four in the afternoon
You and me and Nig 's goin ' to the Klondyke . '' `` Poverty is an odious calling . '' -- Burton 's Anatomy of Melancholy . On Monday morning , the 6th of June , they crossed the British line ; but it was not till Wednesday , the 8th , at four in the afternoon , just ten months after leaving San Francisco , that the Oklahoma 's passengers saw between the volcanic hills on the right bank of the Yukon a stretch of boggy tundra , whereon hundreds of tents gleamed , pink and saffron . Just beyond the bold wooded height , wearing the deep scar of a landslide on its breast , just round that bend , the Klondyke river joins the Yukon -- for this is Dawson , headquarters of the richest Placer Diggings the world has seen , yet wearing more the air of a great army encampment . For two miles the river-bank shines with sunlit canvas -- tents , tents everywhere , as far as eye can see , a mushroom growth masking the older cabins . The water-front swarms with craft , scows and canoes , birch , canvas , peterboro ; the great bateaux of the northern lumberman , neat little skiffs , clumsy rafts ; heavy `` double-enders , '' whip-sawed from green timber , with capacity of two to five tons ; lighters and barges carrying as much as forty tons -- all having come through the perils of the upper lakes and shot the canon rapids .