He landed at last on Denali's crest
  And he gazed on his acres wide—
Barren and bleak, from each mountain peak
  And swamp to the Arctic's tide.
The Devil grinned as he stood and gazed
  Said he, "This is just what I need,
It's the place of my plan, for the downfall of man
  Where I'll change his ambition to greed."

Then he summoned the legions of hell to his side
  Named an arch imp to straw boss each crew.
Tho they gibbered and cursed, each one did the worst
  With the jobs Satan gave them to do.
They tumbled the mountains high up, and on end,
  Piled glaciers where streams ought to be,
And swamp land was placed in the desolate waste
  That stretched from the hills to the sea.

They shook down all hell for a climate to fit,
  But they couldn't get suited in hell,
So they took the worst parts and with devilish arts
  They built one that suited them well.
They laid out muck swamps where the water lies dead
  Bred mosquitoes and moose flies and gnats
Put the brown bear that kills on the barren brown hills
  And with quill pigs infested the flats.

They shut off the sun for full half of the year,
  Made each glacier a blizzard blown trap,
They strung out volcanoes half way to Japan
  Each one with a hair trigger cap.
They planned for the coast line a system of storms
  Each equipped with a ninety mile breath
And then spread o'er it all the fog that men call
  The North Coast mantle of death.

Then knowing full well that man would not go
  To a Land so forlorn to behold,
He salted the hillsides and some of the streams
  With nuggets and traces of gold.
He tinted the hills with a green copper ledge
  And covered the valleys with game,
All this for a lure, then the Devil felt sure
  That the white man would fall for the same.

THE LAND

The lure of the little known places
  Still calls, as it called to your sires;
The longing for wide open spaces,
  The perfume of evening camp fires;
The hunting for treasure unfound yet
  The knocking at fortune's own gate;
The doing of deeds for the joy that it breeds
  Were all used by the Devil as bait.

The summers besprinkled with sunshine,
  The hillsides a riot of bloom
With meadows a color shot grandeur
  And valleys as still as a tomb.
With mountains of cloud-encased beauty
  Or with stars shining down on it all
It's the trails we don't know that call us to go
  And no wonder man heeded the call.

The winters, the trails all unbroken,
  The far fields that beckon and call;
The song of the frost on the runners
  And the Northern Lights high over all;
The trees in the bend of the river,
  The streams that nobody has spanned;
The whisper of gold, the story half told,
  All this by the Devil was planned.

When the trap of the Devil was ready
  Widespread went the whisper of gold,
And the white men stampeded like cattle,
  There never was tie that could hold.
The first mad rush to the Northland
  When the scum from the four ends of earth
Came in with a rush, a scramble, a crush
  Like scrap in a fusing pot hurled.

They came all untaught and not ready,
  Spurred on in the mad rush for gold;
They died here unsung and uncared for
  Of famine, and scurvy and cold.
They had the same laws as the wolf pack,
  Stay up, for you die if you fail,
And the paths to the Northern placers
  Are marked by their graves on the trail.

The towns that they started were plague spots
  With brothels and dance halls aglare,
With cribs, faro banks and roulette wheels
  And phonographs adding their blare.
All traps for the young and unwary,
  All builded to help with his fall,
Never dealer was fair, never game on the square
  For the Devil presided o'er all.

Nick fiendishly grinned when he saw his work
  And he chuckled with devilish glee—
"When it comes to making an up-to-date hell
  They've sure got to hand it to me.
For every ten souls that come in to this land
  There's nine of them headed for hell
With never a fight, the percentage is right,
  And my prep school is doing quite well."

Thus for a time he ruled this land
  Where few might venture forth,
For never a man-made law held good
  From Dixon's Entrance north.
He held this land in his claw tipped grip,
  And he took his pay in souls,
Theirs was the blame, for they played his game,
  And they paid for it on hell's coals.

But the Devil lost when the law came in,
  Or the men who made the laws,
The gambling hall and the dance hall went
  And the Devil was forced to pause.
For the life in the land develops men,
  Men of an alien breed,
A new made lot, that couldn't be bought,
  And strangers to graft or greed.

They loosed the land from the Devil's grip,
  They pierced the hills with their trails,
They flagged the rocks at the harbor's mouth,
  They paved the way for the rails.
They builded a school where the dance hall stood
  And they brought in their children and wives;
They gave their all to the new land's call
  And some of them gave their lives.

Now the pimp and the brothel have passed away
  And the gambling hall is a dream;
A railroad train now follows the trail
  Where we followed a nine-dog team.
A thousand stamps now sing their song
  Where we panned on the gold shot ledge,
And a picture show now marks the line
  That once was the frontier's edge.

The milch cows graze where the brown bear roamed
  And a saw mill sings its lay
On a bar in the Yukon River
  Where we panned one summer day.
They are raising wheat where the bull moose grazed
  In the summers of long ago,
It seems kind of strange when we note the change,
  But we'd rather have it so.

Yet, sometimes we dream as we camp at night
  In the bend of the river's flow
Of the land that was, of the land we knew
  In the days of the long ago.
The wild free land that bred the men
  Who fought with might and main
And took this land from the Devil's hand,
  And we'd like to see it again,

This Land is the orphan kiddie
  Of the group with their stars in the Flag,
And it's looked on Outside as an alien,
  Where its treatment makes honest men gag.
It's treated the same as the harlot
  Who barters her body for pelf
And carries it home to her master
  And is told to look after herself.

Of course we're an orphan, adopted
  When cast off by the great Russian Bear
And our lot's been the lot of an orphan
  And we've had a "stage orphan's" care.
Our coal land was grabbed by our Uncle,
  Our copper and fur by the Jews,
While another gang took all our salmon
  And corrupted our natives with booze.

Sam gave us an Army Commission
  And told it to build us a Trail,
But all