the war did the work of a can-opener on many national and individual reputations, and discovered that their accepted labels were misleading. the estimates we had formed of certain nations have materially changed because of the part they took, didn't take, or were slow about taking in this world-crisis. we saw the effect more clearly on individuals. the standing a man had in his community might be taken at its face value in the battalion for a few weeks, but he was soon re-examined, and if necessary, the label changed to be true to contents. this was especially evident overseas when we were away from home and its influences. there is a camouflage possible in civilian life where a man's real self is not known much outside his own home. this camouflage was usually torn aside in the army. we were thrown into such continuous intimate relations with one another in the huts and outside them that there was little chance for any man to travel under false pretences. it wasn't many days before you were sized up physically, mentally, and morally. the o.c., adjutant, and senior officers were the only ones in a battalion having more privacy and protected by military etiquette who, if they wished, might wear a mask for a time, but not for long. the whole battalion somehow soon got to know pretty much all about them, or thought it knew, and labelled them accordingly.

some men with fair reputations in their home town in canada were found in rare instances to be cads in camp and curs in the line. but to the honor of those of the old british stock, our own canadian men in particular, the great fear in the hearts of multitudes of them was that they might not be able to do or be all that the highest traditions of race or family expected of them. they came from the comfort of peaceful homes where war had meant only an old, foolish, long-abandoned way of settling international disputes. at the call of brotherhood, they left those quiet homes and came in their hundreds of thousands to the old lands across the sea. there, in training, they were surrounded with strange conditions of life, and when later they went into the line were faced with tasks of incredible difficulty and harshness. throughout the long years of war they were rarely disconcerted and never dismayed. most of them were just good, ordinary, canadian boys, practically untested until now, but in tribulation developing qualities that made them men "whom the king delighted to honor." labelled, if you like, "plum-and-apple," when opened up they proved to be genuine "strawberry." faithful comrades, brave soldiers, they played the new game so nobly and well during those weary, homesick, war-cursed years that they won for canada a name unsurpassed in honor among the nations.

it was not so much the grand moment of an attack that revealed character but the strain and monotony of the common round of a soldier's life. it was the pack, the trenches, the mud, the dug-out, and the hut, that showed you up for what you really were. when you got a fruitcake from home did you "hog it" all yourself or share it with your chums in generous chunks? did you squeeze in near the stove on a cold day no matter who else was shoved away? did you barely do your routine duty or go further and lend a helping hand? these were the sort of tests in common-place forms that made it impossible to hide your own true self from the other fellows. if you asked me for instances i could fill a page with names from my own acquaintance of young chaps previously untried who proved themselves "gentlemen unafraid."

it was a severe test for the young men, but peculiarly hard for those in our volunteer army who were middle-aged. with habits formed and living a settled life at home, they abandoned it cheerfully, and unflinchingly set about accommodating themselves in the most unselfish spirit to necessary campaign conditions, which must have been to them almost intolerable.

in this condition i have in mind captain turner, medical officer to the 43rd battalion for six months. he was a man near fifty years of age, with wife and family left behind at home in a western ontario town. "doc" turner joined us at nine elms, where we were resting in the mud after our attack on bellevue spur. he came direct from the base and had never seen any front line work. it was customary for the m.o. and the padre to live together and work together in and out of the line, so he shared a tent with me. a few days after his arrival we moved into the line for the second time on the passchendaele front. it was on the evening before this move that he did me a service that i shall never forget. he "saved my face" in the battalion. this is how it came about. that afternoon i sat in my chilly tent writing some of the many letters which i had to write to folks at home, telling about their heroic dead. captain turner had gone over to poperinghe. i sat too long at my work and got chilled through. after supper i was feeling wretched and went to bed hoping that a few hours warmth and rest would cure me. i got worse, and about 10 o'clock to cap the climax, when i was feeling very miserable, a runner came from the orderly room with the news that we were to pull out for the line next morning, breakfast at five and move at six. then the horrible thought came to me that perhaps i wouldn't be able to go with the battalion. if i weren't a great deal better by morning i would have to stay behind in a c.c.s. at remy. what then would everybody think? it looked queer that i should be going around quite well that day and then, when the order comes to go back into the line, i take suddenly ill. i knew my own boys would say nothing, but perhaps in the back of their minds they would wonder if their padre was really scared. but no matter how charitable the camerons were it would look to outsiders deplorably like a genuine case of malingering. my one and only hope seemed to lie in the magic of doc's medicines. "as i mused the fire burned." he had not returned and the medical tent was a hundred yards away in the mud. how anxiously i listened for his footsteps but it was one o'clock before i heard the welcome sound. he was very tired with the six-mile walk and busy day and after i told what the orders were i hadn't the heart at first to let him know how sick and worried i was. he had taken off one boot before in desperation i poured out my tale of woe. good old doc! he cheerfully pulled on his wet boot again and went out into the night and rain and through the mud, roused sergt. sims and hunted around till he got the stuff he wanted. he was soon back and made me swallow fifteen grains of aspirin. i would have swallowed an earthquake if he had promised it would cure me. then he piled his greatcoat and one of his own blankets on me. enough to say i was clear of the fever in the morning and devoutly thankful that, although a little shaky, i was able to form up with the rest at six o'clock.

