Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle TellerCopyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, SeattleTeller
But we had seen the Grand Canyon of the Yukon—which Schwatka in an evil hour named Miles, for the distinguished army-general—and White Horse Rapids; and seeing them was worth the blisters and the blood. And we know how far it is from the head of the canyon to White Horse town. No matter what the three "oldest" settlers, the railway folders, Schwatka, and all the others say,—we know. It is fifteen miles! Also, among those who scoff at Rex Beach for having the villain in his last novel eaten up by mosquitoes on the Yukon, we are not to be included.
Numerous and valuable copper mines lie within a radius of fifteen miles from White Horse. The more important ones are those of the Pennsylvania syndicate, The B. N. White Company, The Arctic Chief, The Grafter, the Anaconda, and the Best Chance. The Puebla, operated by B. N. White, lies four miles northwest of town. It makes a rich showing of magnetite, carrying copper values averaging four and five per cent, with a small by-product of gold and silver.
In the summer of 1907 this mine had in sight two hundred and fifty thousand tons of pay ore. The deepest development then obtained had a hundred-foot surface showing three hundred feet in width, and stripped along with the strike of the vein seven hundred feet, showing a solid, unbroken mass of ore. Tunnels and crosscuts driven from the bottom of the shaft showed the body to be the same width and the values the same as the surface outcrop.
The Arctic Chief ranks second in importance; and extensive development work is being carried on at all the mines. The railway is building out into the mining district.
Six-horse stages are run from White Horse to Dawsonafter the river closes. The distance is four hundred and thirty-five miles; the fare in the early autumn and late spring is a hundred and twenty-five dollars; in winter, when sleighing is good, sixty dollars.
White Horse was first named Closeleigh by the railway company; but the name was not popular. At one place in the rapids the waves curving over rocks somewhat resemble a white horse, with wildly floating mane and tail of foam. This is said to be the origin of the name.
White Horse is only eight years old. The hotel accommodations, if one does not mind a little thing like not being able to eat, are good. The rooms are clean and comfortable and filled with sweet mountain and river air.
At eight o'clock that evening the steamerDawsonstruggled up the river and landed within fifty yards of the hotel. We immediately went aboard; but it was nine o'clock the next morning before we started, so we had another night in White Horse.
The Yukon steamers are four stories high, with a place for a roof garden. I could do nothing for some time but regard theDawsonin silent wonder. It seemed to glide along on the surface of the water, like a smooth, flat stone when it is "skipped."
The lower deck is within a few inches of the water; and high above is the pilot-house, with its lonely-looking captain and pilot; and high, oh, very high, above them—like a charred monarch of a Puget Sound forest—rises the black smoke-stack, from which issue such vast funnels of smoke and such slow and tremendous breathing.
This breathing is a sound that haunts every memory of the Yukon. It is not easy to describe, it is so slow and so powerful. It is not quite like a cough—unless one could coughininstead ofout; it is more like a sobbing, shivering in-drawing of the breath of some mighty animal. It echoes from point to point, and may be heard forseveral miles on a still day. Day and night it moves through the upper air, and floats on ahead, often echoing so insistently around some point which the steamer has not turned, that the "cheechaco" is deluded into the belief that another steamer is approaching.
The captains and pilots of the Yukon are the loneliest-looking men! First of all, they are so far away from everybody else; and second, passengers, particularly women, are not permitted to be in the pilot-house, nor on the texas, nor even on the hurricane-deck, of steamers passing through Yukon Territory.
Between White Horse and Lake Lebarge the river is about two hundred yards wide. The water is smooth and deep. It loiters along the shore, but the current is strong and bears the steamer down with a rush, compelling it to zigzag ceaselessly from shore to shore.
Going down the Yukon for the first time, one's heart stands still nearly half the time. The steamer heads straight for one shore, approaches it so closely that its bow is within six inches of it, and then swings powerfully and starts for the opposite shore—its great stern wheel barely clearing the rocky wall.
The serious vexations and real dangers of navigation in this great river, from source to mouth, are the sand and gravel bars. One may go down the Yukon from White Horse to St. Michael in fourteen days; and one may be a month on the way—pausing, by no will of his own, on various sand-bars.
The treacherous current changes hourly. It is seldom found twice the same. It washes the sand from side to side, or heaps it up in the middle—creating new channels and new dangers. The pilot can only be cautious, untiringly watchful—and lucky. The rest he must leave to heaven.
It is twenty-seven miles from White Horse to LakeLebarge. Midway, the Tahkeena River flows into the Lewes, running through banks of clay.
Lake Lebarge is thirty-two miles long and three and a half wide. The day was suave. The water was silvery blue, and as smooth as satin; gray, deeply veined cliffs were reflected in the water, whose surface was not disturbed by a ripple or wave; the air was soft; farther down the river were forest fires, and just sufficient haze floated back to give the milky old-rose lights of the opal to the atmosphere. There is one small island in the lake. It was not named; and it received the name—as Vancouver would say—of Fireweed Isle, because it floated like a rosy cloud on the pale blue water.
The Indians called this lake Kluk-tas-si, and Schwatka favored retaining it; but the French name has endured, and it is not bad.
The Lake Lebarge grayling and whitefish are justly famed. Steamers stop at some lone fisherman's landing and take them down to Dawson, where they find ready sale. At Lower Lebarge there is a post-office and a telegraph station. Our steamer paused; two men came out in a boat, delivered a large supply of fish, received a few parcels of mail, and went swinging back across the water.
A dreary log-cabin stood on the bank, labelled "Clark's Place." A woman in a scarlet dress, walking through the reeds beside the beach, made a bit of vivid color. It seemed very, very lonely—with that kind of loneliness that is unendurable.
