I sent my second son, Fred Meeker, to London to learn the English methods of fighting the pest and to import some spraying machinery. We found to our cost, however, in the course of time, that the English methods did not suit our different conditions; for while we could kill the lice, we had to use so much spraying material on the dense foliage that, in killing them, we virtually destroyed the hops. Instead of being able to sell our hops at the top price of the market, we saw our product fall to the foot of the list. The last crop I raised cost me eleven cents a pound and sold for three under the hammer at sheriff's sale. At that time I had advanced to my neighbors and others upon their hop crops more than a hundred thousand dollars, which was lost. These people simply could not pay, and I forgave the debt, taking no judgments against them, and I have never regretted the action. All my accumulations were swept away, and I quit the business--or, rather, the business quit me. After a long struggle with the hop plague, nearly all the hops were plowed up and the land in the Puyallup valley and elsewhere was used for dairy farming, fruit growing, and general crops. It is actually of a higher value now than when it was bearing hops. [Illustration: _United States Forest Service_ Going up the Chilkoot Pass.] CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO TRYING FOR A FORTUNE IN ALASKA AFTER the failure of the hop business, I was left more or less at sea for some years. I tried various other projects--among them the raising of sugar beets. The country, we soon found, was not adapted to this industry. Then I tried banking, likewise with little success. Finally I decided to strike out for the mines of Alaska. This adventure, taken when I was nearly three score and ten years of age, was full of exciting experiences. Indeed, it left me richer only in experience. I had lived in the old Oregon country forty-four years and had never seen a mine. Mining had had no attraction for me. But when my accumulations had all been swallowed up, I decided to take a chance. In the spring of 1898 I made my first trip over the Chilkoot Pass, went down the Yukon river to Dawson in a flatboat, and ran the famous White Horse Rapids with my load of vegetables for the Klondike miners. One may read most graphic descriptions of Chilkoot Pass; but the difficulties met by those earlier fortune-seekers who tried it were worse than the wildest fancy can picture. I started in with fifteen tons of freight and got through with nine. On one stretch of two thousand feet, I paid forty dollars a ton. Some others paid even more.