doc played the game just like that all through his first spell in the line. often i wondered at the matter-of-fact way he carried on like "an old hand" under conditions which were bad enough in all conscience to everyone, but must have been doubly so to him. but if the real stuff is in a man it will show up "under fire" some day, and captain turner is only typical of thousands of uncertain-looking "prospects" that assayed almost pure gold in the crucible of war. when our turn was over and the welcome news came to move back to divisional rest, doc and i travelled out together with two or three of the boys. we had about five miles to go and the hun artillery seemed to be chasing us with his shells. they dropped just behind us with uncanny precision for a mile or two blowing up the slat duck-walks we had come over. i was in the lead and because of "the general scarcity of good men" i was hitting a fast pace. at last i heard him call out, "hold on, padre, i can't keep this pace any longer. they can blow me to kingdom-come if they like but i'm going to slow up whatever happens." strange, too, that slowing up saved our lives, for a few minutes after we were stopped by a salvo of shells ahead of us bursting where we would have been if doc hadn't put on the brakes.

the battalion moved far back to the sleepy little farming village of westerhem where one day captain ross, of the y.m.c.a. sent a request to come over and give a klondike talk to the men in a neighbouring town. that evening they filled the big marquee and stayed for over an hour while i told them how cheechaco hill got its name. it is a story with a moral and has a logical connection with my prologue. what that is i think you will have little difficulty in discovering if you read the story.

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the creek names of the klondike are filled with the romance of the early days. they tell in large something of the story of the pioneer. the names all have color. they speak of incident and adventure, of hopefulness and disappointment, of loneliness and homesickness. there's dominion creek and fourth of july creek. you hardly need be told that a canadian "discovered" one and a yankee the other. "whisky hill," "squabblers' bench," "paradise hill" has each a story of its own and the names hint at it. mastodon gulch with its remains of bone and ivory found in the ever-frozen gravels takes us back to the giant tuskers of those prehistoric ages before the northland was gripped by the frost. bear creek suggests an adventure resulting perhaps in a juicy bear-steak or a hurried scramble up a tree. all gold creek, too much gold, and gold bottom have the optimism of their discoverers boldly disclosed. of these three only the last paid to work. i asked bob henderson, from pictou county, nova scotia, the discoverer of the klondike gold-fields, why he chose the name "gold bottom." "on the principle," he said, "that it's wise to give a youngster a good name to inspire him to live up to it. i had a day-dream, you know, that when i got my shaft down to bed-rock it might be like the streets of the new jerusalem. we old-timers all had these dreams. it kept us going on and on, wandering, and digging on these lonely creeks for years." last chance creek has a story of its own and sometime i may tell you what i know of it. it entered hunker creek about fifteen miles back of dawson. in the rush days a roadhouse was put up there and named after the creek. later it was assumed that the creek was named after the roadhouse and that the roadhouse got its name because it was the last chance to get a drink outward bound on that trail!