A quarter of a mile farther, around a bend in the shore, the boat landed at the telegraph station, where the Canadian flag was flying.
The different reaches of the Yukon are called locally by very confusing names. The river rising in Summit Lake on the White Pass railway is called both Lewes andYukon; the stretch immediately below Lake Lebarge is called Lewes, Thirty-Mile, and Yukon. When we reach the old Hudson Bay post of Selkirk, however, our perplexities over this matter are at an end. The Pelly River here joins the Lewes, and all agree that the splendid river that now surges on to the sea is the Yukon.
It is daylight all the time, and no one should sleep between White Horse and Dawson. Not an hour of this beautiful voyage on the Upper Yukon should be wasted.
The banks are high and bold, for the most part springing sheer out of the water in columns and pinnacles of solid stone. There are also forestated slopes rising to peaks of snow; and the same kind of clay cliffs that we saw at White Horse, white and shining in the bluish light of morning, but more beautiful still in the mysterious rosy shadows of midnight.
There are some striking columns of red rock along Lake Lebarge, and their reflections in the water at sunset of a still evening are said to be entrancing: "two warm pictures of rosy red in the sinking sun, joined base to base by a thread of silver, at the edge of the other shore."
There are many high hills of soft gray limestone, veined and shaded with the green of spruce; vast slopes, timbered heavily; low valleys and picturesque mouths of rivers.
Five-Finger, or Rink, Rapids is caused by a contraction of the river from its usual width to one of a hundred and fifty yards. Five bulks of stone, rising to a perpendicular height of forty or fifty feet, are stretched across the channel. The steamer seems to touch the stone walls as it rushes through on the boiling rapids.
The Upper Ramparts of the Yukon begin at Fort Selkirk. Here the waters cut through the lower spurs of the mountains, and for a distance of a hundred and fifty miles, reaching to Dawson, the scenery is sublime.
"Quiet Sentinel" is a rocky promontory which, seen in profile, resembles the face and entire figure of a woman. She stands with her head slightly bowed, as if in prayer, with loose draperies flowing in classic lines to her feet, and with a rose held to her lips. One of the greatest singers of the present time might have posed for the "Quiet Sentinel."
Rivers and their valleys are more famed in the northern interior than towns. Teslin, Tahkeena, Teslintoo, Big and Little Salmon, Pelly, Stewart, White, Forty-Mile, Indian, Sixty-Mile, Macmillan, Klotassin, Porcupine, Chandlar, Koyukuk, Unalaklik, Tanana, Mynook,—these be names to conjure with in the North; while those south of the Yukon and tributary to other waters have equal fame.
As for the Klondike, it is the only stream of its size, being but the merest creek and averaging a hundred feet in width, which has given its name to one whole country and to a portion of another country. During the past decade it has not been unusual to hear the name Klondike Country applied to all Alaska and that part of Canada adjacent to the Klondike district. The tiny, gold-bearing creeks, from ten to twenty feet wide, tributary to the Klondike, are known by name and fame in all parts of the world to-day. They are Bonanza, Hunker, Too-Much-Gold, Eldorado, Rock, North Fork, All-Gold, Gold-Bottom, and others of less importance. The Bonanza flows into the Klondike at Dawson, and it is but a half-hour's walk to the dredge at work in this stream.
In 1833 Baron Wrangell directed Michael Tebenkoff to establish Fort St. Michael's on the small island in Norton Sound to which the name of the fort was given. Three years later it was attacked by natives, but was successfully defended by Kurupanoff, who was in charge.
In 1836 a Russian named Glasunoff entered the delta of the Yukon, ascending the river as far as the mouth of the Anvik River. In 1838 Malakoff extended the exploration as far as Nulato, where he established a Russian post and placed Notarmi in command.
When the garrison returned to St. Michael's on account of the failure of provisions, the following winter, natives destroyed the fort and all buildings which had been erected. It was rebuilt and again destroyed in 1839. In 1841 it once more arose under Derabin, who remained in command. The following year Lieutenant Zagoskin reached Nulato, ascending to Nowikakat in 1843.
The Russians were therefore established on the lower Yukon several years before the English established themselves upon the upper river.
In 1840 Mr. Robert Campbell was sent by Sir George Simpson to explore the Upper Liard River. Mr. Campbell ascended the river to its head waters, crossed the mountains, and descended the Pelly River to the Lewes, where, eight years later, he established Fort Selkirk.
This famous trading post was short-lived. In 1851 it was attacked by a band of savage Chilkahts and was surrendered, without resistance, by Mr. Campbell, who had but two men with him at the time. They were not molested by the Indians, who plundered and burned the warehouses and forts.
Only the chimneys of the fort were found by Lieutenant Schwatka in 1883. As late as 1890 this point was considered the head of navigation on the Yukon.
In 1847 Fort Yukon was established by Mr. A. H. McMurray, of the Hudson Bay Company. Following McMurray and Campbell, came Joseph Harper, Jack McQuesten, and A. H. Mayo, who established a trading post on the Yukon at Fort Reliance, six miles below the mouth of the Klondike.
In 1860 Robert Kennicott reached Fort Yukon, and in the following spring descended to a point that was for several years known as "the Small Houses"—the most attractive name in the Yukon country. In 1865 an expedition was organized in San Francisco by the Western Union Telegraph Company for the purpose of building a telegraph line from San Francisco to Behring Strait—which was to be crossed by cable to meet the Russian government line at the mouth of the Amoor River. One party, headed by Robert Kennicott, was sent by ocean to the mouth of the Yukon; and another, in charge of Michael Byrnes, up the inside route to the Stikine River. Going from that river to the head waters of the Taku, they followed the chain of lakes and the Hootalinqua River to the Lewes, which they reached on the Tahco Arm of Lake Tagish. At that time it became known that the Atlantic cable had proven to be a success, and the daring and hazardous northern project was abandoned.
