"You can't drive where there are no roads, and you can't ride where there are no horses. Then the time available is short."
"Why is it so short?"
"You haven't a railroad going to every point in Alaska," Barnes pointed out, "there's usually a trip of several hundred miles before you get to the place from which to start. And when are you going to make that journey?"
"In the spring," Hamilton said, "as soon as it gets mild."
"I reckon you don't know much about Alaska," the older man remarked. "When the snow thaws, the creeks overflow, and the rivers become raging torrents. You can't ride, and if you walk, how are you going to cross a swollen river, filled with pieces of ice the size of this room? Those Alaska rivers are huge bodies of water, many of them, and there are no bridges."
"How about boats?"
"You mean traveling on those ice-filled rivers? It couldn't be done."
"But as soon as the ice goes out?"
"That's pretty well into June, to start with, and then you would have to pole up against the current all the way, and the currents of most of the rivers are very swift. Did you ever pole a boat up against a swift mountain river?—I thought not. Suppose, by very hard work, you could make two or three miles an hour up stream,—at that rate how long would it take you to go up to the highest settlement? And then you would have to go all the way down again and ascend the next stream; and even then more than half the settlements would be on streams and creeks you could not get to with boats because of falls, of rapids, of long portages, and things of that kind."
"I guess they couldn't use a boat," said Hamilton, "but still I don't see why they couldn't ride!"