velveteen of the daïs, which we got from Wardrop's at eighteer cents a yard-quite a bargain. My hair was done à la Botticelli; nobody wears bangs now. At last I came to that passage where Big Feet exclaims:

Shall the Paleface waste our wigwams?

Shall the Paleface steal our squaws?

when, to my horror, in the pause that I made there for effect, a husky voice came from the other end of the room and ended up the stanza quite impromptu :

Shall the Paleface be bamboozled

By a pair of d-d Choctaws?

It was Pottimer! Pottimer, red and tipsy, surrounded by a crowd of grinning journalists all on the look-out for 'copy.' Before anybody could stop him, Pottimer jumped up on a chair and began making a speech about how the people were a lot of great stupids -though that wasn't quite the expression he used-not to see through one of the most barefaced pieces of imposture, &c. How that he had struggled for thirty years, vainly trying to get a hearing, sacrificing all the best years of his life, &c., and because he was a plain white man instead of a dirty red-skinned loafermeaning Maple-nobody would listen to him. He went on to say that he wouldn't have cared for our meanness in giving him only a dollar a day and all the slights he had had to put up with, but he would not stand being told to go and have his hair cut-how could I know he was so touchy about his greasy black mane ?-and he shouted and waved his fist at me and Maple. Imagine how I felt! Just think how you would feel yourself, suppose your cook came in drunk at a dinner party and began to tell all your secrets to the guests, and what the dishes were made of, and everything.

Of course there was a great scandale, as you may well suppose. Everybody began shouting, 'Turn him out!' 'Hush!' 'Silence!' &c. I don't think anybody quite understood what it was all about. I am sure Maple Sugar didn't. But when he saw Pottimer shaking his fist at him, his warlike instinct was aroused; for Maple is very fierce when there's anything to be fierce about. He rose slowly, looking very grand, with his blanket sweeping down to the ground about him. The feathers down his back really seemed to stand on end and bristle like a cat's fur when it's angry. He stood a moment, growling in the most unearthly way, with his eyes sticking out, and the veins moving about on his forehead. A

general hum of admiration went round the room, and a lot of people began clapping their hands. I am sorry to say that the effect was rather spoiled by the fact that some of the ladies had, as usual, been clipping Maple's tail-feathers on the sly for mementoes. Next moment admiration was turned to terror, as Maple Sugar pulled out his tomahawk from under his blankethe always wears a tomahawk in his belt-and began to chant his war-song at the top of his voice, slowly hopping up and down on the daïs and waving his weapon round his head like that killing curate who sang' Ballyhooley' that night at your Mothers' Treat.

All the ladies began to shriek, and there was a general rush for the door. In half a minute there wasn't a soul left in the room. I ran to the window, and was just in time to see Pottimer tearing down the street without any hat on and Maple dancing after him brandishing his tomahawk. I am thankful to say that Maple was at once overpowered by the police before any harm happened. Heaven knows what he would have done had he once gotten fairly started on the warpath!

Next morning, of course, the papers were full of it. 'Scandal in high life!' 'Scene at a salon!' 'Pocahontas in a pickle!' 'How the poet let the cat out of the bag!' 'How the fat fell in the fire,' &c. They had long and detailed accounts of the real authorship of the poems and biographies of Pottimer, all of which the journalists had, of course, got from the wretch at my house over my champagne-cup. As luck would have it, there was another edition of Wild Grasses' out that very day. That wretch young Wilcox, of the 'Herald,' had a horrid article about it in his paper. He said that the verses had no real poetical merit in them, and that they had only caused a sensation because Maple was a redskin; that it was like a performing-pig being able to spell, very wonderful considering, &c. The other papers followed suit, so Mr. Julian B. Pottimer won't gain very much by his escapade; besides which the wretch has left all his shirts and things at our flat and dare not come back to fetch them. The worst of it is that all the tradesmen came pouring in at once with their bills; for of course we owe a good deal of money.

Our plans for the future are not quite fixed up yet. Of course we mean to leave New York. Fortunately we have a little money left, for I always had a sort of feeling that perhaps it mightn't last, and we have been laying by all the time.

Besides, the first edition of 'Wild Grasses,' most of which we bought up ourselves to encourage the publisher, is a literary curiosity now, and we expect to make a good deal of money out

of that.

