be found great sweeps of forests and stretches
of smiling land. But this the world is just beginning to know. The
world's explorers have known it, from time to time, but hitherto they
have never returned to tell the world.

The Barrens--well, they are the Barrens, the bad lands of the Arctic,
the deserts of the Circle, the bleak and bitter home of the musk-ox
and the lean plains wolf. So Avery Van Brunt found them, treeless and
cheerless, sparsely clothed with moss and lichens, and altogether
uninviting. At least so he found them till he penetrated to the white
blank spaces on the map, and came upon undreamed-of rich spruce
forests and unrecorded Eskimo tribes. It had been his intention, (and
his bid for fame), to break up these white blank spaces and diversify
them with the black markings of mountain-chains, sinks and basins, and
sinuous river courses; and it was with added delight that he came to
speculate upon the possibilities of timber belts and native villages.

Avery Van Brunt, or, in full distinction, Professor A. Van Brunt of
the Geological Survey, was second in command of the expedition, and
first in command of the sub-exp