but i must get to my story of cheechaco hill. there are two words in common use in the yukon, one is sourdough and the other cheechaco. a sourdough is an old-timer, cheechaco is a chinook word meaning greenhorn, tenderfoot, or new-comer. in every old prospector's cabin on a shelf behind the stove-pipe you would see a bowl which contained sour dough from the previous baking. this was used as yeast to be mixed in with the dough at the next baking. when he used any he would always replace it with the same quantity of fresh dough sure to be soured before he made bread again. the cheechaco had to learn how to bake and usually would borrow some of this yeast-dough from some old-timer down the trail until he had his own sour-dough and so earned his graduate title. now for my story.

in the winter following the discovery of the klondike diggings, two australians were sitting in their cabin on bonanza creek at no. 5 below discovery, having a smoke after a hard day's grind down the drift and on the windlass. one of them was telling with great relish of a practical joke he had played that day on two cheechacos. the winter trail in the creek valley ran close on their shaft. that afternoon two men, evidently partners, hauling their outfit and sleigh had stopped for a rest and one of them had climbed up the dump to the windlass and, after a word or two of greeting, commenced to tell their difficulties. they wanted to find some place to put in their stakes, "open" ground that they could "claim" for their own on which to prospect. they had come seven miles up the creek and there seemed to be nothing open. they asked the australian if he could tell them where they could stake. this question revealed them as the most verdant of cheechacos, for if you knew of any unstaked ground likely to have paydirt in it you weren't going to give your information to a stranger. you or your partner would slip away quietly after dark. you would carefully endeavour to conceal your movements until you had the ground securely staked and recorded. even then any information you might have would only be given to other friends. so of course he told the strangers he could not help them.

the cheechaco then asked him if it would be any use staking on the mountain side, overlooking the creek. this was too much for the old-timer for everyone with any sense knows that alluvial gold can't climb a hill. it was a natural law that the heaviest substances always seek the lowest levels. gold was no exception to this rule. you find it in bed-rock in the valleys where it has burrowed its way down whenever a run of water has loosened things up and given it a chance. so the australian couldn't resist the temptation to agree that there was lots of room on the mountain-side, plenty of trees, they'd be above the frost-fog and "nearer heaven" than in the creeks. they took the thing seriously, asked a few more questions about correct methods of staking and recording and then went on their way. it was a right good joke and such green specimens were certainly proper game; somebody would put them wise up at the forks anyway, and the two had a hearty laugh over the incident.

a day or two afterwards they saw a small tent and the smoke of a fire on the hill opposite, sure enough the cheechacos had "bit." they had staked two claims, a "bench" and a "hillside" adjoining, and were cutting wood and hauling moss for a cabin. the news spread along bonanza until all the creek knew about it and laughed. the two men didn't sense anything wrong and looked upon the australians as their friends. they often came down to the cabin to get advice about building their cabin, how to fit the corners, what size to make it, where to get the moss for the roof and chinking between the logs in the walls. they needed pointers about cooking and a supply of sourdough for their first batch of bread. apart from their ignorance of frontier ways, they were right good fellows. one came from england, the other, nels peterson, from sweden. they had fallen in with one another in seattle when they happened to be outfitting in the same store, there they had spoken to one another, got acquainted, and agreed to go north as partners. one was a professional swedish music-hall comedian and the other a london "cabby" with a witty tongue and a kind heart. such were the strange partnerships of the klondike.

in a few weeks the cabin was completed, seven feet by eight. the next step was to sink a shaft. by this time the old-timers were regretting their part in the affair. they decided not to say anything until after the cabin was finished, because these strangers would have to build a cabin somewhere in which to live. now they hesitated to confess the trick they had played on their new found friends. they concluded that the best way out for all concerned was to let them learn necessary lessons in cabin building and sinking a shaft, and then tell them, when they had gone down a few feet and found no gold, that probably they had better go and try again on some outlying creek like eureka or black hills. that looked the easiest way out of a situation which had become unexpectedly embarrassing. the best they could do now was to say nothing and give every assistance in hurrying the farce to its finish. after the cabin was completed the snow was shovelled away from a ten-foot patch where a landslide had made it comparatively level. there a fire was lit to thaw the ground, for it never thaws in the klondike except by artificial means. when this had been burnt out they dug down three or four feet to frost, cleared out the hole, and put down another fire. so by successive "fires" they slowly worked their way down. at ten feet they had to stop digging operations to make a hand-windlass, an "armstrong hoist" we called it, and a wooden bucket. the fires for thawing were still needed. now one man worked down the shaft and the other on the windlass hoisting the filled bucket and lowering the empty one. they thawed and dug this way through four feet of moss, then twelve feet of black "muck" before they struck gravel. they had been told not to bother about "panning" in muck. there was never gold in muck anyway. when they got into gravel a pan of it was taken into the cabin and washed out. there were no results.

