provisions a poling boat, if it is summer, and if winter,
harnesses his dogs, and heads for the Southland. A few months
later, supposing him to be possessed of a faith in the country,
he returns with a wife to share with him in that faith, and
incidentally in his hardships. This but serves to show the innate
selfishness of man. It also brings us to the trouble of 'Scruff'
Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before the country was
stampeded and staked by a tidal-wave of the che-cha-quas, and
when the Klondike's only claim to notice was its salmon
fisheries.

'Scruff' Mackenzie bore the earmarks of a frontier birth and a
frontier life.

His face was stamped with twenty-five years of incessant struggle
with Nature in her wildest moods,--the last two, the wildest and
hardest of all, having been spent in groping for the gold which
lies in the shadow of the Arctic Circle. When the yearning
sickness came upon him, he was not surprised, for he was a
practical man and had seen other men thus stricken. But he showed
no sign of his malady, save that he worked harder. All summer he
fought mosquitoes and washed the sure-thing bars of the Stuart
River for a double grubstake. Then he floated a raft of houselogs
down the Yukon to Forty Mile, and put together as comfortable a
cabin as any the camp could boast of. In fact, it showed such
cozy promise that many men elected to be his partner and to come
and live with him. But he crushed their aspirations with rough
speech, peculiar for its strength and brevity, and bought a
double supply of grub from the trading-post.