The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-08-16

! in the course of several thousand miles
of tramping, because he possessed no
fixed place of abode and no visible means
of support. Later on he repeated his
yagabond career in the East End OF
London, the result being his volume on
! The People of the Abyss which, alter
! it's serial run in one OF the magazines, IS
! to appear in book form IN the autumn.
Eventually he decided that tramping was
not all beer and skittles. and returned to
! Oakland, where he entered the Hlgh
School. Breaking off his course IN the
University of California IN the middle of
his Freshmen year. he went over Chll-
coot Pass with the first of the Klondike
rush of 1897. 1t was in ting Klondike
that he gathered the material for his
first books, which brought him before
the reading public. His first magazine
article was published in The Overland
Monthly in 1899, and his first book ap-
peared the following year
He is a socialist, and takes an active
part in the propaganda of the socialist
party. AT present he is living on the
Piedmont Hills overlooking San Francisco
Bay Among his hobbies, other than
socialism, may be mentioned kite flying
and boat sailing. Much of his writing is
done onl his sloOp-yacht in San Francisco
Bay; at present he is writing novel of
the sea. In appearance Mr.. London is a
man of medium stature and weight, broad
shouldered, well-muscled, sturdy, and of
breezy carriage, IN keeping with the de-
lghtful shipboard roll of his walk. His
smooth unshaveh face with its square,
firm-set chin is strikingly expressive, the
keen gray-blue eyes are thoughtful and
impassoned by turns. the brow and chin
Indicative of strength and purpose, and
the handsome mobile mouth terminates in
what some writer fehcitously terms pic
tured corners" He impresses any one
who meets him casually as a sailor or an
adventurer, not as a writer.
His college course was limited to his
freshmen year, finances, or the lack of
them, obhging him to turn to at the
familiar grind. This was in 49, and, inn
PEELED by the promise of gold and adven-
ture, Jack London was among the first to
join the fall rush to the Klondike. He
was one of the few doughty Argonauts
who at this season made it over the
Chilcoot Pass, the great majority waiting
for spring. AS charges were forty three
cents per pound for carrying supplies a
distance of thirty miles, from salt water
to fresh. he packed his thoueand-pound
outfit, holding his own with the strongest
and most experienced in the party.
And here in the still white world of the
North, where nature makes the most of
every vital throb that resists her cold, and
man learns the awful significance and
emphasis of Arctic life and action, young
London came consciously into his herit
age He would write of these-the ter
rorizing simplicity of an Alaskan land
scape, its great peaks bullying with cen
tury-piled SHOWS, its woods rigid, tense,
and voiced by the frost like strained cac-
gut; the fierce bowls of starving wolf
dogs; the tracks of the dog-teams mark
ing the lonely trail; but more than all
else, the human of the North Pole.
Thus it would seem that his actual de-
velopment as a writer began on the trail, |
though at the time he set no word to
paper, not even jottings by the way in
a notebook. A tireless brooding on the
wish to write shaped his impulse to defin-
tie purpose, but outwardly he continued |
to share the interests and labors of his |
companion prospectors.
After a year spent in that weirdly pic |
turesque but hazardous life, he succumbed |
to scurvy, and, impatient of the delay of |
homebound steamers, he and two camp |
mates decided to embark in an open boat |
for the Boring Sea. The three accordingly |
made the start midway in June, and the |
voyage turned out to be a memorably |
novel and perilous one-nineteen hundred |
miles Of river travel in nineteen days!