Yet for
twenty years they had been working there, his next-door neighbours,
virtually, in a land of such great spaces. At Victoria, British
Columbia, previous to his going east over the Canadian Pacific (the
existence of which he had just learned), he pregnantly remarked that
he had faith in the Mackenzie watershed, and that he was going back
after he had taken in the World's Fair and got a whiff or two of
civilization.
Faith! It may or may not remove mountains, but it has certainly made
the Northland. No Christian martyr ever possessed greater faith than
did the pioneers of Alaska. They never doubted the bleak and barren
land. Those who came remained, and more ever came. They could not
leave. They "knew" the gold was there, and they persisted. Somehow,
the romance of the land and the quest entered into their blood, the
spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go. Man
after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering,
shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for
good.
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