o owns an
hotel here) occasionally displays his skill.

The history of the Klondike gold-fields has so often been told that I
shall not weary the reader by going over old ground: how George Cormack
made his lucky strike on Bonanza Creek, taking out L240 of gold in a
couple of days from a spot which, with proper appliances, would have
yielded L1000, or how the steamship _Excelsior_ arrived in San Francisco
one July day in 1897 with half a million dollars and thirty old timers
whose tales of a land gorged with gold were almost universally
discredited. But these were confirmed by the arrival of the _Portland_ a
few days later with over a million dollars' worth of dust stowed away in
oil cans, jam-tins, and even wrapped in old newspapers, so desolate and
primitive was the region from whence it came.[78] Then, as every one
knows, the news was flashed over the world and was followed by a
stampede the like of which had not been witnessed since the days of '49.
Unfortunately, the simple and primitive way in which the gold was gained
seemed suggestive of a poor man's "El Dorado," and consequently many of
those who went into the Klondike with the first batch of gold seekers
were small tradesmen, railway officials, clerks, and others, whose
sedentary occupation had rendered them quite unfit for a life of peril
and privation in the frozen north. The tragic experiences of these first
pilgrims to the land of gold are probably still fresh in the mind of the
reader--the deaths by cold and hunger on the dreaded Chilkoot Pass, or
by drowning in the stormy lakes and treacherous rapids of the Yukon. The
death list during the rush of 1897 will long be remembered in Dawson
City, for many of those who survived the dangers of the road were
stricken down on arrival by typhoid fever, which allied to famine,
claimed, in those days, a terrible percentage of victims. And yet if the
risks were great, the rewards were greater for those blessed with youth,
perseverance and, above all, a hardy constitution. Perhaps the most
notable case of success in the early days was that of Clarence Berry
(then known as the "Barnato of the Klondike"). When Berry left
California his capital consisted of L20 which enabled him to reach the
scene of operations and to take L26,000 out of the ground within six
months of his departure from home. Mrs. Berry, who pluckily joined her
husband at Dawson, is said to have lifted no less than L10,000 from her
husband's claims in h