Among my first passions was that for exploration. The Unknown—that region of mysteries lying upon the outskirts of commonplace environment—drew me with a mighty attraction. My earliest recollections are of wanderings into the domains of the neighbors, and of excursions—not infrequently in direct contravention to parental warnings—over fences, stone-walls, and roofs, and into cobwebbed attics, fragrant hay-lofts, and swaying tree-tops. Of my favorite tree, a sugar maple, I remember that, so thoroughly did I come to know every one of its branches, I could climb up or down unhesitatingly with eyes shut. At that advanced stage of acquaintance, however, it followed naturally that the mysteriousness, and hence the subtle attractiveness, of my friend the maple was considerably lessened.
By degrees the boundary line of the unknown was pushed back into surrounding fields. Wonderful caves were hollowed in sandy banks. Small pools, to the imaginative eyes of the six-year-old, became lakes abounding with delightful adventures. The wintry alternations of freezing and thawing were processes to be observed with closest attention and never-failing interest. Nature displayed some new charm with every mood.
[viii]
There came a day when I looked beyond the fields, when even the river, sluggish and muddy in summer, a broad, clear torrent in spring, was known from end to end. Then it was that the range of low mountains—to me sublime in loftiness—at the western horizon held my fascinated gaze. To journey thither on foot became ambition's end and aim. This feat, at first regarded as undoubtedly beyond the powers of man unaided by horse and carry-all (the thing had once been done in that manner on the occasion of a picnic), was at length proved possible.
What next? Like Alexander, I sought new worlds. Nothing less than real camping out could satisfy that hitherto unappeasable longing. This dream was realized in due season among the mountains of New Hampshire; but the craving, far from losing its keenness, was whetted. Of late it has been fed, but never satiated, by wider rovings on land and sea. Perhaps it is in the blood and can never be eliminated.
Believing that this restlessness, accompanied by the love of adventure and out-of-door life, is natural to every boy, I have had in mind particularly in the writing of this narrative those thousands of boys in our cities who are bound within a restricted, and it may be unromantic, sphere of activity. To them I have wished to give a glimpse of trail life, not with a view to increasing their restlessness,—for I have not veiled discomforts and discouragements in relating enjoyments,—but to enlarge their horizon,—to give them, in imagination at least, mountain air and appetites, journeys by lake and river,[ix] and an acquaintance with men and conditions as they now exist in the great Northwest.
The Dalton trail, last year but little known, may soon become a much travelled highway. With a United States garrison at Pyramid, and the village of Klukwan a bone of contention between the governments of this country and Canada, the region which it traverses is coming more and more into notice. I would only add that natural features, scenery, and people, have been described faithfully, however inadequately, and the story throughout is based upon real happenings. Should any of my young readers pass over the trail to-day in the footsteps of David and Roly, they would find, save for possible vandalism of Indians or whites, the cabins on the North Alsek and in the Kah Sha gorge just as they are pictured, and they could be sure of a welcome from Lucky, Long Peter, and Coffee Jack.