They could gamble everything since they had nothing to lose, and their brains were addled by the hope of making a rich strike. Besides, while they were not in a position to work on their own, they could hire themselves out to the owners of claims that often shut down for lack of workers. Wages were probably extremely high, as much as fifteen dollars a day. But that was because the cost of living was exorbitant in the Klondike and the most essential items cost twenty times as much as they did elsewhere. There was really no way of getting rich except by a stroke of luck.

But the transcontinental train was speeding on, full steam ahead. Summy Skim and Ben Raddle had no reason to complain about lack of comfort on their long journey. They had a drawing room at their disposal during the day and a bedroom at night, a smoking room where they could smoke to their hearts' content just as they could in the best restaurants in Montreal, a dining car where the quality of the food and service left nothing to be desired, and a bathing car where they could take a bath en route. But Skim still longed for his cottage at Green Valley.

In four hours the train reached Ottawa, the country's capital,' which overlooks the surrounding countryside from the top of a hill. It is a splendid city and lumbering center, which claims, with more or less justification, to be the center of the world. Farther on, near Carlton Place,' one might have caught sight of Toronto, its rival and one-time Dominion capital. (It seems as if a number of Canadian cities took turns at being the capital.)

Now running due west, the train reached Sudbury, an area made rich by nickel mining. Here, where the track forks, they took the northern line along Lake Superior, to Port Arthur, near Fort William. At Heron Bay, Schreiber, and all the other stations on the huge lake, the train stopped long enough for the two cousins to note their importance as lake ports. Then they went on past Bonheur, Ignace, Eagle River, Rat Portage, through a region holding a fortune in mineral deposits, and arrived at the large city of Winnipeg.

The few hours they stopped there seemed all too short to Skim, who wanted to retain a few memories of the trip. He would gladly have spent a day or two visiting that city of forty thousand souls and the fine neighboring farms of western Canada. But railway timetables are inflexible, and the passengers boarded the train again. Most of them were not traveling for the sake of traveling but in order to get to their destination by the shortest and fastest route. The train that served the many little towns in that region, such as Portage la Prairie, Brandon, Elkhorn, and Broadview, was indifferent to the fact that the land was intensively cultivated or that it contained vast hunting grounds that were home to thousands of buffalo.' Summy Skim would rather have spent six months there than six weeks in the Klondike.

"Oh well," Raddle kept telling him, "if there are no buffalo near Dawson City, you'll make up for it with moose."

The train passed Regina, stopped for a few hours in Calgary, then headed for the Crowsnest Pass through the Rocky Mountains, crossing the border into the coal-rich province of British Columbia, where other animals were seen.

From Calgary another route branched off, and some of the immigrants had chosen that route to reach the Klondike. It was the one Summy Skim would have preferred since it was a route for hunters. It cuts across the Cassiar district, famous as a hunting area; passes through Edmonton and Fort St. John; crosses the Peace, Dease, Francis, and Pelly rivers; and connects northeastern British Columbia with the Yukon. But it is long and difficult, and the traveler must replenish his supplies frequently over a distance of more than 1200 miles. True, the region is very rich in gold, which can be panned in almost all its streams, but it lacks resources and will not be viable until the Canadian government sets up relay posts every forty or fifty miles.

On their way through the Rockies, the travelers caught a glimpse of Mount Stephen and Cathedral Peak as the railway turned on its upward way. Especially magnificent were the immense Selkirk Mountains, with their eternal caps of snow and glaciers as far as the eye could see. In the midst of this solitude reigned the "silence of all life," disturbed only by the puffing of the locomotive.

Before leaving Montreal, Skim had bought the Short, a guidebook published by the Canadian Pacific Railway. While he could not visit all the famous spots mentioned in the book, at least he read the descriptions. He also relied on the guidebook's editor in choosing hotels at the various stations where the train stopped. Some, like Skyte House at Field and Glacier House with its magnificent view over the Selkirks, were truly luxurious and exceptionally comfortable, and their excellent cuisine provided a welcome change from the dining car's regular fare.

As the train traveled west, new regions opened up before it. These were not the rich, fertile lands where man's labor is rewarded by fine harvests from soil that has not yet been exhausted. No! These were the Kootenay region and the gold fields of the Cariboo, where gold was found and is still being found in abundance, as a whole network of streams wash down flecks of the precious metal.