As late as the date of this expedition it was not determined positively whether the Kwihkpak was one of the mouths of the Yukon, or a separate river. Upon the recall of the telegraph expedition, the only portion of the great river that had not been explored was the short distance between Lake Tagish and Lake Lebarge.
There have been several claimants for the honor of having been the first white man to cross the divide between Lynn Canal and the head waters of the Yukon. The first was a mythological, nameless Scotchman employed by the Hudson Bay Company, who is supposed to have reached Fort Selkirk in 1864, and to have proceeded alone over the old "grease-trail" of the Chilkahts to Lynn Canal. He fell into the hands of the Indians and was held until ransomed by the captain of theLabouchere. Because he had long, flowing locks of red hair, he was supposed to be a kind of white shaman, and his life wasspared by the savages. This story is doubted by many authorities.
The honor was claimed, also, by George Holt, who is known to have crossed one of the passes in 1872, and twice in later years. James Wynn, of Juneau, went over in 1879 and returned in 1880.
About this time the Indians seemed to realize that packing over the trail might become more profitable than acting as middlemen between the coast Indians and those of the interior. In 1881 and 1882 small parties of miners, and even one or two travelling alone, crossed unmolested. In 1883 Lieutenant Schwatka had his outfit packed over the Dyea—Taiya, or Dayay, it was then called—Trail; and then, dismissing his packers, built rafts and made his perilous way down the unknown river—portaging, "shooting" the Grand Canyon, White Horse, and Rink Rapids, sticking on sand-bars, almost dying of mosquitoes, and, saddest of all for us who come after him, naming every object that met his eyes with the deplorable taste of Vancouver.
Of a river, called Kut-lah-cook-ah by the Chilkahts, he complacently remarks:—
"I shortened its name and called it after Professor Nourse, of the United States Naval Observatory."
Nourse, Saussure, Perrier, Payer, Bennett, Wheaton, Prejevalsky, Richards, Watson, Nares, Bove, Marsh, McClintock, Miles, Richthofen, Hancock, d'Abbadie, Daly, Nordenskiold, Yon Wilczek; these be the choice namings that he bestowed upon the beautiful objects along the Yukon. It is, perhaps, a cause for thankfulness that he did not rename the YukonSchwatkaorRidderbjelka! However, many of his namings have died a natural death.
The name Yukon is said to have first been applied to the river in 1846 by Mr. J. Bell, of the Hudson Bay Company, who went over from the MacKenzie and descendedthe Porcupine to the great river which the Indians called Yukon. He retained the name, although for some time it was spelled Youkon. For this, may he ever be of blessed memory. I should like to contribute to a monument to perpetuate his name and fame.
To-day Fort Selkirk is of some importance as a trading post and because of the successful farming of the vicinity, and all passing steamers call there. Joseph Harper was located there at the time of George Carmack's brilliant discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, in August, 1896. Harper and Joseph Ladue, who was settled as a trader at Sixty-Mile, immediately transferred their stocks to the junction of the Yukon, Klondike, and Bonanza, and established the town which they named Dawson, in honor of Dr. George M. Dawson.
In 1887 Mr. William Ogilvie headed a Canadian exploring party into the Yukon. His boats were towed up to Taiya Inlet by the United States naval vesselPinta; and while waiting there for supplies, he, having asked for, and received, authority from Commander Newell, made surveys at the heads of the inlets. It was only through the intercession of the commander, furthermore, that Mr. Ogilvie was permitted by the Chilkahts to proceed over the pass. "I am strongly of the opinion," Mr. Ogilvie says in his report, "that these Indians would have been much more difficult to deal with if they had not known that Commander Newell remained in the inlet to see that I got through in safety."
Miners had been going over the trail for several years, but the Chilkahts were enraged at the British because employees of the Hudson Bay Company had killed some of their tribe.
In the meantime Dr. George M. Dawson, heading another Dominion party, was working along the Stikine River.
Dr. Dawson and Mr. Ogilvie—afterward governor of Yukon territory—made extensive surveys and explorations throughout the Yukon district; their reports upon the country are voluminous, thorough, and of much interest. They were both men of superior attainments, and their influence upon the country and upon the people who rushed into the new mining district was great. To-day the name of ex-Governor Ogilvie is heard more frequently in the Klondike than that of any other person, even though his residence is elsewhere. He served as governor during the reckless and picturesque days when to be a governor meant to be a man in the highest sense of the word.
Dawson! It was a name to stir men's blood ten years ago,—a wild, picturesque, lawless mining-camp, whose like had never been known and never will be known again.
All kinds and conditions of men and women were represented. Miners, prospectors, millionnaires, adventurers, wanderers, desperadoes; brave-hearted, earnest women, dissolute dance-hall girls, and, more dangerous still, the quiet, seductive adventuress—they were all there, side by side, tent by tent, cabin by cabin.
Almost daily new discoveries were made and stampedes occurred. Every little creek flowing into the Klondike was found rich in gold. The very names that these creeks received—All-Gold, Too-Much-Gold, Gold-Bottom—turned men's blood to fire. The whole country seemed to have gone mad of excitement and the lust for gold. The white mountain passes grew black with struggling human beings—fighting, falling, rising, fighting on. It was like the blind stampeding of crazed animals upon a plain; nothing could check them save exhaustion or death. When the fever burned out in one and left him low, another sprang to take his place. Dawson, like Skaguay, grew from dozens to hundreds in a day; from hundreds to thousands; tents gave place to cabins; cabins, to substantial frame buildings.
