1 8 CAMP FIRES IN THE YUKON 



To-day this city slumbers peacefully in a gulch 

 whose front is gently washed by the blue waters of 

 the Pacific, while from either side rise the titanic 

 rocky walls of snow-clad mountains that veil their 

 shoulders in the mists and lift their hoary crests into 

 the sunshine above the clouds. The streets are 

 quite deserted, the glaring emptiness of many shop 

 windows is eloquent of business activities that lie in 

 the past, and even the forward look of the inhabi- 

 tants is a hope for a return of the activities of the 

 days that are gone. Even to-day there is much talk 

 that is reminiscent of those fond yesterdays of 1897, 

 1898, and 1899, when this little town was packed 

 to overflowing with thousands of men who had come 

 north by boat to pass through this gateway to the 

 Golden Klondike, discovered by Skookum Jim. 



There the seasoned woodsman and the veriest 

 tenderfoot, the experienced and the self-reliant 

 Western miner and the pitifully unqualified city 

 bookkeeper, the fit and the unfit, in multitudes, with 

 the common spur of golden expectations, jostled 

 each other and made merry for a day or so before 

 starting up the cruel White Pass trail over the moun- 

 tains that hem in the town. 



Of all the hordes of real pioneers, adventurers, 

 and gold-crazed people who streamed through this 

 port of entry into the Northern wilderness, the name 

 of " Soapy Smith " seems to live longest in the 

 memories of Skagway, probably due to the fact that 



