[1] Since deceased.
[2] Since deceased.
Till dazzled by the drowsy glare,I shut my eyes to heat and light;And saw, in sudden night,Crouched in the dripping dark,With steaming shoulders starkThe man who hews the coal to feed my fire.—WILFRED WILSON GIBSON.
Solon once told Croesus that whoever had the iron would possess all the gold, but here Solon was taking coal for granted. Iron-mines are of comparatively little value unless coal-mines are within easy access. I think of this as I view the underground workings of a coal-mine, to-day, and of how our Royal Land of Canada has both minerals in immeasurable quantities. In this Province of Alberta alone, there is so much coal to burn that it will take a million years. Looking at this sheer face of coal twenty feet in height, I must perforce recall Oliver Wendell Holmes's remark that he was not at all nervous about a certain comet which threatened to destroy the earth, for there was so much coal in the world he couldn't bring himself to believe it had been made for nothing.
In time past, it was said hereabout that coal-mining did not pay; that the profit of the industry lay in its higher mathematics, by which was meant the formation of companies and the disposal of bonds and stocks. The primary work of The Coal Barons, it was further declared, consisted in laying up treasures on earth for themselves, leaving the shareholders to find reward in heaven. The "suckers" who purchased stock were said to have gone through the comparative degrees of mine, miner, minus. They were "the bitten."
From the uppermost appearance of things, these remarks would seem to be warranted, particularly as the true westerner has always something to sell and has even been known to lie about it, but a closer and more careful study of affairs shows that, in this grim game, the mine-owners received neither the honours nor the tricks, that is, unless you are disposed to count the chicane as one. Most cases, in their futile efforts to bolster up the exchequer of the company, the barons have sacrificed their private fortunes, so that their titles may, with entire propriety be spelled barrens. It was one of these men who feelingly remarked: "When a man's affairs in this province go rocky, you may safely reckon on coal being the rock."
But now that the seven lean years of coal are over and the fat ones are well begun, now that coal as a revenue producer is only second to Mother Wheat, we can with calmer and more unbiassed judgment consider the causes which have hitherto been responsible for its "outrageous fortune."
Perhaps the commonest cause of failure has been the lack of adequate capital. The President's chair in a coal company is no place for empty pockets. To successfully operate his mine he requires money at any price. The initial outlay is large, the carrying expenses heavy, the unexpected demands many. Hitherto, this capital has not been readily forthcoming. Investors have preferred to buy town lots rather than industrial stocks. In older and more settled communities the opposite condition prevails. On the other hand, coal on the cars is cash. The mine operator takes his bill-of-lading to the bank and draws up to two-thirds of its face value. This enables him to meet his fortnightly pay-bill and general mining expenses, but, for two or three years, until sufficient rooms have been made in the workings of the mine, he cannot expect it to do more.
In the meanwhile, there is development work to be done and development work is expensive. The entries or hallways off which the rooms open are costly to drive and they must be beamed with great timbers held in place by tree trunks. Initial surveys have to be made, and expert superintendence paid for. It is for such work the President requires ready money and free money. He cannot possibly make his working expenses to cover those of development in that the same managing staff is required to handle a small output as a large one. The same is applicable to the engines and hoisting machinery.
The second cause which has hitherto hindered successful operations has been lack of railway facilities and lack of a steady market. Emerson has defined commerce as taking things from where they are plentiful to where they are needed. Coal, we have shown, is plentiful; and that it is needed in the Canadian North-West we need hardly remark, but that it could not be carried needs explanation. For several years our railways were lamentably short of equipment, so that the mines had frequently to close down for days, or even weeks, their bunkers being entirely inadequate for storage purposes. This meant a severe loss to the mines in that their men and machinery stood idle and that lucrative contracts had to be cancelled.
