As an agent of
the Alaska Commercial Company, in 1873, McQuestion built Fort
Reliance, six miles below the Klondike River. In 1898 the writer met
Jack McQuestion at Minook, on the Lower Yukon. The old pioneer,
though grizzled, was hale and hearty, and as optimistic as when he
first journeyed into the land along the path of the Circle. And no
man more beloved is there in all the North. There will be great
sadness there when his soul goes questing on over the Last Divide--
"farther north," perhaps--who can tell?
Frank Dinsmore is a fair sample of the men who made the Yukon
country. A Yankee, born, in Auburn, Maine, the Wanderlust early laid
him by the heels, and at sixteen he was heading west on the trail
that led "farther north." He prospected in the Black Hills, Montana,
and in the Coeur d'Alene, then heard a whisper of the North, and went
up to Juneau on the Alaskan Panhandle. But the North still
whispered, and more insistently, and he could not rest till he went
over Chilcoot, and down into the mysterious Silent Land.
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