advantage of a college education! Two thousand eight hundred feet are scaled by this line in seventeen miles, after which it leisurely drops five hundred feet to Bennet, twenty two miles beyond. The entire journey occupies some four hours. But it is neither its height nor its gradients that make this line remarkable above its fellows; it is the series of acrobatic positions that the train finds it necessary to assume during the first seventeen miles of its career. The gauge is very narrow, and the difficulties and cost of blasting were immense, so that-faute de mieux-the train has to balance itself on the most inadequate of tracks. At times the cars literally appear to overlap a yawning precipice, 1400 feet in depth. At such moments the passenger smiles pityingly at recollection of the emotions conjured up by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Canadian Pacific Railway is to the White Pass Railway as St. James's Street is to the Matterhorn; for the dangers of the latter are by no means dangers of the imagination only. The train is at times wayward and impatient of restraint, and shows a disposition to stray from the hard-and-fast lines laid down for its guidance by the Company-a form of schism with which the passenger cannot be expected to sympathise. So far, the Westinghouse brake has proved master of the situation, so that the White Pass Railway, like its big brother of the Canadian continent, has a clean bill of health as regards passengers; but should accident ever get the better of precaution, it is quite certain that the newpsaper reports will not be supplied by any inmate of the train concerned. Even the tough miners crowd on the steps outside the cars, ready to spring against the cliff in case of occasion. However, the line is very young, and its management is thorough and competent, so that it may safely be assumed that the dangers will diminish with each month's experience. It has yet, however, to stand the test of a winter. Judging by the sprinkling of snow encountered as late as the 20th of March 1899,

Huskies of Yukon.

this will be no light task. With a view to meeting this engagement, the Company is shipping up seven million feet of timber for the erection of snowsheds.

is about these lakes in autumn a beauty that is almost oleographic in its colouring, and yet entirely beautiful; for in plain nature we frankly admit the beauty of that which in exact reproduction is the very abomination of art. The Dawson road is down the Yukon, that remarkable river that rises sixteen miles from the sea, and then thinks it necessary to travel 2500 miles before it shakes itself clear of land. Here, again, the instrument of progression is a steamboat, or, rather, steamboats.

The vehicle of the pioneer was the skow, a broad flat barge of flimsy build, knocked together on the spot, and the passage of the White Horse Rapids in these skows was a stage of the journey much more feared than either the White or the Chilkoot Passes. And this, too, not without reason, for the White Horse Rapids have claimed many a victim for their own - how many will never be known, for the half of these pioneers were nameless, and for a few to go down meant no perceptible gap in the great column pushing northward.

Now, however, the

White Horse Rapids

are avoided by a portage between the steamboats on the upper and lower waters. These steamboats of the upper waters were all dragged in small sections over the snows of the White Pass. Without the means of transport provided by the Alaskan winter they could never have reached their destination. The boats ply

from June to October, after which date all the waters of this district solidify, and so remain till the following May. This solid ice of the lakes and rivers affords as good a road as the open water, though a slower; and the only period during which Dawson and Atlin are cut off from the outer world is during the short stages of transition.

The bulk of the harness work is done by dogs; they are easier to keep and to feed than horses, and get better across the ice and snow. During the summer the dogs grow fat, and grin and run about the city, while the thin, dejected horses do the burden of the work. In the winter the dogs eat the thin, dejected horses, and then become thin and dejected themselves, and the men eat the horned beasts, ending with the milch cows. There is no room for herbivorous beasts in a Yukon winter. Every four-footed beast that comes to Atlin comes drawing or bearing a load, and one and all-except the dogs-are eaten before the winter. The dogs are not eaten -excepting occasionally by one another. These dogs are of every shape and parentage, and their name is legion. The aristocracy have the additional name of "huskie." Beautiful furry, grey dogs are these huskies, with tight curly tails- a cross, it is said, between the Esquimaux or Indian dog and the wolf. Sixty pounds has before now been refused for a good huskie.

The wealth of the Great North-West is beyond doubt very great, and practically ubiquitous. The richest deposits so far discovered lie round Dawson, but the talk

of the country latterly is of Cape Nome, and nothing but Cape Nome; and it is a safe prophecy that with the spring there will be a huge stampede to this new El Dorado. Here, we are told, the happy prospector sits picturesquely on the seashore and scoops the precious dust in handfuls from the sand. What a playground for our children, with their spades and pails!

Dawson, however, remains up to the present the Mecca of the North-West. It is astonishingly rich, and it needs to be, for the cost of living, even to-day, is four times as great as in the English home the miner leaves behind. Compared, however, to 1897, to-day is a day of store prices. At Christmas 1897, £30 was paid at Dawson for a dead turkey, champagne at the same date was 16 a bottle, and 10 was offered and refused for a live kitten, and this not even for purposes of food! These, of course, were luxuries, but the very necessities of life were on the same scale. As late as October 1897, 25. per pound was the recognised charge for portage over the White Pass, a desperate tax on men who carried with them, not only the whole of their household gods, but also their entire commissariat. Twenty-four shillings was the cost of shoeing a horse in Skagway, and in August 1897 as much as 4s. was paid for a single shoe-nail! What wonder that smoothpalmed sons of leisure did the laying of the White Pass Railway? A pioneer of 1897 had need to be armed with dollars, as well as with strength and resolution, and dollars do not necessarily go with the smooth palms that find themselves in the North-West; no more does resolution.

