the sea, and out of it came that long, wavering line of ants. They
did, indeed, appear to be ants, those men, as they dragged
themselves across the meadow and up the ascent; they resembled
nothing more than a file of those industrious insects creeping
across the bottom and up the sides of a bath-tub, and the likeness
was borne out by the fact that all carried burdens. That was in
truth the marvel of the scene, for every man on the Chilkoot was
bent beneath a back-breaking load.

Three miles down the gulch, where the upward march of the forests
had been halted, there, among scattered outposts of scrubby spruce
and wind-twisted willow, stood a village, a sprawling, formless
aggregation of flimsy tents and green logs known as Sheep Camp.
Although it was a temporary, makeshift town, already it bulked big
in the minds of men from Maine to California, from the Great Lakes
to the Gulf, for it was the last outpost of civilization, and
beyond it lay a land of mystery. Sheep Camp had become famous by
reason of the fact that it was linked with the name of that Via
Dolorosa, that summit of despair, the Chilkoot. Already it had
come to stand for the weak man's ultimate mile-post, the end of
many journeys.

The approach from the sea was easy, if twelve miles of boulder and
bog, of swamp and nigger-head, of root and stump, can be called
easy under the best of circumstances; but easy it was as compared
with what lay beyond and above it. Nevertheless, many Argonauts
had never penetrated even thus far, and of those who had, a
considerable proportion had turned back at the giant pit three
miles above. One look at the towering barrier had been enough for
them. The Chilkoot was more than a mountain, more than an obstacle