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three reached the Klondike on June 14, so that reckoning, say, twelve days for the journey from here to Winnipeg (which is mere child's play), it would give us about nine weeks right through from England to the gold-fields.

In the meantime, a much larger party from the prairie capital were perfecting their arrangements, which brought them to the last week in May, and it is the adventures of this party which we shall be able to follow in detail, and so arrive at some notion of what a journey to the Klondike actually means. Tuesday at the Winnipeg depôt is usually a quiet day, from the fact that the Pacific express, which would otherwise arrive from Montreal, is not despatched from that city on Sundays, and a special train has to be made up for the small number of passengers going West. On this particular Tuesday, however, the departure of some five and twenty young men, many of them belonging to good Winnipeg families, for the distant Yukon, attracted to the platform a large assemblage of prominent citizens to wish the adventurers all success, and say their last farewells. The party was accommodated with a special tourist-car, and every arrangement made for their comfort on the long journey to the Pacific.

From Winnipeg to Vancouver by the Canadian Pacific Railway, and across the Gulf to Victoria, is about 1,570 miles; thence north to Juneau along the Pacific coast by boat, is over 900 miles more, but this is all plain sailing. Perhaps old countrymen will get a better idea of the distances to be traversed after leaving the railway, if I say that Victoria is in the latitude of Paris, Juneau in that of the Orkney Islands, and Dawson City, on the Klondike River, in the latitude of Iceland. At Juneau the real work of the journey begins, and here our party arrived in the evening of June 11, having met large quantities of ice floating down. Juneau is situated in the north-east corner of the Gulf of Alaska, south of the entrance to a long stretch of water called the Lynn Canal, which runs due north. Juneau was described as a large mining town with mountains behind it, about 3,000 feet high, making a great back and grand scenery.' There were fifty hotels and saloons always open, and only one policeman, and though there were several dance-halls and gambling resorts full all night, the place was quite orderly. The weather was hot at this time, and here the party stopped to make their purchases. Prices were reasonable, flour, bacon, and dried fruits being rather lower than in Winnipeg, where such things are by no means dear.

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On the afternoon of the 14th they left Juneau for Dyes, 100 miles further north, on the tug Sealin. From Dyea (Tai-ya) it is about twenty-three miles across the coast-range to Lake Lindeman, the first of the lakes which are the head-waters of a river (the Lewes), flowing north into the Yukon, and for this distance the goods should be packed (that is, carried in packs) by the Indians who do this work. The mountains form the watershed which divides the basin of the Yukon on the north from that of the streams running south into the Gulf of Alaska, as this part of the North Pacific is called.

The first six miles were along a rapid stream where the rough track ran from side to side, over sand and boulders, with from six inches to two feet of water, and a very swift current; thence over boulders with fair footing to a cañon which was the end of the so-called wagon track. Then began the steep and rocky climb through the woods up the face of the mountain and across numerous deep and narrow gullies, towards the Chilcoot Pass (the name by which the Tai-ya Pass is known to the miners). To men accustomed to Alpine climbing this would be mere holiday work, but to youngsters who had spent all their life on the prairies it was, of course, particularly trying. The first halt was at Sheep Camp, which they reached in the evening, having left Dyea at ten in the morning, and here they had to stay for a day on account of rain. At 1.30 next morning they left for the summit with their Indians, twenty in number, including boys and squaws, an early start being necessary since the days were hot and the snow soft in the afternoon. After leaving Sheep Camp, vegetation is stunted, and the ascent becomes stiff; for a thousand feet they had to stick their toe-nails in for all they were worth, as the Canadian expression goes, and take steps of only a few inches. When the top was reached, the descent was begun, and if one lost his footing it would be a serious matter. There were altogether six miles over snow, but the latter part of the rocky track down to Lake Lindeman, though quite rough enough for our travellers, was found not to be so very bad.

The lake, nine miles from the top of the pass, they reached on June 19, a little disfigured, but still in the ring.' Only two of the party had had their goods packed' right through to the lake; some, indeed, had only had them packed to Sheep Camp, intending to do the rest of the work alone, but they speedily found themselves obliged to call in the help of the Indians; the

others had their stuff packed to the summit of the pass, but after struggling for three miles under their loads, they too were obliged to stop and look for Indians to relieve them. The writer who mentions this advises anyone who cannot afford to pay for transportation on this part of the journey not to come at all, as some men had been on the trail three weeks, and were then only half-way through. At Lake Lindeman most of the party remained nearly three weeks, since it is here that the boats have to be built for the rest of the journey to the Klondike, between 500 and 600 miles. From the time of first finding and then felling your trees, until your boat is ready for use, this boat building involves a great amount of hard work, even for men who know how to handle tools, but Canadians are very quick at this sort of thing, as General Middleton discovered in the last Riel rebellion in 1885 on the Saskatchewan, on which occasion he found that the Canadian volunteers contrasted very favourably with British regulars in their aptitude at necessary and urgent work of this description.