Probably no industry has suffered so keenly from car shortage as that of coal-mining. The only people who have received windfalls from this regretable state of affairs were the dishonest yard-masters who, unknown to the railway officials, did a secret but withal brisk business with the rival coal companies that bid for cars. It took a goodly slice off the profits of each car of coal to grease the large palm of the yard-master. And who in this pushful, practical age has ever heard of a car spotter in the railway yards buying a ton of coal? The plethora of his coal-bin is more to the credit of his wits than his morals. My mind is fully established in this thing; as a grafter he is the perfected article.
It may, however, be said in excuse for the car shortage, that the demand for coal cars synchronized with that of wheat, the rush for both being in the autumn and early winter. At first, the pioneer coal dealers in the villages and towns throughout the west, had neither the buildings wherein to store fuel nor the money to permit of their purchasing it, so that orders were seldom given until cold weather had actually set in.
While this condition of affairs still leaves something to be desired, the dealers have had several salutary lessons and are, as a generality, becoming much more forehanded. The population of the west has also increased so vastly during these latter years, that the demand on the dealers, and accordingly on the mines, has gradually become steadier till, at last, the industry rests upon the well-settled foundation of a regular demand, a regular supply, and a dependable railway service, in other words, it fulfils the three conditions laid down in Emerson's definition of commerce.
A third difficulty which confronted mine operators, was the securing of experienced miners. The supply was distinctly inadequate, so that green hands had to be engaged—homesteaders who wanted to earn money during the winter, newly-arrived immigrants who took the first job which came to hand; and farm labourers who came west to take off the harvest and decided to stay in the country.
These men, while they came under the union scale of wages, were unable to do little else for the first winter than spoil their shots of dynamite, cave in the roofs, and blow out the timbers. The mine operator, however, rarely became disheartened so long as the green man didn't blow off his own head for, in this case, the operator would be called upon by the courts to pay staggering damages to the miner's heirs under the compulsion of an extraordinary statute known as the Labourer's Compensation Act.
But now, in these days of grace, owing to the investment of British and foreign capital, the unskilled man has been superseded by electric drillers and cutters—in a word, modern methods are being used in our mines with the result that we have fewer accidents and losses.
This application of machinery to the industry has also brought about a maximum of output with a minimum of expenditure. The development work can be done with more speed and less expense, so that the old disabilities under which western operators had to labour will soon be cancelled out of memory.
While the application of machinery to mining must indubitably minimize the probability of strikes, the operators must be prepared to reckon with these until the end of time, in that throwing down their tools appears to be the chief occupation of miners. It is hard to account for this irresponsible vagary unless it be that they receive twice as much pay as other workmen. Or it may be that they make a fetish of the union, in which respect they do resemble certain stupid people in the southern seas who have a worm to their god and are wont to sacrifice oxen to it.
Now, miners on strike are persons of no very marked refinement, neither are they given to logic. What Tennyson says of the Light Brigade is finely applicable here—"Theirs not to reason why."
When you meet real strikers nothing counts. You may do everything which instinct, invention or despair can suggest, except descending to vulgar invective, yet without the slightest tangible result. No matter how soothly their employer may speak to them, they are suspicious of him or her. The intervention must always come from a third party. These men are the latter-day exponents of the old rule laid down by Dean Swift for the better direction of servants: "Quarrel with each other as much as you please, only always bear in mind that you have a common enemy which is your Master and Lady."
To find yourself facing a square of irate strikers is to feel yourself very thin, very colourless, and amazingly inexperienced. It is to wonder at the rudeness of their speech, the largeness of their mouths, and to speculate in a Christianly way as to just what screw is loose in their mental make-up. I know this to be the way of it, for once we had a strike in a mine which I, with a strutting but misguided assurance, imagined to be the property of our family. Owing to a former superintendent having entered into an agreement with the union, I learned we were holding the mine co-operatively, and that I could not dismiss the men either individually or collectively.
