The Call of the Wild and White Fang - Jack London [150]
2 . (p. 5) Northland: George Washington Carmack discovered gold in the Klondike in 1896. News of his Bonanza River strike reached the United States in 1897. Approximately 250,000 gold miners left for the Northland during the two big years of the Gold Rush that followed. London left for the Klondike on July 25, 1897, saying about his adventure “I had let career go hang, and was on the adventure path again in quest of fortune.”
3 . (p. 5) Buck: London based many of his canine characters on dogs he met in the Klondike. Buck, for instance, is modeled after Jack, a St. Bernard-collie mix who came from California to the Klondike with a miner named Lois Bond. Other dogs, like Curly and Koona, are based on animals London read about in Egerton Young’s My Dogs in the Northland.
4 . (p. 7) Chinese lottery: The reference is to a popular but illegal game of chance (now called keno) that Chinese immigrants brought to the United States.
5 . (p. 13) Narwhal: This small, white-gray whale inhabits the waters of the eastern Arctic Ocean and is known for its “tusk,” a singular tooth that is three to seven feet long and projects from its blunt nose. Native peoples often use the meat of the whale to feed sled dogs.
6 . (p. 13) half-breed: This term broadly connotes a person born of parents of different races. In the United States, it is often applied to children of whites or blacks and Native Americans.
Chapter II
1 . (p. 15) Dyea beach: This beach was the arrival point for Klondikers (gold miners) coming from the south and the departure point for those returning south from the gold fields. Dyea had no wharves or harbor, and its thirty-foot tide often left boats stranded on the shore.
2 . (p. 20) Canon ... Sheep Camp ... Scales ... Chilcoot Divide: These are places along the Dyea trail, one of the two most popular routes to Dawson. The other was the Skaguay trail. The trails met at Lake Bennett.
Chapter III
1 . (p. 23) Lake Le Barge: On modern maps, the name of this lake is given as Lake Laberge.
2 . (p. 27) Hootalinqua: This river is also known as the Teslin River.
3 . (p. 27) Five Fingers: These dangerous rapids on the Upper Yukon River posed a great hazard to miners traveling downstream to Dawson City. The rapids were formed by five giant rocks that thrust up out of the water and divided the river into six smaller channels.
4 . (p. 29) Dawson: Dawson City, the principal departure point for the gold mines to the far north and west, was located at the point where the Klondike River empties into the Yukon River. The “city” arose out of the wilderness just a few days after prospectors found gold in the Klondike region. Dawson quickly grew into a town of considerable size, with graded streets, water service, and businesses of all kinds.
5 . (p. 30) aurora borealis: A vibrant, luminous array of electrical discharges that lights up the northern skies, the aurora borealis displays take the form of dancing patches and columns of light, in rapidly changing forms and colors (green, red, yellow, blue, and violet).
6 . (p. 30) Barracks: The reference is to the headquarters of the Northwest Mounted Police. As people rushed into the Klondike and Yukon regions, the Canadian government maintained fifty-five mounted police stations in the Yukon territory, each staffed by at least three men. In addition, the Mounties had garrisons at Dawson City and White Horse.
Chapter IV
1 . (p. 39) Skaguay: Buck and the mail sled return south via the Skaguay trail. The town of Skaguay (now called Skagway) provided better access for docking boats and soon replaced Dyea as the main departure point for gold seekers.
2 . (p. 42) Cassiar Bar: The reference is to a location between the junction of the Thirty-Mile section of the Yukon River and the Hootalinqua (Teslin) and Big Salmon rivers.