When Jack London, aged 21, arrived at Dyea Inlet in August of 1897, six steep miles of the Chilkoot Pass stood between him and the trail to the goldfields of the Yukon. The beaches were thick with stampeders, prospectors, would-be prospectors, and the piles of gear that were going to get them to Dawson City and make them rich once they got there. But most of them were not moving, for the very good reason that they could not get over the pass. To prevent mass suicide by greed, the Northwest Mounted Police required that each man who entered the territory carry a thousand pounds of food and five hundred dollars in cash. Beyond the pass, it was another twenty-one miles to Lake Linderman, where the long river voyage to the Yukon began. The August sun was powerful, the switchback trail up Chilkoot was littered with dead and exhausted horses, and the Tlingit porters had raised their rates to fifty cents a pound. London’s brother-in-law, an unprepossessing Oakland grocer of about sixty, calculated that it would cost them their entire grubstake to get to the lake and a boat. He regarded the milling crowds on the beach and his own prospects and decided to go home.