But the mountain received only passing notice. Daylight's
interest was centered in the big flat itself, with deep water all
along its edge for steamboat landings.
"A sure enough likely town site," he muttered. "Room for a camp
of forty thousand men. All that's needed is the gold-strike."
He meditated for a space. "Ten dollars to the pan'll do it, and
it'd be the all-firedest stampede Alaska ever seen. And if it
don't come here, it'll come somewhere hereabouts. It's a sure
good idea to keep an eye out for town sites all the way up."
He stood a while longer, gazing out over the lonely flat and
visioning with constructive imagination the scene if the stampede
did come. In fancy, he placed the sawmills, the big trading
stores, the saloons, and dance-halls, and the long streets of
miners' cabins. And along those streets he saw thousands of men
passing up and down, while before the stores were the heavy
freighting-sleds, with long strings of dogs attached. Also he
saw the heavy freighters pulling down the main street and heading
up the frozen Klondike toward the imagined somewhere where the
diggings must be located.
He laughed and shook the vision from his eyes, descended to the
level, and crossed the flat to camp.
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