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AN ASPIRATION
Let me explain that this was penned amid the scenes described, in order to get the color, action, and atmosphere, and that from time to time fragments were in print during my wanderings; so you may find bits in the book not entirely new. But as these were photographs, so far as I could make them, they must remain unchanged.
My aspiration is and ever has been, in my dim and uncertain way, to be a sort of Columbus—or a Cortez. “And if I perish, I perish.”
But I need room. I need not only the latitude but even the longitude of all known oceans and of all glorious nature to sail these uncharted buccaneer seas. For the tribute of song and story must be not only worthy them but of sympathetic interest and sincere concern to you, my ardent reader.
Besides and above all, despising the hazard of
new work and ways, I aspire to picture the
matchless, magnificent, and terrible splendors of
our gold-strown and flame-fed Arctic Empire.
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