Jack London found a different kind of gold in the Klondike. Leaving frustrated poverty behind in Oakland, California, he sailed north with a partner in 1897 to look for the traditional kind. At Port Townsend, Washington, they changed ships and sailed on to Juneau, Alaska. In Juneau, stories about the incredibly difficult and dangerous path from Skagway to the Klondike, scared his partner into giving up and heading home.
Another writer who brought gold home from the Klondike
Alone, London survived the incredible climb up Chilkoot Pass to the Canadian border. He navigated the raging Whitehorse Rapids. He negotiated the Yukon River to Dawson City. And he built himself a rough cabin in the Klondike—just in time to hibernate in it through a miserable winter.
Too broke to eat right, London got scurvy. And London found not one grain of gold.
But, if he didn’t find the mineral labelled “Au” on the periodic table, he found something equally valuable. The atmosphere, the lore, the sheer drama of survival in the subarctic north accumulated in his fertile mind, a mind thoroughly ready to make use of it.
Flat broke, London worked his way home stoking coal on a steamship. And, back in California, he put pen to paper. Page after page of the drama of the north piled up on his writing table. And in 1899 OVERLAND MONTHLY payed him $5.00 and published his story, “To the Man on the Trail”.
A few months later ATLANTIC MONTHLY payed $40 for “An Odyssey of the North”; published it in January 1900. And later in 1900 came his first book—a collection of stories, called A SON OF THE WOLF. A second collection of stories, THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS, followed in 1901.
Other collections of stories followed and in 1903, sales of his first novel, CALL OF THE WILD, immediately made it clear that the knowledge and atmosphere he accumulated on the Klondike had as much value as gold. Unfortunately, London didn’t get the Gold. He had sold all rights to the novel for $2,000.
