A NEW TERRITORY 255 



der that any of these men ever pulled through? 



Think of the fatal snow-slide on Chilkoot 

 Mountain when the men who were crowding 

 up to the top — in spite of the warnings given 

 them that the snow was not safe — were in the 

 twinkling of an eye carried down by an ava- 

 lanche, and sixty-nine men speedily found 

 a grave amid the sliding, rushing, deadly 

 snow. 



Think also of the men who lost all, who 

 pawned their spare clothes to buy food, who 

 searched for gold and found it not, who 

 couldn't get work because they had no trade 

 and were physically unfit for the hard work 

 of digging gold in the mines. 



Many blew out their brains, more died of 

 starvation, others went insane. For every 

 eighteen men who succeeded, eighty-two other 

 men either fell by the wayside, or returned 

 home in a crippled condition, financially as 

 well as physically. 



It is true that since then an enormous out- 

 put of gold has been yearly shipped away — as 

 much as $25,000,000 in one year, but this huge 

 sum has been made mostly by wealthy com- 

 panies operating the mines under skillful man- 

 agement and with up-to-date machinery. The 

 Rothschilds and the Guggenheims, and others 



