When Mac put the request to me I welcomed the chance it gave me to talk to ready listeners about a land I love, to me the fairest under heaven. The men were always eager to listen, eager because the stories were about Canada and they were home-sick. Also because in every man there is something that stirs responsive to tales of the mystic Northland, vast, white, and silent. Then besides, the mad years of the Great Stampede had their own appeal, when the golden treasures were found and adventurers from the Seven Seas rushed to the discovery. What days those were, filled with tragedy and comedy, shameful things we would fain forget but can't, incidents too of heroism and comradeship that will live in our memories forever, and through it all, bad and good, an intense, throbbing life that was irresistibly fascinating. Little wonder that my soldiers, out themselves on a great adventure, would listen to stories of the Yukon and its adventurers in those glorious Stampede days.
Many an hour have I spent with my men off duty spinning these "sourdough" yarns, and I know very often we forgot for the time the dugout and the trench, hardly hearing the boom of the guns or bursting shells.
The incidents are true both in prologue and story. In "The Lost Patrol" and "Soapy Smith" I am indebted to my good friends Staff-Sergt. Joy of the R.N.W.M.P. and Mr. D. C. Stephens of Vananda, for inside information not otherwise obtainable. Mr. George P. Mackenzie, Gold Commissioner for the Yukon, has given me data I needed from government records. I am very grateful to my former "O.C.," Lieut.-Colonel H. M. Urquhart, M.C., D.S.O., now commanding the 1st Battalion Canadian Scottish, for arduous work done by him in getting my manuscript into shape. The preparation of these sketches, as they now stand, came about largely through the kindly encouragement and expert advice of Dr. Haddow of the Presbyterian Witness in which journal some of them were published.
The stories are put down pretty much as I told them. I have had, of course, to make some changes to suit a written narrative offered to a larger circle. The language and style are homely, for the stories were first given in simple words and I have tried to reproduce them. Some names have been changed for obvious reasons. Probably I seem at times to speak much about myself; where this happens I couldn't avoid it in telling my story. For the rest I make no excuse. There is one advantage about a book, if you don't like it you can shut it up!
If these pages serve to keep alive old friendships and pleasant memories among my "tillicums" of the trail, and the men in khaki to whom I ministered, I shall be content.
GEORGE C. F. PRINGLE.
Vananda, Texada Island, B.C.
Tillicums of the Trail