"Yet how many thousands climbed that Pass after gold had been struck
on the Klondyke?" queried Owens.

[Illustration: THE TOP OF THE CHILKOOT PASS.

The neck to the Klondyke as it appeared in April, 1898, during the
height of the stampede.

_From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams._

_Copyright, 1898, by S. A. Hegg._]

[Illustration: PASS IN THE SIERRA NEVADAS OF CALIFORNIA.]

"Thirty thousand an' more, so folks said. Two thousand o' them,
though, died in tryin'. An' they had Injun an' half-breed porters to
tote their dunnage, too! The trail was marked for them. In the last
years o' the big rush, there was an aerial tramway to take up the
stuff. It wasn't like that in my day. We tackled it on our own.

"When we reached the top, the trouble wasn't over neither. 'Tother
side was rough an' dangerous, all loose rock an' mighty little snow.
We loaded the sleighs an' let 'em down by jerks, all three men hangin'
on to the drag-ropes. But we made the bottom, safe, an' started off
again. No trail, no map, no nothin'! We jest pushed on, blind, three
white men in a country o' hostile Injuns huntin' for a river which we
didn't even know where it was.

"Followin' a small creek an' pannin' now an' agin--though not findin'
any color--we came at last to Crater Lake an' then on to Lindeman, an'
final, to Lake Bennett. Here, we'd heard before leavin', the Yukon
River begun, an' we started to go round the lake, so's to strike the
bank o' the river.

"It couldn't be done. Muskeg an' thick forest run clear down to the
shore o' the lake, an' a b'ar couldn't ha' pushed his way through.
Small creeks shot out every which way. Sleighs were worse'n useless.

"There warn't nothin' to be done but build a boat, an' nary one o' the
three of us knew the fust durn thing about boat-buildin'. But we put
together a kind of a log-raft, that floated, anyway, put the dunnage
aboard it, an' drifted down the lake. This was easy goin', for a
while.

"All of a sudden, a swift current took us, the lake narrowed into a
river, an', afore we had a chance to pole our heavy an' clumsy raft to
the bank, we was shootin' wi' sickenin' speed down white water. It was
Grand Canyon Rapids, a mile long! Half-way through, the raft struck a
rock an' went to bits, the logs bustin' free. I grabbed one an' went
spinnin' down the rapids. I must ha' hit my head on a snag, for I
don't remember no more till I woke up to find myself on the bank, an'