28o THE UPPER YUKON 



a stranger will find double windows on what 

 few houses there are in White Horse. Then 

 the days are short and the nights are long and 

 the cold may be severe. Before November 

 there is a genuine hegira of men and women 

 rushing out to escape being ''frozen in" — and 

 this is so particularly from Dawson. The 

 route is by steamer to White Horse, where 

 they get rail transportation to Skagway, and 

 from that port the crowd will take the first 

 steamer either to Vancouver in Canada, or to 

 Seattle in Washington. When the river is 

 tightly frozen over, the men who are left in 

 the interior have practically but two occupa- 

 tions before them — mining and trapping. 

 It's "Hobson's choice" with them. Either oc- 

 cupation means exposure to an extremely low 

 temperature, with high winds, at times deep 

 snows, and frozen ground. In either of these 

 two occupations the severe climate soon weeds 

 out the feeble ones. The Yukon is no place 

 for the weakling. The man with timid heart 

 or flabby muscles had better stay at home. To 

 survive they must be 



"The men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith 

 of a child, 

 Desperate, strong, and resistless, unthrottled by fear or 

 defeat." 