In the first place, after the trees are felled, the logs themselves are very hard to get down to the water; then the stream is very rough and full of boulders, the water being icy cold and running like a mill-race, and into this you have to get up to your middle and hand-spike the logs along, in danger all the time of being swept away by the current. As to the size of the boats here built, one, which was named the Katie, was 18 feet long at the bottom, and 20 feet at the top. Another was 19 feet bottom and 28 feet top, 4 feet across bottom, 6 across top, 24 inches high in centre, and 28 in bow; the mast 12 feet high. This one involved twelve days' hard work from early to late, in cutting down the logs and sawing them, and then building the boat. It was afterwards found that it would have been much better if the boat had been 6 feet longer, but logs good enough to build it that long could not be got, since trees which could be converted into good building timber were very scarce, the country being mostly rock and scrub. At Lake Lindeman there was quite a tenttown, and potatoes were then 30 cents a pound, flour 18 dollars a hundred, and pitch 100 dollars a barrel. Five or six boats were built here, to take a crew of three or four men in each. The lake is five miles long, and is connected with Lake Bennett, the next one below, by a rapid stream three-quarters of a mile in length, rough and rocky, with a fall of 20 feet between the

two lakes. Here the boats have to be unloaded and the goods packed over the 'portage,' as such stretches over land are calle: in America, where the loads and sometimes the boats themselves have to be carried instead of going by water. The Katie and some of the other boats were let down through the worst part in safety, but one boat, which was foolishly left by its crew to run itself through the rapids, was lost and became a complete wreck. The larger boat described above was hauled out of the water and portaged for fifty yards on skids. It was found to be leaking considerably, and had to be turned over and re-pitched. In the case of another boat, which they tried to run through the rapids, they were not so fortunate, for a serious accident occurred which would certainly have terminated fatally, had it not been for the readiness and presence of mind of those on the spot. Two of the crew were in the boat to guide her through the rapids, while there were three men on the tow-line. In the forcible language of the narrator, they snubbed the line to a stump on the bank, and M and N- got in for the run; the men at the stump let out too much slack, and it got fast in the rocks in the river; and when the boat got near to a pile of drift timber in the middle of the shoot, she took up the loose line and went up against the timber, tipped up and filled with water. M— jumped out, but N (a young doctor) was tumbled headlong into the water; he came up fifty yards down, and was carried down the rapids like a shot, but someone threw a rope to him, and he got ashore pretty well shaken up, it being a miracle he was not dashed to pieces on the rocks. We spent nearly two days trying to get the boat out, and did so, but she was a total wreck, and was burned for her nails.'

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Then arose the question as to how the goods thus left stranded were to be disposed of. Were they to stay here, where already three weeks of precious time had been spent, while another boat was built, or run the risk of overcrowding the rest of the boats on their passage through the lakes? Fortunately at this juncture, a stranger, named McCauley, who was also on his way down, came to the rescue, and with him they were able to arrange taking along most of the stuff. To show how the land lay I must here state that Lake Bennett is the first of a series of lakes which form what is technically called a 'system of still-water navigation'an attractive-sounding phrase, which, however, only means that there are no obstacles in the shape of rapids or cataracts to obstruct the steady passage of a vessel. It by no means signifies

that your boat may not be overtaken in a violent storm, with the possibility of capsizing and the loss of all on board, through want of experience and skill in dealing with such an emergency.

These lakes are 2,150 feet above sea-level, and follow on in this order :--Lake Nares, the Windy Arm of Lake Tagish, Tagish Lake itself, and then Lake Marsh; the distance from the head of Lake Bennett to the foot of Lake Marsh being 70 miles.

In addition to the boats already referred to, six members of the party had a couple of boats built on Lake Bennett, and got away before the rest. One of these, the Dorothy, was steered by an archdeacon from Prince Albert, who was going north to serve as a missionary under Bishop Bompas; the other, named the Nina, being steered by an ex-alderman of Winnipeg, who was going to the Klondike to start a 'real estate and financial office' (an employment dear to the hearts of Canadians). They reached Dawson City on July 19, and found that three others of the party had arrived a few days previously; but these had not stopped to build boats, as they had contrived to get along with a couple of other parties who were already having boats built.

To return now to the rest of our adventurers, whom we left at the head of Lake Bennett, pulling themselves together after the dangers and troubles of the rapids, baking a supply of bread for the voyage down, packing their stuff securely in the boats, and getting everything in readiness for the next stage of their journey, which would take them well through the lakes and down the first part of the Lewes River, a hundred miles or so of straight sailing, day and night.

On Lake Bennett they met with rough weather, and two of the boys' were laid up for a couple of days. They then camped on Cariboo Crossing, between Bennett and Nares Lake, and on July 11 'tracked' to the Windy Arm, which required to be reached in the morning owing to its liability later in the day to such sudden squalls as have already been spoken of. Beyond difficulties from such causes, to which these lakes are particularly liable, no dangers of any special kind presented themselves.

Out of Lake Marsh runs the Lewes River, and it is on this river that some of the most exciting scenes of the journey occur, for serious obstacles are met with twenty-three miles below the lake, in the shape of the Miles Cañon and the White Horse Rapids. The stranger McCauley was among the first to arrive at the cañon with the extra load of goods which he had brought down, and

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