It was gold that had been Alaska's doom. When people
thought of it, they visioned nothing beyond the old stampede days, the
Chilkoot, White Horse, Dawson, and Circle City. Romance and glamor and
the tragedies of dead men clung to their ribs. But they were beginning
to believe now. Their eyes were opening. Even the Government was waking
up, after proving there was something besides graft in railroad building
north of Mount St. Elias. Senators and Congressmen at Washington had
listened to him seriously, and especially to Carl Lomen. And the beef
barons, wisest of all, had tried to buy him off and had offered a
fortune for Lomen's forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward
Peninsula! That was proof of the awakening. Absolute proof.
He lighted a fresh cigar, and his mind shot through the dissolving mist
into the vast land ahead of him. Some Alaskans had cursed Theodore
Roosevelt for putting what they called "the conservation shackles" on
their country. But he, for one, did not. Roosevelt's far-sightedness had
kept the body-snatchers at bay, and because he had foreseen what
money-power and greed would do, Alaska was not entirely stripped today,
but lay ready to serve with all her mighty resources the mother who had
neglected her for a generation. But it was going to be a struggle, this
opening up of a great land.
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