We have had several callers come to express their sympathy. Old Professor Panks left flowers the next day. Colonel Walkinshaw's admiration knows no bounds; he says it is the finest plant that has been gotten off on New York this century. He does a big business with the Indian settlements, and I think it most probable that he will give us his Kinahanville Agency. Of course, after our career in New York we shall be a good deal looked up to among the natives and shall probably do a good trade. You'd best wait till I give our new address before writing. The spotted tulle you sent a cutting of is very pretty, and I shall have a summer gown of it if I can match it anywhere here.

Toujours à toi,

LAUGHING ASPEN.

G. L. CALDERON.

769

THROUGH TO THE KLONDIKE.

WE have now the record of a journey to the Klondike made this season. This journey was successfully accomplished from Juneau and Dyea by the usual route hitherto taken by the miners, and was made during the summer by a large party of Manitobans, who sent back word of their progress from time to time by men whom they met returning to the coast. This is, in all probability, the latest, if not the only account in this country of any journey made to the gold-fields during the past season; and as the letters were written while their experiences were fresh in the minds of the writers, we are enabled to get a pretty clear idea of the chief difficulties and dangers which such a journey entails.

Minute details, of course, could not be expected; indeed, the marvel is that, under such trying conditions, any man should have had the patience and energy to write at all. The letters are, however, characteristic, terse, and to the point. Difficulties which to a 'green Englishman' (as they say in Canada) would seem appalling, are dismissed with a joke or not referred to at all. A Canadian is not put about when he cannot rely upon others for assistance in the trumpery details of everyday life. If a thing has to be done, no matter what, he will do it--somehow-from making his porridge for breakfast to pleading his cause in a court of law later on, though he may be neither a cook nor a lawyer.

The precipices of the Chilcoot and the snow-tramp higher up are got over, though he never climbed a mountain before. He may know nothing of boat-building, but, with the help of one or two in the crowd to tell him something about it, he builds a more or less clumsy craft that answers his purpose and takes him over stormy lakes and swiftly running streams to his destination. He learns his work, in fact, by doing it.

The utter desolation of the vast unexplored wilderness around, where he is thrown solely on his own resources in every requirement of daily existence, is passed unnoticed. The Canadian has 'been there before,' and leaves you to fill in the blanks from your own imagination. The swarms of mosquitoes and gnats, which are a source of torture morning, noon, and night, are never once VOL. III.-NO. 18, N.S.

33

mentioned; they are nothing new to those whose home is on the prairies, though it is certain that, if all accounts be true, they increase in size and virulence the nearer you approach the Arctic circle.

In short, the thousand and one incidents of days and nights for weeks on end, without shelter in any and every kind of weather, are taken as matters of course. When an Indian appears like a ghost on the scene from nowhere in particular, the Canadian makes a deal with him-by words, if possible, but if not, then by signs; the purpose is answered equally well either way.

Hardship and bodily discomfort being thus disregarded as belonging to the regular bill of fare, it is only the actual natural difficulties of the situation which are dwelt upon as they arise and are faced one after another by the travellers; and thus the ground is considerably cleared.

The news of the Klondike gold-fields was, as it were, suddenly sprung upon the people of this country. To some few of us here it had been known for some time past that the basin of the Upper Yukon was a vast gold-bearing region. The Canadian Government had long been represented on the spot by their surveyors and police. Reports were constantly coming in, and British capitalists were beginning to put money into the country and seeking powers of incorporation from the governments concerned. All this was known here; but even if the intelligence had been published, it would probably have fallen upon deaf ears. Meanwhile, long before news of the Yukon gold-fields had penetrated to the English press and been grasped by the people, Canadians, thousands of miles from the scene of excitement, had woke up to the fact and begun to push their way out.

Spring is the proper time to set out for the far North-West, and in Manitoba the snow begins to disappear during the second week in April. As soon then as the winter had broken up, a small party of three young Winnipeggers, one of whom was a son of the sheriff of Manitoba, were in readiness to start, and left Winnipeg on April 24 last. They reached Dyea on May 6, and took sixteen days to get their belongings over the Chilcoot Pass, the Indian packers at that time charging from eight to sixteen dollars a day. On May 22 they found Lake Lindeman still covered with ice, but unsafe to travel on, while they had difficulty even at that time in getting logs big enough out of which to whipsaw boards for their boats, so scarce were trees of any size. These