The Great Gold Rush

One night in the December preceding his setting out for the Klondike, he was lying in his bunk on Judas Creek--one of the innumerable streams in British Columbia in which colours of gold, otherwise "prospects" could be found--reading a month old newspaper that a trapper, who had passed the previous night with him, had brought from the settlement, and in its columns had found an item of news telling of the recent rich discoveries in the Yukon. He read the paragraph carefully again and again, striving to separate exaggeration from truth, and to satisfy himself that there was truth in it.

By the camp stove sat Joe, the French-Canadian whom he employed, smoking and gazing at the glow of the fire with stolid and witless eyes. He would sit thus for hours; to a man of Berwick's temperament he was a satisfactory companion. On the Claim things had gone none too well. True, by great effort they had reached bed-rock at thirty feet, and were beginning to cross-cut in search of a pay-streak. Ther