On every hand
          stretched the forest primeval,
        --the home of noisy comedy
               and silent tragedy.

    Here the struggle for survival
          continued to wage
               with all its ancient brutality.

    Briton and Russian were
         still to overlap
               in the Land
                   of the Rainbow's End
         -- and this
            was the
                   very heart of it--
           nor had Yankee gold yet
              purchased its vast domain.

    The wolf-pack still
        clung to the flank
               of the cariboo-herd,
           singling out the weak
               and the big
             with calf,
         and pulling them down
               as remorselessly as
            were it a thousand,
           thousand generations into the past.

    The sparse aborigines still
           acknowledged the rule
               of their chiefs
             and medicine men,
           drove out bad spirits,
         burned their witches,
           fought their neighbors,
         and ate their enemies
               with a relish
              which spoke well
                   of their bellies.

    But it
        was at the moment
         when the stone age
            was drawing to a close.

    Already,
           over unknown trails
               and chartless wildernesses,
         were the harbingers
               of the steel arriving,
          --fair-faced,
           blue-eyed,
         indomitable men,
           incarnations of the unrest
               of their race.

    By accident or design,
           single-handed and
               in twos and threes,
         they came from no one
            knew whither,
           and fought,
         or died,
           or passed on,
         no one knew whence.

    The priests raged against them,
           the chiefs
              called forth their fighting men,
         and stone clashed with steel;
        but to little purpose.

    Like water
          seeping from some mighty reservoir,
           they trickled
               through the dark forests
                   and mountain passes,
         threading the highways
               in bark canoes,
           or with
               their moccasined feet breaking
             trail for the wolf-dogs.

    They came
           of a great breed,
         and their mothers were many;
        but the fur-clad denizens
               of the Northland
            had this yet to learn.

    So many an unsung wanderer
          fought his last
        and died
               under the cold fire
                   of the aurora,
           as did his brothers
               in burning
             sands and reeking jungles,
         and as
             they shall continue to do
               till in the fulness
                   of time the destiny
                 of their race
                  be achieved.

    It was near twelve.

    Along the northern horizon
           a rosy glow,
         fading to the west and
              deepening to the east,
         marked the unseen dip
               of the midnight sun.

    The gloaming and the dawn
        were so commingled
         that there was no night,
          --simply a wedding of day
               with day,
           a scarcely perceptible
              blending of two circles
                   of the sun.

    A kildee timidly chirped good-night;
        the full,
           rich throat of a robin
              proclaimed good-morrow.

    From an island
           on the breast
               of the Yukon a colony
             of wild fowl
          voiced its interminable wrongs,
           while a loon
              laughed mockingly back
                   across a still
                 stretch of river.

    In the foreground,
           against the bank
               of a lazy eddy,
         birch-bark canoes
            were lined two
                   and three deep.

    Ivory-bladed spears,
           bone-barbed arrows,
         buckskin-thonged bows,
           and simple basket-woven traps
            bespoke the fact
             that in the muddy current
                   of the river the salmon-run
                was on.

    In the background,
           from the tangle
               of skin tents and
              drying frames,
         rose the voices
               of the fisher folk.

    Bucks skylarked with bucks
          or flirted with the maidens,
           while the older squaws,
         shut out from this
               by virtue of
            having fulfilled the end
                   of their existence
                 in reproduction,
           gossiped as
             they braided rope
                   from the green
                 roots of trailing vines.

    At their feet
           their naked progeny
          played and squabbled,
           or rolled
               in the muck
             with the tawny wolf-dogs.

    To one side
           of the encampment,
         and conspicuously apart from it,
         stood a second
              camp of two tents.

    But it
        was a white man's camp.

    If nothing else,