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[Illustration: SLEDDING UP THE CHILKAT VALLEY]




                             GOLD-SEEKING

                          ON THE DALTON TRAIL

                     _BEING THE ADVENTURES OF TWO
                      NEW ENGLAND BOYS IN ALASKA
                     AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY_


                                  BY

                          ARTHUR R. THOMPSON


                              Illustrated


                BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1900




                          _Copyright, 1900_,

                     BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY


                         _All rights reserved_


      UNIVERSITY PRESS. JOHN WILSON AND SON. CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




                                  TO

                     My Comrade of Many Camp-Fires

                         DEXTER WADLEIGH LEWIS




                                PREFACE


Among my first passions was that for exploration. The Unknown--that
region of mysteries lying upon the outskirts of commonplace
environment--drew me with a mighty attraction. My earliest
recollections are of wanderings into the domains of the neighbors, and
of excursions--not infrequently in direct contravention to parental
warnings--over fences, stone-walls, and roofs, and into cobwebbed
attics, fragrant hay-lofts, and swaying tree-tops. Of my favorite tree,
a sugar maple, I remember that, so thoroughly did I come to know every
one of its branches, I could climb up or down unhesitatingly with eyes
shut. At that advanced stage of acquaintance, however, it followed
naturally that the mysteriousness, and hence the subtle attractiveness,
of my friend the maple was considerably lessened.

By degrees the boundary line of the unknown was pushed back into
surrounding fields. Wonderful caves were hollowed in sandy banks.
Small pools, to the imaginative eyes of the six-year-old, became
lakes abounding with delightful adventures. The wintry alternations
of freezing and thawing were processes to be observed with closest
attention and never-failing interest. Nature displayed some new charm
with every mood.

There came a day when I looked beyond the fields, when even the river,
sluggish and muddy in summer, a broad, clear torrent in spring, was
known from end to end. Then it was that the range of low mountains--to
me sublime in loftiness--at the western horizon held my fascinated
gaze. To journey thither on foot became ambition's end and aim. This
feat, at first regarded as undoubtedly beyond the powers of man unaided
by horse and carry-all (the thing had once been done in that manner on
the occasion of a picnic), was at length proved possible.

What next? Like Alexander, I sought new worlds. Nothing less than real
camping out could satisfy that hitherto unappeasable longing. This
dream was realized in due season among the mountains of New Hampshire;
but the craving, far from losing its keenness, was whetted. Of late it
has been fed, but never satiated, by wider rovings on land and sea.
Perhaps it is in the blood and can never be eliminated.

Believing that this restlessness, accompanied by the love of
adventure and out-of-door life, is natural to every boy, I have
had in mind particularly in the writing of this narrative those
thousands of boys in our cities who are bound within a restricted,
and it may be unromantic, sphere of activity. To them I have wished
to give a glimpse of trail life, not with a view to increasing their
restlessness,--for I have not veiled discomforts and discouragements in
relating enjoyments,--but to enlarge their horizon,--to give them, in
imagination at least, mountain air and appetites, journeys by lake and
river, and an acquaintance with men and conditions as they now exist
in the great Northwest.

The Dalton trail, last year but little known, may soon become a much
travelled highway. With a United States garrison at Pyramid, and the
village of Klukwan a bone of contention between the governments of this
country and Canada, the region which it traverses is coming more and
more into notice. I would only add that natural features, scenery, and
people, have been described faithfully, however inadequ