United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But old Tom's in the sere and yellow leaf: he's onnery. like all old men. I try to humor him, but here's a limit." The speaker looked Pierce over shrewdly. "You said you was packin' for wages. Well, old Tom ain't any help to me. You look strong. Mebbe I could hire you." Phillips shook his head. "I don't want work just now," said he. "I'm going to Dyea in the morning."
He saw the tent the instant he struck it, carrying away the corner guys, bursting in the front flaps, and fetching up inside, still on top of the tarpaulin and in the midst of his grub-sacks. The tent rocked drunkenly, and in the frosty vapour he found himself face to face with a startled young woman who was sitting up in her blankets the very one who had called him chechaquo at Dyea.
He was rather sallow and drawn, but still his own indomitable self, when he landed on the Dyea beach one day in the spring of the year. Between the cost of dogs, grub, and outfits, and the customs exactions of the two clashing governments, it speedily penetrated to his understanding that the Northland was anything save a poor man's Mecca. So he cast about him in search of quick harvests.
We left Juneau on Thursday, the twentieth, on a little boat smaller than the ferry at Ottawa. There were over sixty aboard, all in one room about ten by fourteen. There was baggage piled up in one end so that the floor-space was only about eight by eight. We went aboard about three o'clock in the afternoon and went ashore at Dyea at seven o'clock Friday night.
"Shorty, I've got you skinned to death. I've reconstructed every cell in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea. My flesh is as stringy as whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake. A few months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to write such words, but I couldn't have written them. I had to live them first, and now that I'm living them there's no need to write them.
This was perhaps the most feverishly busy camp on the entire thirty-mile Dyea trail, but, unlike the coast towns, there was no merrymaking, no gaiety, no gambling here. Linderman's fever came from overwork, not from overplay. A tent village had sprung up at the head of the lake, and from dawn until dark it echoed to the unceasing sound of ax and hammer, of plane and saw.
She cached the gold, saving out thirty pounds, which she carried back to the coast. Then she signaled a passing canoe, made her way to Pat Healy's trading post at Dyea, outfitted, and went over Chilcoot Pass. That was in '88 eight years before the Klondike strike, and the Yukon was a howling wilderness.
One form of this emotion was the impatience to get forward faster than before. There was nothing of the feeling when leaving Seattle or Juneau or Dyea, nor did they experience it to any degree while toiling through the hundreds of miles from lake to lake and down the upper waters of the streams which help to form the Yukon.
From Dyea the trail led for five miles over the ice, when they reached the mouth of the cañon. This is two miles long with an average width of fifty feet. The sleds were dragged over the strong ice, but later in the season, when it breaks up, travellers are obliged to follow the trail to the east of the cañon. The party were so unaccustomed to this kind of labor that they found it exhausting.
They're back in Dyea now, the whole works." The Countess Courteau exploded with a man's oath. Her face was purple; her eyes were blazing. "Danny Royal, Kirby's man, done it. Sam's gone on to Linderman to build a boat. I saw Danny curled up on the chief's ear while you were loading. After you'd gone him and the old pirate followed.
Word Of The Day