41 Lure O Gold 1904

"
Had
My Burden of
Treasure
We sailed from our home city up through the wonder
ful Inland Passage, threading among fairy summer
islands up toward what seemed to me the golden
top
of the world up
past
shores on which in those
June days
it seemed always afternoon up past the
the trail
mysterious Taku Inlet, to Dyea and thence by
over the rough Chilkoot and down by Lake Lindermann,
Lake Bennett and the swift-flowing upper
reaches of the Yukon, over the tragic White Horse
Rapids and down to Dawson.
But we were too late. There is no gold at the tail
of the stampede no gold, only the galling regret,
we but been among the first ! "
Our means were
running low and we could make but a short stay in
Dawson. After the weary pilgrimages in which we
sweated under the hot, searching, ever-shining sun and
fought the mosquitoes up
and down the creeks after
vanishing golden Meccas, my father was offered a posi
tion as bookkeeper at St. Michael s, a small trading
post near the lower end of the Yukon, a thousand miles
away,
and he hastened there before his last dollar
should be gone, that he might earn passage money for
the two of us in some homebound vessel.
I now thought of that wonderful river journey, the
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