Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899Various
Religion
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Mr. _Frederick Palmer's In the Klondyke_[16] is an unpretentious book
and free from the appearance of sensationalism, but gives a clear and
graphic account of the region and its ways and of the getting there at
the breaking up of winter. The author was at Dyea late in February,
having intended to go with a Government relief expedition which had
found no occasion to proceed farther. Being thus left out, he
undertook, with dogs and sledges and two companions who proved
congenial, the "untried journey" of six hundred miles over the ice
fields of the Lewes Lakes and the ice packs of the Yukon River, which
had been the contemplated route of the expedition. The start was made
about the 18th of March, with little time to spare, because the Yukon
was expected to become impassable by the 20th of April. The Chilkoot
Pass was achieved in a day, and the rest of the journey was made
"downhill with the current of the river at the rate of eight inches to
the mile," in weather that became very variable, with now hard
freezing and now slush in the middle of the day. The difficulties of
the journey must have been formidable, with considerable suffering,
besides a week in a hut with the measles, but no complaint further
than the mention of the incidents appears in the author's story. On
some of the days the thermometer ranged from 10° to 20° below zero at
two o'clock in the morning, to 80° above at night, and the author "had
one ear blistered by the frost and the other by the sun in the same
day." The party arrived at Dawson just four days before the final
break-up of the ice in the river. Accounts corresponding in temper and
vividness with that of the journey are given of Dawson, the miners and
mining, the history of the Klondyke mining enterprise, Klondyke types
of character and adventure, the toils and trials and profit and losses
of the "Pilgrims," the workings of the Government, and the return home
to civilization--which does not appear, after all, to have offered
transcendentally superior attractions to those who had experienced the
pleasure of adventure.
[Footnote 16: In the Klondyke, including an Account of a Winter's
Journey to Dawson. By Frederick Palmer. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. Pp. 218, with plates. Price, $1.50.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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