As to mining as it is generally understood in London, E.C.-that is to say, the development of mineral claims on scientific principles by means of English capital-it is yet in its very earliest infancy. North of Vancouver there are but two mines that can boast such extravagancies as stamp-mills. In Klondike and Atlin even the contemplation of such things is still far distant. Quartz is not worked, though it is there in abundance. The miner devotes himself at present to "placer" claims or hydraulic propositions, as being better suited to individual enterprise and somewhat primitive methods. But that his amateur efforts are not barren is proved by results. The first passenger train that left Bennet on the White Pass Railway took down £4,000,000 worth of gold to Skagway. Long may that train continue its auriferous career!

A

THE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR.

T those yearly banquets, always on the twelfth of June, which Mr. Reginald Luttrell gave, I had never before been a guest, and on this particular occasion I was the youngest man present. At ordinary times I was a constant visitor, dining at his, as often as at my own, table. Indeed, I had the run of his house, a great old Devonshire manor, with so many winding stairways in it, so many unexpected rooms, such shadowy corners, that only an intimate acquaintance could make a man master of its intricacies. I was allowed the utmost freedom, coming and going as I would-coming, indeed, as on wings, going with reluctant and heavy feet. For the house was casket to Mary Luttrell, who could have drawn me from any occupation, at any moment, with a glance or lifted hand.

To each other Mary and I were avowed lovers; to the world, unless it chose to use its eyes very acutely, we were no more than friends. I hardly know why we refrained so long from taking Mr. Luttrell into a confidence which he must have penetrated readily; perhaps it was because a love no longer secret seems to lose something of its finer sweetness in others' knowledge. At any rate, we did not speak, promising ourselves a few more weeks of hand in hand before we consulted as to the wedding-day.

For myself, I was well able to marry, being hardly less rich than Reginald Luttrell himself, and my own absolute master. My mother had died at my birth; my father, a few weeks later, had disappeared, leaving no clue to his whereabouts, and no reason for so strange a course. He left all his estate to me by absolute deed of gift, to be held, until I was twenty-three years of age, by trustees whom he named. They fulfilled their trust handsomely and with discretion, so that the previous August I had become master of a fortune of some eight thousand pounds a year. That was in the year 1762.

Having had no parents' care, and so neither receiving nor being able to give the natural affection of kinship, it may be supposed that when love came to me it found a soil in which to flourish exceedingly. Mary Luttrell became the centre of my world; we loved each other with a kind of delighted wonder. I knew enough

of life to understand her worth; she was as innocent of evil as a child, which was curious in a house where strict propriety was not one of the master's virtues. Yet over her he watched with an amazing tenderness, and shielded her as one would shield a delicate flame.

Reginald Luttrell had many faults, but he had some of my esteem and a great deal of my affection. I have known better men not half so good. He was a hard liver, not over-nice in morals, rash-tempered, quick with the rapier,-yet never overbearing, always generous, often forgetful of wrongs, and ever ready to forgive. He was beloved equally by his servants and his tenants, who would at any time have turned out in force to avenge an insult offered to his house. He was generous, as I have said, but not weak. He would forego a rent, but only if his quick apprehension was assured that misfortune and not recklessness had emptied his debtor's pocket. Also, no poacher caught on his estate was ever

hanged his keepers had orders to administer a sound beating and let the culprit go. I adopted the same plan, which we found to work to admiration. Sometimes neighbouring landowners sneered, but our game-bags proved our wisdom.

Such, then, was Mary's father, to whose banquet on the 12th of June, 1763, I, with a score of neighbouring gentry, was invited.

It was an entertainment provided for men only, for the drinking was deep and the talk apt to be wild.

"It is time," Mr. Luttrell said to me, "that you should know the best and worst of this house." He smiled and handed me his snuff-box. "I am no angel, yet this yearly banquet, which has a touch of the devil in it-only a touch, on my honour, Phil-is held in commemoration of my marriage with an angel, if there ever was one." He raised his hat, and put it on again firmly. "Perhaps you think I should be a better man. Alas! two years of such happiness don't serve to kill the beast in a man. And yet," he added, smiling again, though this time with a touch of half-humorous sadness, "the memory of them sometimes makes me repent, which is a clear gain—a clear gain. . . . Fortunately, Mary has all her mother's goodness and none of her father's follies. Have you observed any follies, Phil ? ”

"None, sir," I said heartily: "Mary is perfect!"

"Thank you, boy. If she had any, so close an observer as yourself could not have failed to notice them."

I laughed, discerning in the words an understanding of our relationship. "Mary is perfect," he repeated reflectively," yes, perfect. Strong, beautiful, honest, tender

"Yes!" I cried.

"Tender?"

He hardly put it as a question, though I saw his eyes twinkle as he handed me his snuff-box again.

"Sir, you expect a confession from me!" He waved his hand. "Not at all, Phil.

Hurry is the worst thing in the She seems to be expecting some one.

We saluted and parted; he to take horse and ride to Martinscombe, where a promising cockfight was to take place that day, I to hurry to Mary, who was waiting for me.

"Dear girl," I said, "Mr. Luttrell knows all."

"Have you spoken?" she asked, laying a hand in mine and looking eagerly into my face.

"Not that; but he let me see quite plainly that he knew.”

"But he must have known for a long time, Phil.”

"Of course; and yet, sweetheart, it's hard to have to tell him plainly, for then all the county will soon know. It will seem like being watched."

Mary put her arms about my neck and her head upon my shoulder, rocking gently to and fro.

"But we shall still be happy, Phil," she said, "and I shall be proud that the county should know.”

"Dearest heart," I cried, "be proud of me so long as you can! . . . There will soon be a dozen hands itching to cross steel with me!".

"No, no! No one, Phil, ever made real love to me but you!"

"I only joked, Mary; it was a foolish jest. As to fighting, well, if it came to it, your father's pupil has as supple a wrist and as clear an eye as most. There's no