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mild." "I reckon you don't know much about Alaska," the older man remarked. "When the snow thaws, the creeks overflow, and the rivers become raging torrents. You can't ride, and if you walk, how are you going to cross a swollen river, filled with pieces of ice the size of this room? Those Alaska rivers are huge bodies of water, many of them, and there are no bridges." "How about boats?" "You mean traveling on those ice-filled rivers? It couldn't be done." "But as soon as the ice goes out?" "That's pretty well into June, to start with, and then you would have to pole up against the current all the way, and the currents of most of the rivers are very swift. Did you ever pole a boat up against a swift mountain river?--I thought not. Suppose, by very hard work, you could make two or three miles an hour up stream,--at that rate how long would it take you to go up to the highest settlement? And then you would have to go all the way down again and ascend the next stream; and even then more than half the settlements would be on streams and creeks you could not get to with boats because of falls, of rapids, of long portages, and things of that kind." "I guess they couldn't use a boat," said Hamilton, "but still I don't see why they couldn't ride!" "Ride what? Dogs? Or reindeer? I suppose you mean to take a horse up there?" "That's what I was thinking of," Hamilton admitted. "How would you get him up there? Take him in a dog-sled the preceding winter? You know a horse couldn't travel on the snow like a dog-team. And if you did get him up to the starting point during the winter, on what would you feed him? Dried salmon? That's all there is, and while it makes good enough dog-feed, a horse isn't built that way. There's no hay-cutting section up there, and your horse would starve to death before you had a chance to ride him. And even supposing that you could keep him alive,--I don't believe you could ride him over the tundra swamps; there is no horse made that could keep his footing on those marshy tussocks." "I see you're right," said Hamilton, "I hadn't thought of all that." The older man continued: "There are horses in the towns of southern Alaska, because, you know, there is one narrow strip that runs a long way south, and there the weather is not severe. But the north is another matter entirely. The pay that you would have to offer in order to lure the men away from the gold-diggings would be enormous.
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