The trouble happened in this wise: the president being absent for several months, it fell to me, as vice-president, to hold the reins. By reason of the facts that the seam of coal was pinching thin; that the miners were receiving one-third more than any others in the locality, and that we were producing on a falling market, we found we were losing nearly one hundred dollars a day. The superintendent invited the miners to discuss the matter without prejudice. They did not disallow the correctness of his contention but refused to consider a reduction of their wages. They were content to stand by their side of the agreement and would see to it that the company did the same.
And here I showed a lack of discretion in allowing this matter to be discussed, for, while failing to deduce that it was highly preposterous to kill the goose who laid the golden egg, they still had the penetration to see that in closing down the mine because of lack of orders, my primary object was to nullify the agreement. Nothing could express their unmeasured contempt of the vice-president, and they left me under no misapprehension as to their opinion of me. They accused me of playing them, and being guilty of the offence, I was naturally offended at the accusation. Still, I declined to be led into further discussion, or to recriminate in kind, so that ultimately I came to feel strong as one does who is intentionally weak before her enemy. There was nothing for it. The miners had to walk out, all except the engineers who pumped the water from the sump. Now, the night engineer had a face so wicked that he might all his life have been stoking furnaces in the underworld, and he it was who permitted the men to enter the shaft and put a stick in the valve of the pulsometer so that the mine became flooded and several entries caved in.
I was quite as angry as my temperament allowed, and it would have given me much satisfaction to have killed them, for, after all, this is a most effective method of getting rid of your enemies. It was, nevertheless, no small satisfaction when the superintendent, a tight-built muscular Englishman, gave the engineer a touch or two that reminded the onlooker of a piston-rod in action. If might and right are not the same thing, they ought to be. Two weeks later, the works were re-opened with other workmen on a new wage scale. On arriving at the mine the following day, I found our former employees were picketing it. They had a crow to pluck with me, I could see that. The very air was portentous. Those workmen were like the horses of Phoebus Apollo in that their breasts were full of fire and they breathed it forth from their nostrils and mouths. But while the men were abusive and loud-voiced, they were never insulting, for even Satan finds it hard to forge a weapon against a smile and an unwavering courtesy. And, after all, what can strikers do with a vice-president who is a woman? It seemed like taking an unfair advantage of them. It was only when we met the miner's wives that I learned my exceeding limitations; that the power fell out of my elbow and the stiffening out of my collar-bone.
When I say "we" I mean William and myself. Now, William was my driver, and he spent fourteen years in the British cavalry. He had served in Egypt and South Africa; he had fought his way through a screaming death at Omdurman and yes, I will say it—William was "a nob" and handsome as a circus horse. His deference as he lifted me down off the high seat, his manifest concern for my comfort, and his superb arrogance as he bade the women "Give over there!" were too much, for even these raging furies to reckon with. His coolness under a withering fire of invective restored me to normal and enabled me to stand pat.
To shorten the story, we had to engage three successive gangs before we won out. By that time the strikers had become divided, some having accepted work in other mines, while the remainder became discouraged and gradually gave up the picket.
I have dwelt at some length on this matter of strikes because, as yet, no actual operator has expressed his view point or his feeling under the ordeal, whereas the strikers have made the street corners vibrant concerning the villainies of their employers whom they designate as Capital. In dismissing this phase of mining, I would say a strike is to be avoided at almost any cost, for, apart from its factor as a somewhat strenuous builder of character, it is a victory which costs the operator too dearly both in the expenditure of nerves and of money.
... Before being led into the discussion of finances and strikes, I had started to tell you about an Albertan mine and its workings. The theme is worth picking up again. Before you go down, it is well to have a look around the machinery-room where the engines pump up the water and pump down the air. You will also be interested in the great spool or drum which unwinds the long steel cables by which the cage is lowered or hoisted in the shaft. One man stands beside it and controls it with a lever. The man behind the lever needs to be equally as steady and effective a worker as the man behind the gun, for it is by this cage the men enter and leave the mine, although they may, if so disposed, ascend or descend by the escapement or ladder-shaft beside it.