Ah, to have been there in the old days! Who would not have suffered the early hardships, paid the price, and paid it cheerfully, for the sake of seeing the life and being a part of it before it was too late?
Now it is forever too late. The glory of what it once was is all that remains. To-day Dawson is so quiet, so dull, so respectable, that one unconsciously yawns in its face.
But men's eyes still kindle when their memories of old days are stirred.
"They were great times," they say, looking at one another.
"They could only come once. They were times of blood and gold; of dance and song; of glitter and show—and starvation and death. We worked all day and danced or gambled all night. Our only passions were for women and gold. If we couldn't get the women we wanted, the men that did get 'em fought their way to 'em, inch by inch; if we couldn't dig the gold out of the earth, we got it in some other way.
"All the best buildings were occupied by saloons. Every saloon had a dance-hall in the back of it; not that the girls had to keep to their quarters, either—they had the run of the whole shebang. Every saloon had its gambling rooms, too—unless the tables and games were right out in the open. I tell you, it was tough. You can't begin to understand the situation unless you'd been here. There wasn't a hotel nor a corner where a man could go in and get warm except in a saloon—and with the thermometer fooling in the neighborhood of fifty below, he didn't stand around outside with his hands in his pockets, not to any great extent. Most likely his pockets was naturally froze shut, anyhow, and the only way he could get 'em thawed out was to go into a saloon.Thatthawed 'em quick enough. It not only thawed 'em out; it most gen'rally thawed 'em wide open.
"I tell you, the worst element in a mining-camp is women. They follow a man and console him when he'sdown on his luck; they follow him through thick and thin; and they get such a hold on him that, when he wants to get back to decent ways and decent women, he just naturally can't do it. Young fellows don't realize it. They don't see it being done; they see it after it is done and can't be undone.
"As soon as the mounted police took holt of Dawson, with Inspector Constantine at the head, there was a sure change. Still, even the mounted-police doctrine does have some drawbacks. I noticed they couldn't make the post-office clerks turn out letters unless you slipped two-three dollars into their outstretched hands. I noticed that."
To-day Dawson is a pretty, clean-streeted town built of log and frame buildings. In the hottest summer the earth never thaws deeper than eighteen inches, and no foundation can be obtained for brick buildings. For the same reason plastering is not advisable, the uneven freezing and thawing proving ruinous to both brick and plaster.
The first objects to greet the visitor's eyes are the large buildings of the great commercial and transportation companies of the North, along the bank of the river. Passing through these one finds one's self upon a busy, but unconventional, thoroughfare. Dawson is built solidly to the hill, extending about a mile along the water-front; and the most attractive part of the town is the village of picturesque log cabins climbing over the lower slopes of the hill. They are not large, but they are all built with the roof extending over a wide front porch. The entire roof of each cabin is covered several inches deep with earth, and at the time of our visit—the first week of August—these roofs were grown with brilliant green grasses and flowers to a height of from twelve to eighteen inches. They were literally coveredwith the bloom of a dozen or more varieties of wild flowers. Every window had its flaming window-box; every garden, its gay beds; and there were even boxes set on square fence posts and running the entire length of fences themselves, from which vines drooped and trailed and flowers blew. Standing at the river and looking toward the hill, the whole town seemed a mass of bloom sloping up to the green, which, in turn, sloped on up to the blue.
We had heard so much about the exorbitant prices of the Klondike, that we were simply speechless when a very jolly, sandy-haired Scotch gentleman offered to take our two steamer trunks, three heavy suit cases, and two shawl-straps to the hotel which we had blindly chosen, for the sum of two dollars. We had expected to pay five; and when he first asked two and a half, we stood as still as though turned to stone—and all for joy. He, however, evidently mistaking our silence, doubtless felt the prick of the stern conscience of his ancestors, for he hastily added:—
"Well, seeing you're ladies, we'll call it an even two."
We agreed to the price coldly, pretending to consider it an outrage.
"My name is Angus McDonald," said he, with reproach. "When a McDonald says that his price is the lowest in the town, his word may be taken. If you come to Dawson twenty years from now, Angus will be standing here waiting to handle your baggage at the lowest price."
We gave him our keys and he attended to all the customs details for us. We had left Seattle on the evening of the 24th of July; had stopped for several hours at Ketchikan, Wrangell, Metlakahtla, Juneau, Treadwell, and Taku Glacier; a day and a night at Skaguay; two nights and a day at White Horse; had made short pauses at Selkirk and Lower Lebarge—to say nothing of hoursspent in "wooding-up," which is a picturesque and sure feature of Yukon voyages; and at noon on the fifth day of August we were settled at the "Kenwood"—the dearest hotel at which it has ever been my good fortune to tarry even for a day. I do not mean the most stylish, nor the most elegant, nor even the most comfortable; nor do I mean the dearest in price; but the dearest to my heart. It is kept in a neat, cheerful, and homelike style by Miss Kinney—who had almost as many malamute puppies, by the way, as she had guests.
When we gave Mr. Angus McDonald our keys, it was not quite decided as to our hotel; but when we learned that we were sufficiently respectable in appearance to be accepted by Miss Kinney, we telephoned for our trunks. Then we forgot all about paying for them, and set out for a walk. When we returned, luncheon was being served; our trunks were in our rooms, but—Mr. Angus McDonald had gone off with our keys! We did not know then what we know now; that Mr. Angus McDonald and his retained keys are a Dawson joke. It seems that whenever one does not pay in advance for the delivery of his trunks, Mr. McDonald drives away with the keys in his pocket, whistling the merriest of Scotch tunes.
