Miss Flora Shaw, who recently visited the Klondike region, read
a paper embodying her experiences before the Colonial Institute on Tuesday. Disclaiming all credit for her achievement, Miss Shaw nevertheless admitted that she travelled quite alone and on foot fifteen or twenty miles a day over trails which, but for the passing prospector, were the exclusive haunts of wild animals and birds ; that the food was primitive—she "learned to eat beans, when need arose, like a horse, quite contentedly three times a day "—and that while crossing the White Pass she had joined a dinner party con- sisting of four murderers (Indians), a man they had tried to murder, and two policemen. The most valuable part of her paper was that which discussed the question whether women whom men respected could be brought into the Yukon. "Nowhere does one see so plainly as in districts of new settle- ment the need of woman as a home-maker The rougher the man the more imperative the need." Miss Shaw evidently thinks that they can, and that their advent will promote thrift as well as comfort. The honesty of the country was illustrated by the entire absence of gold robbery. As regards the future of the Klondike, Miss Shaw professed herself a converted sceptic. The best-informed mining engineer whom she was able to consult gave fifty years as his estimate for working out the alluvial gold already in sight; and it was scarcely conceivable that in such a period the quartz veins which every one was seeking would not be found, and further developments opened up.
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