KLONDIKE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 432, 3 October 1947, Page 17

KLONDIKE

THE GOLDEN GRINDSTONE. By Angus Graham. Digest Publications, Melbourne. HIS is the story of a failure, a failure more satisfying than many men’s successes. George M, Mitchell,:a Canadian business man, dropped everything to join the gold rush to the Klondike in 1896; he chose the long northern route down the Mackenzie River and back up a tributary to a suitable pass. In this tributary, the Peel, he broke his kneecap and spent a winter with a tribe of largely friendly Indians (some of them made strenuous attempts to murder him), who healed his leg and fed him when nearly starving themselves, and rather to his own surprise, he lived to tell the tale, The tale is a good one, though it is difficult to see what are the relations of Mitchell and the narrator. So much of the story is in inverted commas "in Mitchell’s own words," ‘one begins to wonder why he did not tell it all himself, especially as his own words are never allowed to rise above such mild oaths as "the God-damndest curious thing," coyly proffered as a sort of certificate of authenticity. The fault of the book is its frequent protestation of reliability: apparently the narrator expects to be disbelieved things which are the commonplaces of anthropology. By the way, what a shame it is that the anthropologist is so often so late on the scene: what a lot a trained observer would have drawn from such a _ blood-brother-hood as Mitcheli’s with this unspoiled tribe. ae But Mitchell, evidently a man of strong character, tells us much. He reproduces the virile, shameless world of the North, where the weak perished and the strong had difficulty in surviving by copy-book rules, with colour and zest. The dangers of travel in that country of hard winters and’ navigable rivers which every so often become impassable rapids were added to by tough and unscrupulous fellow travellers. The miners and the Indians are described magnificently with a "sourbelly" garrulity whose period flavour is part of the charm of the book; a whole alien way of life takes shape in these hearty

pages.

David

Hall