eathless, fevered,
yet without result beyond a general stringing up of nerves. The special
spell of Dawson was upon them all--the surface aliveness, the inner
deadness, the sense of being cut off from all the rest of the world, as
isolated as a man is in a dream, with no past, no future, only a
fantastic, intensely vivid Now. This was the summer climate of the
Klondyke. The Colonel, the Boy, and Captain Rainey maintained the
illusion of prosecuting their affairs by frequenting the offices,
stores, and particularly saloons, where buyers and sellers most did
congregate. Frequent mention was made of a certain valuable piece of
property.

Where was it?

"Down yonder at Minook;" and then nobody cared a straw.

It was true there was widespread dissatisfaction with the Klondyke.
Everyone agreed it had been overdone. It would support one-quarter of
the people already here, and tens of thousands on their way! "Say
Klondyke, and instantly your soberest man goes mad; say anything else,
and he goes deaf."

Minook was a good camp, but it had the disadvantage of lying outside
the magic district. The madness would, of course, not last, but
meanwhile the time went by, and the people poured in day and night. Six
great steamers full came up from the Lower River, and still the small
craft kept on flocking like coveys of sea-fowl through the Upper Lakes,
each party saying, "The crowd is behind."

On the 14th of June a toy whistle sounded shrill above the town, and in
puffed a Liliputian "steel-hull" steamer that had actually come "on her
own" through the canon and shot the White Horse Rapids. A steamer from
the Upper River! after that, others. Two were wrecked, but who minded?
And still the people pouring in, and still that cry, "The crowd's
behind!" and still the clamour for quicker, ampler means of transport
to the North, no matter what it cost. The one consideration "to get
there," and to get there "quickly," brought most of the horde by the
Canadian route; yet, as against the two ocean steamers--all-sufficient
the year before to meet the five river boats at St. Michael's--now, by
the All-American route alone, twenty ocean steamers and forty-seven
river boats, double-deckers, some two hundred and twenty-five feet
long, and every one crowded to the guards with people coming to the
Klondyke.

Meanwhile, many of those already there were wondering why they came and
how they could get home. In the tons of "mail matter" for Dawson,
s