2,000 MILES DOWN THE YUKON 21 



Briefly, the itinerary before us was as follows: to 

 traverse the Inside Passage by steamer, cross the White 

 Pass to the head of the Yukon River, take steamer to 

 Dawson and see the Klondike gold fields, go down the 

 great river across the boundary into Alaska, to Fairbanks, 

 the chief interior town, and emerge at Nome, formerly 

 the greatest Alaskan mining camp. 



There we were to board our own hunting schooner, 

 sail across to Siberia, up to Wrangell Island in the Arctic, 

 back to southwestern Alaska, and return to Seattle by 

 the south coast. It would have been hard to plan a 

 more thorough tour of this part of the world for so short 

 a time as we had. 



We landed from the "Jefferson" at Skagway and 

 went directly into the interior of Alaska. 



It was a fateful trail in the earhest days of the rush 

 of '96, from Skagway to Dawson and the Klondike. 

 Many a man lost his outfit and many a one his life. 

 But these were, for the most part, inexperienced gold- 

 seekers who brought useless weight of unsuitable things 

 or too few necessities. 



There were four well-marked stages in the long 

 journey of 571 miles; first, packing over the pass to 

 Lake Linderman; second, the lake and river voyage 

 nearly to White Horse; third, shooting Miles Canyon 

 and the White Horse Rapids ; fourth, the long drift down 

 the river to Dawson. At first the trail from Dyea over 

 the Chilkoot Pass, which was shorter but steeper, was 

 much used to reach the head of Lake Linderman, but 

 eventually a wagon road constructed through White 

 Pass, a short distance eastward of the Chilkoot, won the 

 traffic. Thousands of horses fell dead by the roadside 

 and tons of abandoned provisions Httered the trail. 