The joke has its embarrassments, particularly when one has descended to the Grand Canyon of the Yukon in a sand-slide.
The traveller in Alaska who desires to retain his own self-respect and that of his fellow-man will never criticise a price nor ask to have it reduced. He is expected to contribute liberally to every church he enters, every Indian band he hears play, every charitable institution that may present its merits for his consideration, every purse that may be made up on steamers, whatsoever its object may be. Fees are from fifty cents to five dollars. A waiter on a Yukon steamer threw a quarter back at a man who had innocently slipped it into his hand. Later, I saw him in the centre of a group of angry waiters and cabin-boys to whom he was relating his grievance.
Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle Family of King's Island Eskimos living under Skin Boat, NomeCopyright by F. H. Nowell, SeattleFamily of King's Island Eskimos living under Skin Boat, Nome
Since one is constantly changing steamers, and has a waiter, a cabin-boy, a night-boy, and frequently a stewardess to fee on each steamer, this must be counted as one of the regular expenses of the trip.
Other expenses we found to be greatly exaggerated on the "outside." Aside from our amusing experience with soap-bubble soda at White Horse and a bill for eight dollars and fifty cents for the poor pressing of three plain dress skirts and one jacket at Nome, we found nothing to criticise in northern prices.
The best rooms at the "Kenwood" were only two dollars a day, and each meal was one dollar—whether one ate little or whether one ate much. It was always the latter with us; for I have never been so hungry except at Bennett. I am convinced that the climate of the Yukon will cure every disease and every ill. We walked miles each day, drank much cold, pure water, and ate much wholesome, well-cooked, delicious food—including blueberries three times a day; and our sleep was sound, sweet, and refreshing.
Dawson has about ten thousand inhabitants now; it once had twice as many, and it will have again. Mining in the Klondike is in the transition stage. It is passing from the individual owners to large companies and corporations which have ample capital to install expensive machinery and develop rich properties. It is the history of every mining district, and its coming to the Klondike was inevitable. Its first effect, however, is always "to ruin the camp."
"Dawson's a camp no longer," said one who "went in" in 1897, sadly. "It's all spoiled. The individual miner has let go and the monopolists are coming in to take hisplace. The good days are things of the past. Pretty soon they'll be giving you change when you throw down two-bits for a lead pencil!" he concluded, with a lofty scorn—as much as to say: "It will then be time to die."
Dawson is connected with the "outside" by telegraph. It has two daily newspapers,—which are metropolitan in style,—an electric-light plant, and a telephone system. Its streets are graded and sidewalked, and it is piped for water; but its lack of systematized sewerage—or what might be more appropriately called its systematized lack of sewerage—is an abomination. It is, however, not alone in its unsanitation in this respect, for Nome follows its example.
Both homes and public buildings are of exceeding plainness of style, owing to the excessive cost of building in a region bounded by the Arctic Circle. The interiors of both, however, are attractive and luxurious in finish and furnishings; and owing to the sway of the mounted police, the town has an air of cleanliness and orderliness that is admirable.
A creditable building holds the post-office and customs office, and there is a public school building which cost fifty thousand dollars. The handsome administration building, standing in a green, park-like place, cost as much. There is a large court-house, the barracks of the mounted police, and other public buildings. Only the ruins remain of the executive mansion on the bank of the river, which was destroyed by fire two years ago and has not been rebuilt. It was the pride of Dawson. It was a large residence of pleasing architecture, lighted by electricity and finished throughout in British Columbia fir in natural tones. It contained the governor's private office, palatial reception rooms and parlors, a library, a noble hall and stairway, a state dining room, a billiard room and smoking room, and spacious chambers.
The governor's office in the administration building is large and handsomely furnished. The commissioner of Yukon Territory is called by courtesy governor, and the present commissioner, Governor Henderson, is a gentleman of distinguished presence and courtly manners. He had just returned from an automobile tour of inspection among "the creeks."
Governors, elegant executive mansions and offices, and automobile tours—where eleven years ago was nothing but the creeks and the virgin gold which brought all that is there to-day! We did not rebel at anything but the automobile; somehow, it jarred like an insult. An automobile up among the storied creeks!
There is a railroad, also, on which daily trains are run for a distance of twenty miles through the mining district. Six and eight horse stages will make the trip in one day for a party of six for fifty dollars.
Thirty dollars is first asked. When that price is found to be satisfactory, it is immediately discovered that the small stage is engaged or out of repair; a larger one must be used, for which the price is forty dollars. When this price is agreed upon, some infirmity is discovered in the second stage; a third must be substituted, for whose all-day use the price is fifty dollars. If one cares to see the "cricks," with no assurance that he will stumble upon a clean-up, at this price, he meekly takes his seat and is jolted up into the hills, paying a few dollars extra for his meals.
He may, however, take an hour's walk up Bonanza Creek and see the great dredges at work and the steam-pipes thawing the frozen gravel; and if he should voyage on down to Nome, he may take an hour's run by railway out on the tundra and see thirty thousand dollars sluiced out any day. Almost anything is preferable to the "graft" that is worked by the stage companies upon the helpless cheechacos at Dawson.
The British Yukon is an organized territory, having a commissioner, three judges, and an executive legislature, of whose ten members five are elected and five appointed. The governor is also appointed. He presides over the sessions of the legislature, giving the appointed members a majority of one.
