The Klondike clan : a tale of the great stampede (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

contain - Alaska travel and description- gold discovery- Klondike River ValleyFOREWORDALASKA and the Yukon Territory of Canada together form a country whose whole atmos phere is surcharged with romance. The old days of the Indian and the fur-trader held a buried store of adventure and mystery, of which but a very little has yet been unearthed. The mighty mountain ranges that rim the great bowl of the Yukon; the still higher ranges and peaks that float in clouds within it; the river itself, with its scores of tribu taries coming mysteriously from unexplored wilds; the vise-like cold of the winters and wonderful life and beauty of the summers; these all enhance the poetic interest of the far Northwest.When gold first began to be discovered in this neglected corner of the world, and hordes of eager adventurers stormed across the mountain-ranges of the coast and along the southern and western shores of Alaska and up its rivers, the romance of great gold-camps was added to that of the game-stocked wilderness.This field has been prolific in literature, and the traveler, the poet and the story-teller have tilled it diligently, and sometimes successfully. But the author of the present volume feels that a large sec tion of this rich field is still virgin ground. He has spent almost his whole life in Alaska, and has seen it change from a despised and ridiculed country, forwhich the purchase-price of seven million dollars was considered exorbitant, to its present status as " the richest section of either American continent " ; from "Seward's Folly" to " Seward's Wisdom," from " Uncle Sam's Ice Box " to " The Storehouse of the Nation." He has lived among and studied its natives, has explored unmapped wilds, has paddled his canoe or driven his dogs over almost all sections of Alaska, and sampled all its climates. He has seen its white population grow from less than two hundred to sixty thousand. He has followed all the great gold stampedes and many of the smaller ones, and has been at the birth of most of the camps and towns of the Northwest. He has lived the life and played the game.Alaska is the author's home. He considers it the best of all lands to live in, to work in, to die in. He esteems its people as among the bravest, cleanest and most admirable in all the world—the survival of the fittest, the winners of a mighty battle, the sifted wheat, the separated nuggets. He believes that very few of those who have written of this strong and typical American race have done it full justice.The region known vaguely as The Klondike lies in Canada, but close to the Alaskan border. Gold was dis covered, and the first claims staked there, by citizens of the United States — old miners from Forty Mile Creek and Circle City in Alaska. During the first year of the Klondike Stampede it was generally believed through out the Republic, that at least the greater portion of the Klondike, including the richest creeks, were on the Alaska side of the line between the two countries.A popular cartoon of the day in a New York journaldepicted the British Lion sitting close to the Alaska line, on the other side of which was written " The Klondike." He was saying " I wonder if I couldn't inch over a bit."Fully five-sixths of the stampeders were from the United States, and the great majority of the claims were owned by citizens of this country. Although Canada organized its government, sent its officials and collected its taxes, the United States sent freely its citizens of all classes, and its mission boards sent in ministers to look after them. When the Stampede reached high tide in the summer of '98, and the vast majority of the eager host were disappointed in secur ing gold mines on the British side, they sailed by thousands down the Yukon to Alaska and spread over that vast region, prospecting for the precious metal; and with them went their missionaries.