keenly disappointed they went down to their two friends that night and told them of their bad luck in not getting gold when they got into gravel. they were interrupted by excited exclamations and questions. surely it couldn't be really gravel, they must be mistaken for no gravel could get up there. if it were true gravel it meant the upsetting of all current placer mining theories, and the prospect of unlimited possibilities of new gold deposits on hillsides and benches. such news would set the whole klondike on the stampede again. but of course there must be a mistake. it was broken up slide-rock and not gravel. next morning they would come up and have a look. so they did and there was no doubt about the gravel. the cheechacos were advised to go on "sinking" and on no account to "talk" at store or roadhouse. after every thaw the australians went up to see how things looked. one day "colors" were found in the pan, and after that the four worked together unceasingly in rushing the digging as fast as the need of thawing would permit. the light flakes of yellow gold continued but it wasn't "pay" yet.

one memorable evening, after an all-day spell of work without panning, the four men gathered in the little cabin around the panning tub in the corner to test dirt taken out eight feet lower than the last sample. they were all bending over eagerly, watching in the dim candle light one of the sourdoughs, an expert, who was squatted beside the tub with the pan in his hands under water. holding it aslant, he twisted it back and forth with a sort of circular motion until the top dirt was gradually washed off and the gravelly stones left. these he scraped off with his hands and then repeated the whole process. slowly the pan was emptying. if there was any gold it would be slipping down to the bottom of the pan at the lower edge of it. the candle was held closer and breathlessly the four men watched as the last few inches of the pan bottom cleared of dirt. there was only an inch of black sand and gravel now. the miner swirled the pan in the water again, then brought it up and near the candle, ran his finger through the margin of dirt still remaining and as he did so he left uncovered a shining track of yellow gold! there was a moment's silence, a hurried, deft swirl in the water and the pan was carried over to the table. there with bent heads they gazed with tense emotion first at the slender thread of gold and then at one another. not much in itself, but it meant—well, who could tell what amazing new finds it might mean? perhaps richer than anything yet known! soon they were talking in earnest excited tones. the impossible had come true and they had found, on that hill side, a "prospect" which, if the pay dirt continued for any distance or depth, would bring untold wealth to them. it was a great night in that klondike cabin. the sourdoughs confessed without reservation their attempt to play off a joke and how they had long been ashamed of it. the cheechacos laughed it off in good-will that was heightened by the happy outcome of it all. the australians were to stake claims beside them that night and then to rouse their friends who were near and have them stake on half interests. the hillside was to be called on the records "cheechaco hill" in memory of its discoverers.

by the next day the news had leaked out, the camp went crazy, and in a week every piece of ground right over the klondike summits from creek to creek had been staked off in claims, no matter how absurdly unlikely the locality was, although in the scramble many very rich hillsides were found.

some punster said that the only "benches" in the klondike that weren't staked were those of my log-church at gold bottom! and it was practically true. i remember once when going down indian river noticing a tree with its trunk "blazed," and on the blaze these words were written: "i, ole nelson, claim 25 ft. straight up in the air for climbing purposes!" he had been chased up that tree by a bear and had put the event on record in this way, and indeed about the only direction by that time that was open for staking was "up in the air."

there was, however, much reason for this indiscriminate staking. it seemed as if gold was likely to be found anywhere now that it climbed up the hillsides. but in a year or two the mining operations showed how the gold got there. ages ago there had been an upheaval of some kind that had changed the course of the streams and had made valleys hills, and hills valleys. these deposits were in what had formerly been river or creek bottoms. the hill-side seemed an unlikely place but the gold was there, and the digging disclosed it buried deep where god had placed it, not haphazard, but according to one of the laws of nature.