The Yukon has a delegate in parliament, a gold commissioner, a land agent, and a superintendent of roads. Three-fourths of the population of the territory are Americans, yet the town has a distinctly English, or Canadian, atmosphere. In incorporated towns there is a tax levy on property for municipal purposes.
Order is preserved by the well-known organization of Northwest Mounted Police, whose members might be recognized anywhere, even when not in uniform, by their stern eyes, set lips, and peculiar carriage.
The first station of mounted police in the Yukon was established at Forty-Mile, or Fort Cudahy, in 1895, when the discovery of gold was creating a mild excitement. Although so many boasts have been made by the British of their early settlement of the Yukon, not only was Mr. Ogilvie compelled to cross in 1887 under protection of the American Commander Newell, but in 1895 the members of the first force of mounted police to come into the country were forced to ascend the Yukon, by special permission of the United States government, so difficult were all routes through Yukon Territory.
There are at the present time about sixty police stations in the territory, as well as garrisons at Dawson and White Horse. The smaller stations have only three men. They are scattered throughout the mining country, wherever a handful of men are gathered together. Between Dawson and White Horse, where travel is heavy, a weekly patrol is maintained, and a careful register is kept of all boats and passengers going up or down the river.On the winter trail passengers are registered at each road house, with date of arrival and departure, making it easy to locate any traveller in the territory at any time. In the larger towns the mounted police serve as police officers; they also assist the customs officers and fill the offices of police magistrate and coroner. A police launch to patrol the river in summer has been recommended.
Dawson is laid out in rectangular shape, with streets about seventy feet wide and appearing wider because the buildings are for the most part low. In 1897 town lots sold for five thousand dollars, when there was nothing but tents on the flat at the mouth of the Klondike. The half-dollar was the smallest piece of money in circulation, as the quarter is to-day. Saw-mills were in operation, and dressed lumber sold for two hundred and fifty dollars a thousand feet. Fifteen dollars a day, however, was the ordinary wage of men working in the mines; so that such prices as fifty cents for an orange, two dollars a dozen for eggs, and twenty-five cents a pound for potatoes did not seem exorbitant.
There are rival claimants for the honor of the first discovery of gold on the Klondike, but George Carmack is generally credited with being the fortunate man. In August, 1896, he and the Indians "Skookum Jim" and "Tagish Charlie,"—Mr. Carmack's brothers-in-law—were fishing one day at the mouth of the Klondike River. (This river was formerly called Thron-Dieuck, or Troan-Dike.) Not being successful, they concluded to go a little way up the river to prospect. On the sixteenth day of the month they detected signs of gold on what has since been named Bonanza Creek; and from the first pan they washed out twelve dollars. They staked a "discovery" claim, and one above and below it, as is the right of discoverers.
At that time the gold flurry was in the vicinity ofForty-Mile. The first building ever done on the site of Dawson was that of a raft, upon which they proceeded to Forty-Mile to file their claims. On the same day began the great stampede to the little river which was soon to become world-famous.
The days of the bucket and windlass have passed for the Klondike. Dredging and hydraulicking have taken their place, and the trains and steamers are loaded with powerful machinery to be operated by vast corporations. It is certain that there are extensive quartz deposits in the vicinity, and when they are located the good and stirring days of the nineties will be repeated. Ground that was panned and sluiced by the individual miner is now being again profitably worked by modern methods. Scarcity of water has been the chief obstacle to a rapid development of the mines among the creeks; but experiments are constantly being made in the way of carrying water from other sources.
It was perplexing to hear people talking about "Number One Above on Bonanza," "Number Nine Below on Hunker," "Number Twenty-six Above on Eldorado," and others, until it was explained that claims are numbered above and below the one originally discovered on a creek. Eldorado is one of the smallest of creeks; yet, notwithstanding its limited water supply, it has been one of the richest producers. One reach, of about four miles in length, has yielded already more than thirty millions of dollars in coarse gold.
The gold of the Klondike is beautiful. It is not a fine dust. It runs from grains like mustard seed up to large nuggets.
When one goes up among the creeks, sees and hears what has actually been done, one can but wonder that any young and strong man can stay away from this marvellous country. Gold is still there, undiscovered; it isseldom the old prospector, the experienced miner, the "sour-dough," that finds it; it is usually the ignorant, lucky "cheechaco." It is like the game of poker, to which sits down one who never saw the game played and holds a royal flush, or four aces, every other hand. How young men can clerk in stores, study pharmacy, or learn politics in provincial towns, while this glorious country waits to be found, is incomprehensible to one with the red blood of adventure in his veins and the quick pulse of chance. Better to dare, to risk all and lose all, if it must be, than never to live at all; than always to be a drone in a narrow, commonplace groove; than never to know the surge of this lonely river of mystery and never to feel the air of these vast spaces upon one's brow.
No one can even tread the deck of a Yukon steamer and be quite so small and narrow again as he was before. The loneliness, the mystery, the majesty of it, reveals his own soul to his shrinking eyes, and he grows—in a day, in an hour, in the flash of a thought—out of his old self. If only to be borne through this great country on this wide water-way to the sea can work this change in a man's heart, what miracle might not be wrought by a few years of life in its solitude?
The principle of "panning" out gold is simple, and any woman could perform the work successfully without instruction, success depending upon the delicacy of manipulation. From fifty cents to two hundred dollars a pan are obtained by this old-fashioned but fascinating method. Think of wandering through this splendid, gold-set country in the matchless summers when there is not an hour of darkness; with the health and the appetite to enjoy plain food and the spirit to welcome adventure; to pause on the banks of unknown creeks and try one's luck, not knowing what a pan may bring forth; to lie downone night a penniless wanderer, so far as gold is concerned, and, perhaps, to sleep the next night on banks that wash out a hundred dollars to the pan—could one choose a more fascinating life than this?
