THE RUSH TO KLONDIKE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1354, 10 February 1898, Page 10

THE RUSH TO KLONDIKE.

£ STOEY OF THEEE NOVELISTS. Every now and then something happens which makes one desire desperately to be younger. Just now {says Sir W. Besant in the Queen) it is a rush to Klondike. Next summer there will be witnessed the most wonderful rush of men and the most wonderful improvised city of framehouses, with the most wonderful saloons, gambling-places, dancing-places, singingplaces, newspapers, churches, perhaps, that the world-has ever seen. There was a rush to California in the old days. There was a rush to Melbourne. I remember from time to time running across men who had been to the goldfields. None of them had brought away any gold at all. What they did bring away was rheumatism, bent bodies, creaking joints, torture and early death. And that, I think, in some form or other, will be the portion of most of the Klondike diggers. The word has apparently been passed to “boom” Klondike in the interests of the American outfitters, who will reap all the harvest for themselves. If I were younger I would go to look at the place and the people. Alas 1 I cannot. It is no use recommending young novelists to go, because, no doubt, they are preparing for a start in March. There were three young novelists. They all resolved —each thinking himself the first —to go to Klondike, and there to lay the scene of a novel certain to have a most enormous boom. They all thought they would start in March—this happened next year. They went out by different boats; one by the Allan liue, so as to get local colour in Canada; one by the Cunard line, because they have never lost a passenger; and one by the White Star, because it was handy. They all got out West —far West —to British Columbia, where the start is made; on the morning of the start they made; face to face they met. They had come by different routes, §■ and they met on the same morning face to face; every man had thought himself - the first in the field. They grasped the situation in a moment; they broke into hollow laughter; they shook hands with wooden smiles. ‘-Going to Klondike?” said one. “ So am I. All on the same business, of course.” They started; anon they came to a place; two held aloof, hoping that the third would tumble over and break his neck, or tumble in and be drowned, or get into a hole and break bis neck. Nothing happened. On the third day one of them, who had been quite silent and meditative all day, lay down at night beside the other two. In the morning he had vanished. The other man, therefore, had rolled over something and broken his neck. They smiled, and wont on. Then they came to the worst piece of all; the most terrible road in the whole world; and in the night one of the two remaining novelists vanished. Assuredly lie had gone over the precipice, too; he was no m° re * The third novelist went on with as light a heart as the perils and sufferings of that pass would allow. But the first who vanished was not killed; he simply thought he would go home. On the way back he bought aJJ the Klondike literature that h® -Cjpp find; he drew rough sketches; he Inpv pictures of houses, of mountains, of gold-

washing; he took the train to New York; he wrote all day long all the way across the Atlantic ; he went up to London. Six weeks later the great Klondike novel came out. It had an enormous boom. A quarter of a million copies went off in the first month. All previous boomers lay down and died with envy. Then the second traveller arrived. He, too, had not perished, but he had made up his mind ti go no further. Imagine his joy when he reached Liverpool to be offered the last edition—they came out ; six a week —of the great Klondike novel 1 No; his own was refused everywhere. There could not be two booms about the same place. Lastly, there earne, three months later, the man who had done it. I believe they allowed him to produce a “ Journey to Klondike, life at Klondike, want at Klondike, and the rest of it. The moral of this is, of course, that if you are a novelist you don’t want to go to Klondike. At the same time I wish I was younger, because I should very much like to go.