That it extended farther north, was their creed, and
"Farther North" became their cry. No time was lost, and in the early
seventies, leaving the Treadwell and the Silver Bow Basin to be
discovered by those who came after, they went plunging on into the
white unknown. North, farther north, they struggled, till their
picks rang in the frozen beaches of the Arctic Ocean, and they
shivered by driftwood fires on the ruby sands of Nome.
But first, in order that this colossal adventure may be fully
grasped, the recentness and the remoteness of Alaska must be
emphasized. The interior of Alaska and the contiguous Canadian
territory was a vast wilderness. Its hundreds of thousands of square
miles were as dark and chartless as Darkest Africa. In 1847, when
the first Hudson Bay Company agents crossed over the Rockies from the
Mackenzie to poach on the preserves of the Russian Bear, they thought
that the Yukon flowed north and emptied into the Arctic Ocean.
Hundreds of miles below, however, were the outposts of the Russian
traders.
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