[Illustration: SLEDDING UP THE CHILKAT VALLEY] GOLD-SEEKING ON THE DALTON TRAIL _BEING THE ADVENTURES OF TWO NEW ENGLAND BOYS IN ALASKA AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY_ BY ARTHUR R. THOMPSON Illustrated BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1900 _Copyright, 1900_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY _All rights reserved_ UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. TO My Comrade of Many Camp-Fires DEXTER WADLEIGH LEWIS PREFACE Among my first passions was that for exploration. The Unknown--that region of mysteries lying upon the outskirts of commonplace environment--drew me with a mighty attraction. My earliest recollections are of wanderings into the domains of the neighbors, and of excursions--not infrequently in direct contravention to parental warnings--over fences, stone-walls, and roofs, and into cobwebbed attics, fragrant hay-lofts, and swaying tree-tops. Of my favorite tree, a sugar maple, I remember that, so thoroughly did I come to know every one of its branches, I could climb up or down unhesitatingly with eyes shut. At that advanced stage of acquaintance, however, it followed naturally that the mysteriousness, and hence the subtle attractiveness, of my friend the maple was considerably lessened. By degrees the boundary line of the unknown was pushed back into surrounding fields. Wonderful caves were hollowed in sandy banks. Small pools, to the imaginative eyes of the six-year-old, became lakes abounding with delightful adventures. The wintry alternations of freezing and thawing were processes to be observed with closest attention and never-failing interest. Nature displayed some new charm with every mood. There came a day when I looked beyond the fields, when even the river, sluggish and muddy in summer, a broad, clear torrent in spring, was known from end to end. Then it was that the range of low mountains--to me sublime in loftiness--at the western horizon held my fascinated gaze. To journey thither on foot became ambition's end and aim. This feat, at first regarded as undoubtedly beyond the powers of man unaided by horse and carry-all (the thing had once been done in that manner on the occasion of a picnic), was at length proved possible.