12 THE STIKINE RIVER IN 1898 



where a bald cliff met the flood, speedily climbed the Big riffle 

 of the Stikine — only a stretch of dashing rapids over a stony bed. 

 Green benches or terraces along the river bank, open and grassy 

 stretches, with towering peaks in the background, gave one the 

 idea of approaching civilization again and the group of log- 

 houses and buildings at Hudson's Bay Flats, or Shakesville, 

 seemed quite in keeping. A great sign on the banks of " Cassiar 

 Central Railway" marked the terminal or initial point of that 

 enterprise, the great trunk road whose fortunes were then bal- 

 ancing — whether to be or not to be. Two miles beyond, Glenora 

 showed a row of log-houses along the river bank, with innumer- 

 able tents beyond, and a most discouraged, homesick-looking 

 company of men straggled to the mud bank to watch the tying- 

 up, every man with both hands pocketed. The postmaster car- 

 ried his mail-bags ashore, the mounted police watched the land- 

 ing and stowing far above the water line of the dressed lumber 

 and fittings for the gold commissioner's ready-made house, and 

 Glenora subsided into the stagnation of a rainy Sunday in a 

 mining camp whence the boom had twice fled. 



Glenora, "the lively camp " of so long ago, had been galvanized 

 to a far livelier condition in the spring of 1898, to fall away again 

 as the difficulties of the long, boggy Teslin trail became known, 

 and as the chances for wagon road and railway building lessened, 

 the army of the disappointed, the faint-hearted, and also the 

 sturdy ones bent on trying the other trails from points further up 

 the coast, had all gone from Glenora, and there remained only 

 those who could not getaway and those who felt themselves fix- 

 tures there. Everything on the bank was for sale, apparently — 

 tents, blankets, provisions, horses, mules, dogs, sleds, snowshoes, 

 aluminum boats, harness, pick-axes, shovels, pans, forges, quick- 

 silver, and scales — so rough notices at every door-sill and tent- 

 flap told. Great tents served as hotels, stores, and storage ware- 

 houses, a charge of five dollars a ton each month leaving these 

 storage depositories banked full of overdue trunks and valises 

 containing the civilized clothes of those gone on into the wilder- 

 ness, and of " outfits " for which there were no means to have 

 carried over the trail with the owners at the time of the rush, 

 and no claimants later. The reckless extravagance of the mad 

 Klondikers surpasses anything told of them, even their cruelty 

 to animals, and outfits that cost hundreds of dollars were thrown 

 away and left behind at Glenora in the mad race for Dawson, 

 or in the discomfited return toward civilization, while thousands 



