The Wilderness Is Shrinking
“FLY TO FORT NORMAN” is the bold headline of a startling advertisement in Western newspapers, “. . . in absolute safety and comfort; flying time about eight hours each way,” continues this epochal announcement.
Commercial enterprise has brought the air-boat to its aid in penetrating the fastnesses of the Northland where, reports say, oil will soon be gushing. But yesterday, this thousand-mile journey from McMurray down toward the Arctic Ocean was achieved only by toilsome weeks of tedious travel. What must the astonishment of leather-hued rivermen be to view these winged canoes darting from civilization to Norman almost “between meals.” How that great wilderness shrinks and becomes smaller. The terror and loneliness of it, the hardships of it begin already to pass away.
There are men living who labored over Chillkoot and spent months on the ghastly Klondike trail, and they must marvel at the advantages given by science and invention to the prospectors of 1921.