bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim
heartbreaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the
sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and waked to dream again.
River and plain and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of
the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the
scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the
malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a
hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death,
lay Bill.*

* From "Ballads of a Cheechako."


The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate
that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live anywhere, the
strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active
types of mind. Only those can endure whose nerves lack
sensitiveness and who are able to bear long privation and the
strain of hunger and cold and darkness. Though the Indian may
differ from the white man in many respects, such conditions are
probably as bad for him as for any race. For this reason it is