The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-02-22
LIFE IN THE KLoNDIKE.
The Men who Invade the Frozen
North.


North.
From the New York Commercial-Adver-
tiser.
The country has heard enough of Klon-
dixie life in the last year to have a just,
even if theatrical, conception of IT. 1t has
appreciated at last that besides being the
most forbidding land on earth the noun
tains and glaciers of the Alaskan north
west, with their limpid northern silver and
sublimity are unapproached by Alps or
Hlmalayas. But the deeper human aspect
of a pioneer life more rigorous than the
'49ers has been utterly obscured by its
more sensational details. What are the
kinds and classes of men who willfully
break with home and fireside In the dan
gerous pursuit of a hap-hazzard, precari-
Gus dream and pass from where life is
complex and artificial to where it is re-
duced to It's elements, where soul meets
soul markedly and human nature is strip
ped of arts and trappings, unconscious,
frank, naive, Indispensable? The northern
life Is the test of men as men; they can
show only the primal nature of their crea-
ton. There is something in those polar
winds, in the thunder of those rivers, that
makes ii impossible for man to be ip-
sincere And the many who fell by the
trail-side, turned back disheartened, ours
ing the sign of the country, were defeat
ed by their own Httleness, and found that
their natural, irrepressible selves, funda-
mentally petty and ignoble, could not cope
with the stern demands of self-control and
A., a, haA NOT fh, mill 70
make real (and this is the prime necessity
of ii ain the chimera of their dreams.
Three classes, broadly, We're subjected to
these conditions and each bore the test ac-
cordlng TO no preconceived notions of its
kind 1t was a test of pure personality.
You could see the Montana cow-puncher
worsted where the New England dude tri-
umphed; you would see the pioneer of
dozen new countries turning back where
the London clubman went on happy and
contented Men gave up to you their deep
est selves on a half hours acquaintance;
and If YOU didn't Isle" a fellow up from
the look of his eye or shape of back-head
YOU knew him as well as If he'd been your
school-fellow did you once cook dinner to-
gether or load the boat.
There was first the real pioneer, most
Cosmopolitan of men, who had thrice cir
cled the globe, been in Frisco In the fifties
would tell YOU how he was the first man
who went down the Grand Canon of the
Colorado, knew Denver when 1t was only
q place where the trails forked, had killed
the largest grizzly in the Wasatch noun
tains with claws, yes long as your
forearm You enjoyed him most around
the camp fire, when the boat was moored
or the horse hobbled. His stories were
endless. always funny; you knew all of
them were lies, and he knew you knew IL,
and neither of you cared. Jack MacKen-
zie was this sort and his acquaintance
was a liberal education in experience and
hurnor. He was the son of a Southern gen.
tleman ruined in our civil war, who had
been sehooled In England, and ran away
al 16 years of age. on the death of both
parents He had "iramped' in the coast
iradk of Tasmania. New Zealand and the
China Sea. In the British revenue serv-
ice. he had chased Chinese smugglers in
the yellow Sea. He had fought with Peru
against Chill, and had a dead man fall
ing from the crows nest keel him over;
ne had been surveying in Patagonia for the
Argentine Republic; he had been In the
American navy among "our new possess
siops' long ago, and was aboard the Iro-
quois al the fall Of Alexandria. In So he
Joined the Northwest mounted police, and