26 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



of water, curving to the left in a bend. Rocks lined the 

 right hand, a beach made out on the left. As we 

 approached it many passengers crowded the deck just 

 before the pilot house, talking volubly. ''Not a word 

 while we are going through!" roared the captain. He 

 reversed and held the vessel's stern as close as possible 

 to the left-hand side, sweeping along in the current, 

 letting the bow swing wide. The water presently brought 

 the bow inshore and then he drove ahead, watching the 

 left shore so fixedly that his eyes seemed bulging from 

 his head. 



Four days out of White Horse we drew up at Daw- 

 son, the famed city of the Klondike, now a struggling 

 village of about 2,000 people, one-tenth of its one-time 

 population. The Klondike River and its tributary 

 creeks had yielded almost all their richness and were 

 now being picked over by giant dredges which let no 

 gold escape. In two years, we were told, they would 

 finish the Klondike. 



A thirty-mile ride up the local railway, on flat cars 

 furnished with plank benches, revealed no great activity 

 aside from the dredging operations of two large com- 

 panies. The most impressive monument of the former 

 workers was the vast piles of dirt torn from the hills and 

 creek bottoms, sluiced of their richest pay and heaped 

 aside. On these the dredges were working. 



The largest gold dredge in the world sat in a muddy 

 pond, feeding itself in front from the bed, venting 

 itseK at the other end, like some fabulous, prehistoric 

 monster. We crossed a gangway and entered its 

 resounding vitals. The noise stunned our ears. An 

 endless chain of great steel buckets tore loose the dirt 

 forty feet under water, biting a foot into bed-rock, and 



