James Oliver Curwood

The Valley of Silent Men Annotated James Oliver Curwood

Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the great white North. It is still Iskwatam - the "door" which opens to the lower reaches of the Athabasca, the Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is somewhat difficult to find on the map, yet it is there, because its history is written in more than a hundred and forty years of romance and tragedy and adventure in the lives of men, and is not easily forgotten. Over the recent path it absolutely was a few hundred and fifty miles north of Edmonton. The railroad has brought it nearer to it base of civilization, however on the far side it the geographical region still howls because it has howled for cardinal years, and therefore the waters of a continent flow north and into the Arctic Ocean. it's potential that the gorgeous dream of the real-estate dealers could come back true, for the foremost avid of all the sportsmen of the earth, the money-hunters, have come au fait the jarring railroad that typically lights its sleeping cars with lanterns. "Do others as they would do you." And with it, too, has come the legitimate business of barter and trade, with eyes on all that treasure of the North which lies between the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca and the edge of the polar sea.