Rockers are wooden boxes which are so constructed that they gently shake down the gold and dispose of the gravel through an opening in the bottom. Sluicing is more interesting than any other method of extracting gold, but this will be described as we saw the process separate the glittering gold from the dull gravel at Nome.
The two great commercial companies of the North to-day are the Northern Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company. The Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company were the first to be established on the Yukon, with headquarters at St. Michael, near the mouth of the river. In 1898 the Alaska Exploration Company established its station across the bay from St. Michael on the mainland; and during that year a number of other companies were located there, only two of which, however, proved to be of any permanency—the Empire Transportation Company and the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company.
In 1901 the Alaska Commercial, Empire Transportation, and Alaska Exploration companies formed a combination which operated under the names of the Northern Commercial Company and the Northern Navigation Company, the former being a trading and the latter a steamship company. Owing to certain conditions, the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company was unable to join the combination; and its properties, consisting principally of three steamers, together with four barges, were sold to the newly formed company. During the first year of the consolidation the North American Transportation and Trading Company worked in harmony with the Northern Navigation Company, Captain I. N. Hibberd, of San Francisco, having charge of the entire lower river fleet, with the exception of one or two small tramp boats.
By that time very fine combination passenger and freight boats were in operation, having been built at Unalaska and towed to St. Michael. In its trips up and down the river, each steamer towed one or two barges, the combined cargo of the steamer and tow being about eight hundred tons. It was impossible for a boat to make more than two round trips during the summer season, the average time required being fourteen days on the "up" trip and eight on the "down" for the better boats, and twenty and ten days respectively for inferior ones, without barges, which always added at least ten days to a trip.
After a year the North American Transportation and Trading Company withdrew from the combination and has since operated its own steamers.
Of all these companies the Alaska Commercial is the oldest, having been founded in 1868; it was the pioneer of American trading companies in Alaska, and was for twenty years the lessee of the Pribyloff seal rookeries. It had a small passenger and freight boat on the Yukon in 1869. The other companies owed their existence to the Klondike gold discoveries.
The two companies now operating on the Yukon have immense stores and warehouses at Dawson and St. Michael, and smaller ones at almost every post on the Yukon; while the N. C. Company, as it is commonly known, has establishments up many of the tributary rivers.
As picturesque as the Hudson Bay Company, and far more just and humane in their treatment of the Indians, the American companies have reason to be proud of their record in the far North. In 1886, when a large number of miners started for the Stewart River mines, the agent of the A. C. Company at St. Michael received advice from headquarters in San Francisco that an extra amount of provisions had been sent to him, to meet all possible demandsthat might be made upon him during the winter. He was further advised that the shipment was not made for the purpose of realizing profits beyond the regular schedule of prices already established, but for humane purposes entirely—to avoid any suffering that might occur, owing to the large increase in population. He was, therefore, directed to store the extra supplies as a reserve to meet the probable need, to dispose of the same to actual customers only and in such quantities as would enable him to relieve the necessities of each and every person that might apply. Excessive prices were prohibited, and instructions to supply all persons who might be in absolute poverty, free of charge, were plain and unmistakable.
Men of the highest character and address have been placed at the head of the various stations,—men with the business ability to successfully conduct the company's important interests and the social qualifications that would enable them to meet and entertain distinguished travellers through the wilderness in a manner creditable to the company. Tourists, by the way, who go to Alaska without providing themselves with clothes suitable for formal social functions are frequently embarrassed by the omission. Gentlemen may hasten to the company's store—which carries everything that men can use, from a toothpick to a steamboat—and array themselves in evening clothes, provided that they are not too fastidious concerning the fit and the style; but ladies might not be so fortunate. Nothing is too good for the people of Alaska, and when they offer hospitality to the stranger within their gates, they prefer to have him pay them the compliment of dressing appropriately to the occasion. If voyagers to Alaska will consider this advice they may spare themselves and their hosts in the Arctic Circle some unhappy moments.
Yukon summers are glorious. There is not an hour of darkness. A gentleman who came down from "the creeks" to call upon us did not reach our hotel until eleven o'clock. He remained until midnight, and the light in the parlor when he took his departure was as at eight o'clock of a June evening at home. The lights were not turned on while we were in Dawson; but it is another story in winter.
Clothes are not "blued" in Dawson. The first morning after our arrival I was summoned to a window to inspect a clothes-line.
"Will you look at those clothes! Did you ever see such whiteness in clothes before?"
I never had, and I promptly asked Miss Kinney what her laundress did to the clothes to make them look so white.
"I'm the laundress," said she, brusquely. "I come out here from Chicago to work, and I work. I was half dead, clerking in a store, when the Klondike craze come along and swept me off my feet. I struck Dawson broke. I went to work, and I've been at work ever since. I have cooks, and chambermaids, and laundresses; but it often happens that I have to be all three, besides landlady, at once. That's the way of the Klondike. Now, I must go and feed those malamute pups; that little yellow one is getting sassy."
She had almost escaped when I caught her sleeve and detained her.
"But the clothes—I asked you what makes them so white—"
"Don't you suppose," interrupted she, irascibly, "that I have too much work to do to fool around answering the questions of a cheechaco? I'm not travelling down the Yukon for fun!"
This was distinctly discouraging; but I had set out tolearn what had made those clothes so white. Besides, I was beginning to perceive dimly that she was not so hard as she spoke herself to be; so I advised her that I should not release her sleeve until she had answered my question.
She burst into a kind of lawless laughter and threw her hand out at me.
