The Trail Of '98 Poem by Lone Dog

Gold was the cry from the Yukon!
More wealth than a person could dream!
Gold on the benches and hillsides!
Gold in the creeks and the streams!

`Tis the lure of a poke full of nuggets
That can grip you and hold like a spell.
And you'd search the whole earth `til you got it,
Though the pathway might lead you through Hell.

So the clarion call from the Klondike
Roused hordes to the cause in a craze.
Hordes tired of the streets and the gutters
And clawing and scraping like slaves.

Forsaking their wives and their children
In the struggle to fill empty plates,
They raced for the docks and the steamers
And the fortunes they hoped would await.

Unprepared for the challenge before them,
But obsessed with the sickness called 'lust',
They threaded their way through the Passage,
Dog-drunk with their thirst for the dust.

They flooded the beaches of Skagway,
Feeding violence and lawlessness there,
Then tackled the White or the Chilkoot
Where many turned back in despair.

Battling blizzards and snow slides and sickness,
Their strength and their stamina gone,
The vision of huge golden nuggets
Was the magnet that lured the men on.

The dogged who conquered these Passes
Were men of the highest degree,
For the hardships their bodies endured there
Made them all that they ever could be.

Down to the lakes they stampeded,
Still gripped by the sickness called 'lust'.
From the forests they hewed a flotilla,
Hoisting sheets to the wind's eager thrust.

For that clarion call from the Klondike
Drew louder and clearer each day.
And they smelled the rich muck of the creek beds
Some five hundred miles away.

Spinning like corks in a whirlpool,
Battered and bashed by the waves,
They conquered the turbulent canyon,
Defying its watery graves.

On through the rage of Five Fingers,
On down the Yukon's swift flow,
Till `round a wide bend in the river,
Lay their El Dorado a-glow.