It is the strict duty of the foreman to examine this drum, these cables, and the cage every day, and to record his findings in a book which he is required to keep in compliance with the laws regulating coal-mines. This man must also carefully test for gas. The maintenance of the air-circuit is a matter of much concernment to the operators, for on it depends not only the health and security of the men but the safety of the mine itself. Carbon monoxide, which is white damp, is more dreaded by the miners than any other gas because it is difficult to detect, having no odour, taste or colour.
The Bureau of Mines in the United States have recently discovered that canary birds are extremely susceptible to it and, after being exposed for three minutes to air containing one-sixth of the one per cent, of the gas, show marked distress. In eight minutes, they fall off their perches. As a result, many American miners are now using canaries to watch out for gas while they are at work.
Black damp, or carbon dioxide, may be detected by its peculiar odour. It is heavier than air and tends to suffocate fire. After an explosion has taken place these two gases become mixed and form what is known as after damp, a mixture which surely destroys all life remaining in the mine.
From familiarity with danger, miners become disdainful of it and careless to a degree that is well-nigh incredible. They will hold dynamite caps in their mouths for convenience, a risk which pales into nothingness the ancient simile of the weaned child who plays on the den of the cockatrice. He is a poor man of low-funk spirit who does not believe himself quick enough to cross a cage after the signal to ascend has been given. To run this venture is, to them, a matter of no moment. I have seen more than one miner caught and crushed through a slight miscalculation in this respect, but these accidents are so quickly forgotten that they do not act as deterrents to any noticeable extent. In truth, there seems little reason to doubt that most of the sudden catastrophes which result in the loss of many valuable lives, are the result of some insane risk taken by one man. If these risks were not among those things which the Deity is said to "wink at," all miners would have been killed long ago.
If you feel inclined, you might stop awhile and look at the skeleton-like tipple of the mine, by which I mean the wooden framework above it; at the automatic self-dumping skips and at the rocking screens which sort the coal into the kinds known as lump, egg, and nut; but the tempestuous torrent of coal from the hopper bottoms of the cars would drown our talk and assault our eardrums, so, on the whole, it is just as well to take these things for granted.
One's first descent into a mine is an experience rather than a pleasure. To leave the sharp intensity of the sunlight and to be suddenly dropped into a horrible pit, is to feel oneself rolled into a tight little ball, with every nerve as hard as a nail. You hope, you pray, that the long, lithe cables which hold the cage are stronger than they look. You wonder if you will come out feet foremost in Australia, and if it will hurt very much. After a second or third experience, the sensation is one of swift adventuring, but few people care to inure themselves to this frame of spirit. Arrived at the shaft bottom, you are made aware with the aid of your cap lamp, of huge square timbers around you and of a "sump" or well, underneath. It is into this sump that all the entries of the mine are drained.
Without realizing it, you will have lowered your voice, for the darkness and stillness oppress you as though you were bearing a weight on your shoulders. The air is lifeless and leaden. This is assuredly The City of Dreadful Night. You feel as if you were the last survivor in a dead world. But presently, a strong hand will take yours in his and lead you through the Stygian darkness till your eyes become habituated to the gloom, when you will become aware of two tracks stretching away in the channel which has been hollowed out of the coal. Then you will be warned to step aside and keep close to the wall while a stocky-car holding probably three tons is, with a vast grinding of wheels, whirled by you to the cage, there to be hoisted to the tipple.
Your guide will explain that you are in the main entry or tunnel of the mine, and that there are other entries at right angles. These with the rooms which open off them, are surveyed by engineers with great exactness and according to certain regulations laid down in the mining statutes.