"Oh, you! Well, there, then! I never saw your beat! There ain't a thing in them there clothes but soap-suds, renched out, and sunshine. We don't even have to rub clothes up here the way you have to in other places; and we never put in apinchof blueing. Two-three hours of sunshine makes 'em like snow."
"But how is it in winter?"
She laughed again.
"Oh, that's another matter. We bleach 'em out enough in summer so's it'll do for all winter. Let go my sleeve or you won't get any blueberries for lunch."
This threat had the desired effect. Surely no woman ever worked harder than Miss Kinney worked. At four o'clock in the mornings we heard her ordering maids and malamute puppies about; and at midnight, or later, her springing step might be heard as she made the final rounds, to make sure that all was well with her family.
We were greatly amused and somewhat embarrassed on the day of our arrival. We saw at a glance that the only vacant room was too small to receive our baggage.
"I'll fix that," said she, snapping her fingers. "I just gave a big room on the first floor to two young men. I'll make them exchange with you."
It was in vain that we protested.
"Now, you let me be!" she exclaimed; "I'll fix this. You're in the Klondike now, and you'll learn how white men can be. Young men don't take the best room and let women take the worst up here. If they come up here with that notion, they soon get it taken out of 'em—andI'm just the one to do it. Now, you let me be! They'll be tickled to death."
Whatever their state of mind may have been, the exchange was made; but when we endeavored to thank her, she snapped us up with:—
"Anybody'd know you never lived in a white country, or you wouldn't make such a fuss over such a little thing. We're used to doing things for other peopleup here," she added, scornfully.
Miss Kinney gave us many surprises during our stay, but at the last moment she gave us the greatest surprise of all. Just as our steamer was on the point of leaving, she came running down the gangway and straight to us. Her hands and arms were filled with large paper bags, which she began forcing upon us.
"There!" she said. "I've come to say good-by and bring you some fruit. I'd given you one of those malamute puppies if I could have spared him. Well, good-by and good luck!"
We were both so touched by this unexpected kindness in one who had taken so much pains to conceal every touch of tenderness in her nature, that we could not look at one another for some time; nor did it lessen our appreciation to remember how ceaselessly and how drudgingly Miss Kinney worked and the price she must have paid for those great bags of oranges, apples, and peaches—for freight rates are a hundred and forty dollars a ton on "perishables." It set a mist in our eyes every time we thought about it. It was our first taste of Arctic kindness; and, somehow, its flavor was different from that of other latitudes.
Dawson is gay socially, as it has always been. In summer the people are devoted to outdoor sports, which are enjoyed during the long evenings. There is a good club-house for athletic sports in winter, and the theatres are well patronized, although, in summer, plays commenceat ten or ten-thirty and are not concluded before one. As in all English and Canadian towns, business is resumed at a late hour in the morning, making the hours of rest correspond in length to ours.
Two young Yale men who were travelling in our party had been longing to see a dance-hall,—a "real Klondike dance-hall,"—but they came in one midnight, their faces eloquent with disgust.
"We found a dance-hallat last," said one. "They hide their light under such bushels now that it takes a week to find one; the mounted police don't stand any foolishness. Then—think of a dance-hall running in broad daylight! No mystery, no glitter, no soft, rosy glamour—say, it made me yearn for bread and butter. Do you know where Miss Kinney keeps her bread jar and blueberries? Honestly, I don't know anything or any place that could cultivate a taste in a young man for sane and decent things like one of these dance-halls here. I never was so disappointed in my life. I can go to churchat home; I didn't come to the Klondike forthat. Why, the very music itself sounded about as lively as 'Come, Ye Disconsolate!' Come on, Billy; let's go to bed."
No one should visit Dawson without climbing, on a clear day, to the summit of the hill behind the town, which is called "the Dome." The view of the surrounding country from this point is magnificent. The course of the winding, widening Yukon may be traced for countless miles; the little creeks pour their tawny floods down into the Klondike before the longing eyes of the beholder; and faraway on the horizon faintly shine the snow-peaks that beautify almost every portion of the northern land.
The wagon roads leading from Dawson to the mining districts up the various creeks are a distinct surprise. They were built by the Dominion government and are said to be the best roads to be found in any mining districtin the world. A Dawson man will brag about the roads, while modestly silent about the gold to which the roads lead.
"You must go up into the creeks, if only to see the roads," every man to whom one talks will presently say. "You can't beat 'em anywheres."
Claim staking in the Klondike is a serious matter. The mining is practically all placer, as yet, and a creek claim comprises an area two hundred and fifty feet along the creek and two thousand feet wide. This information was a shock to me. I had always supposed, vaguely, that a mining claim was a kind of farm, of anywhere from twenty to sixty acres; and to find it but little larger than the half of a city block was a chill to my enthusiasm. They explained, however, that the gravel filling a pan was but small in quantity, that it could be washed out in ten minutes, and that if every pan turned out but ten dollars, the results of a long day's work would not be bad.
Claims lying behind and above the ones that front on the creeks are called "hill" claims. They have the same length of frontage, but are only a thousand feet in width. In staking a claim, a post must be placed at each corner on the creek, with the names of the claim and owner and a general description of any features by which it may be identified; the locator must take out a free miner's license, costing seven dollars and a half, and file his claim at the mining recorder's office within ten days after staking. No one can stake more than one claim on a single creek, but he may hold all that he cares to acquire by purchase, and he may locate on other creeks. Development work to the amount of two hundred dollars must be done yearly for three years, or that amount paid to the mining recorder; this amount is increased to four hundred dollars with the fourth year. The locator must secure a certificate to the effect that the necessary amount of yearly work has been done, else the claim will be cancelled.