Volume 11, 1958 - The Arctic Circle - Home

VOL Xl No.3 THE ARCTIC CIRCULAR 51
We had been in Dawson about three days when ea.ch
of us had a bad cold. We had been on the trail for over a year.
often in soaking wet clothes, but felt ,.,one the worse for it, and
now, living in comfort, bad colds caught us all. There were
many thousands of people living with very little sanitary
arrangement, and of course the air was loaded with all kinds
of germs. Funerals were a daily occurrence, and several men
we had known on the trail were dead and buried by the time we
arrived in Dawson. Meanwhile, we decided not to return to the
McQuesten for the winte:::-, but to try our luck on the local creeks.
This necessitated getting the outfit we had cached, so two of us
started back with a poling boat, even though we '-Jere feeling
anything but fit to travel. We poled all day, and slept in the
open at night, and were surprised that in two or three days our
colds had disappeared, and \'/9 were our old rugged selves.
Arriving back at the McQuesten, we found our poling
boat was too small to hold our cached outGt, so we made a
s mall raft, loaded the outfit and fi.xed a canvas shelter with a
large tarpaulin, our old faithful box-stove, and plenty of stovewood.
We then cast off, let our raft drift, and lay in the warm shelter
(it was quite cold weather now" and ice forming), but kept an eye
out to see when the raft needed hanc.ling. Wearrived back in
Dawson shortly before the river wc.S running thick with ice.
Again, on our return to Dawson, the cold germs
were waiting for U6, and in two days we we:::-e feeling as bad as
ever, and did not get ,,',d 0: our colds until we went out to the
creeks on a prospecting trip,
Thus ended our epic trip over the All Canadian Route
to the famous goldfields, and we were left more experienced if
not wiser men.