"No doubt of it. Do you remember that stoop-shouldered old man whose room is next to ours?"
"The one who has such dreadful coughing spells in the night?"
"Yes; he is far gone with consumption, and yet he won't believe there's anything the matter with him. He is worse than when he came on board: but he says it is only a slight cold which will soon pass off, and he is just as hopeful as you or I of taking a lot of nuggets home with him."
"He never will see the other side of Chilkoot Pass."
"I doubt whether he will ever see this side."
Thus the boys speculated, sometimes amused and sometimes saddened by what they saw. There was a big San Francisco policeman, who said he had cracked heads so long that he thought he knew how to crack some golden nuggets; a correspondent of a prominent New York newspaper, whose situation was enviable, since his salary and expenses were guaranteed, and he was free to gather gold when the opportunity offered; a voluble insurance agent, who made a nuisance of himself by his solicitations, in season and out; a massive football-player, who had no companion, and did not wish any, since he was sure he could buck the line, make a touchdown, and kick a goal; a gray-haired head of a family, who, having lost his all, had set out to gather another fortune along the Klondike. He walked briskly, threw back his shoulders, and tried hard to appear young and vigorous, but the chances were strongly against him. There were a number of bright clerks; a clergyman, pleasant and genial with all; gamblers, with pallid faces and hair and mustaches dyed an intense black, who expected to win the gold for which others dug; young and middle-aged men, some with their brave wives, serene and calmly prepared to bear their full share of privation and toil; and adventurers, ready to go anywhere for the sake of adventure itself. In truth, it was a motley assemblage, which to the boys was like a continually shifting panorama of hope, ambition, honesty, dishonor, pluck, and human enterprise and daring, that was ever present throughout the thousand miles of salt water that stretches from Seattle to Juneau.
Juneau, the metropolis of Alaska, was founded in 1880, and named in honor of Joseph Juneau, the discoverer of gold on Douglas Island, two miles distant. There is located the Treadwell quartz-mill, the largest in the world. The city nestles at the base of a precipitous mountain, thirty-three hundred feet high, has several thousand inhabitants, with its wooden houses regularly laid out, good wharves, water works, electric lights, banks, hotels, newspapers, schools, and churches.
"Here's where we get our outfit," said Jeff, as they hurried over the plank to the landing. "But where can Tim be?"
He paused abruptly as soon as he was clear of the crowd, and looked around for the one who was the cause of his coming to this out-of-the-way corner of the world. He was still gazing when a man, dressed much the same as himself, but short, stockily built, and with the reddest hair and whiskers the boys had ever seen, his round face aglow with pleasure stepped hastily forward from the group of spectators and extended his hand.
"Ah, Jiff, it does me good to see your handsome silf; and how have ye been, and how do ye expect to continue to be?"