MUCH-CHANGED YUKON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20383, 11 October 1929, Page 14

MUCH-CHANGED YUKON.

PASSING OF OLD HAZARDS.

LAND OF ROMANCE AND CHARM. [fhom our. own CORRESPONDENT. J i VANCOUVER, Sept. IS. Many Australians and New Zcalanders who braved tho dangers of the "trail of '93" in search of gold at the Klondyke would find the Yukon much changed today. The old hazards of tho journey are gone. Luxurious steamers carry the tourist through flio famous "inside passage," as calm as the water inside tho Great Barrier Reef, from Vancouver to Skagway. From here the train goes through the Whito Pass to the Yukon, following the old trail. The traveller, seated in comfortable sightseeing cars, passes many places with familiar names, now fallen into decay, but with evidences still plain of their romantic past. Wore he here in those stirring days he would be busy conjuring up in his mind scenes and incidents so graphically described by Robert Service—the wild experiences of the "clieechako" and the "sourdough"; the dangers and hardships of the trail; the lawlessness of the gold rush. The Yukon is a land of contrasts, of extremes in climate, animal life, vegetation—above all, of human interest. It ia a land of romance and mystery and charm. To tho world it has a heady given, from its placer fields, over £40,000,000 in gold. It has given also great quantities of fino furs, big-game trophies, silver, copper and other wealth; tho fossilised remains of mastodons and-other Pleistoceno mammals. The celebration of the anniversary of tho discovery of gold finds it a paradise for tho tourist and pleasureseeker.

Over tlio Chilcoot Pass, through which an Australian was the first to come out in 1897, past Lake Bennett and tho awsoino depths of Miles Canyon, to Dawson City, with its "Tattersall's Sweep" every year on the hour and minute the ice on the river goes out— over all theso, nowadays, forever marches an endless army of sightseers, with an occasional prospector or placer miner, returned for a brief spell from the "outsido" to live again tho thrills that swept over him as he trod tho trail in search of tho elusive metal.