Here and there in the blackness, thin tongues of flame move about like fireflies. These are the lamps in the miners' caps. You have also a fire-fly in your bonnet, but, of course, it is only visible to the onlookers. These lamps are like little coffee-pots and are filled either with carbide or seal oil. In the more modern mines which are lighted by electricity, lamps are not required so much, although no man ventures into the mine without one. Faith is not nearly so estimable a virtue as sight, no matter what the theologians may say. It was a miner poet (you must not spell it a minor poet) who wrote the lines—
"God, if you had but the moonStuck in your cap for a lamp,Even you'd tire of it soonDown in the dark and the damp.
Nothing but blackness aboveAnd nothing moves but the cars—God, in return for our love,Fling us a handful of stars."
These lamps are the footlights the miners hold up to Old King Coal as they pierce his sides with their electric drills, and wrench open his wounds with their ripping charges of dynamite. They call this shooting the coal, so it is just as well to keep your peculiar fantasies to yourself.
In a coal-mine one loses his sense of direction, for there is no heaven above, no earth beneath—nothing but silence and black impenetrableness.
And yet, when you are alone in a mine, you may hear a sound like the sighing of great trees. This is probably the utterance of your own blood to which you are giving audience as when you put your ear to a conch-shell; or it may be the surging sigh of the enormous primitive ferns, sigillarias and lepidodendrons who lay down in these strata as though for an eternal rest. In the counting-house of the years, vast cycles have come and gone till, now in these impertinent days of dynamite and electricity, uncouth, ungentle men have broken their rest forever. The complaint of the trees is not without judgment. The thing seems ill-done and almost, of myself, I can hear their tragical murmurings.
The temperature in the coal-mine does not vary with the seasons, and the men believe it healthier to work in this underworld than to be subject to the changes of climate above. They have also told me that there is no echo in a coal stratum. I do not know if this be true, but, of a surety, one's voice does not carry far in the dead air, and even the shots of dynamite seem to be muffled and indistinct. Nevertheless, it is my opinion—an irrational one, no doubt—that men who dig in mines should have music rather than men who eat in cafés. We need to recast our ideas about these things.
It makes no difference how you have quarrelled with these miners in a strike; it makes no difference that once you felt like murdering them in bulk, it is impossible to follow them day after day through the working of a coal-mine without seeing something heroic in their crude bent figures. You may not be able to understand the language they speak, for many of them are foreign born, but in time you come to talk to them through the smile, the touch on the arm, or the clap of the hands, which signals are, after all, the universal language of the world. Most of these men are kindly disposed and, when left free from the machinations of the lawyer, are capable of self-sacrifice for their employer, and even of affection. In every gang of men, whether in railway construction, lumber camp, or coal-mine, there is always an unamiable workman of ferocious egoism who is known as the camp lawyer. The legal fraternity will probably resent this misuse of their name, and properly so, for this fellow is froward in manner and has the same loving heart as a tiger. He it is who stirs up all the internal strifes and keeps them at boiling point. It is an art in which he greatly excels. In olden days, they called a man of his ilk a gallows knave, and the epithet was selected with care. Foremen are, nowadays, beginning to pay less attention to the communion of saints in their camps and vastly more to the communion of sinners. It is a foreman's particular business to spot the lawyers early in the game and to deal with them as the occasion warrants.
There are many things to be observed down in these black entrails of the earth, but, before we leave, we will look at the stables. They are lighted by electricity. It is the work of the horses to haul the cars to the main entry where they are switched on to the electric cable. It is commonly believed that horses who live in mines become blind. This is not true. What they lose is their sense of colour, for in the dark all things are hueless. These horses are fat-fleshed and healthy, and are so tame they can almost be mesmerized into talking to you. They seem highly interested in the story I tell them of how once the Frenchmen put twelve thousand dead men and their horses down three coal-pits at Jemappes, and things like that. They appreciate carrots, sugar-lumps and apples, which have been steadily purloined from the cook's pantry at the bunk-house, in a way that is positively human. It would be unkind to enter the mine without carrying a treat for the horses, but now, having done so, let me bid all of you on the day-shift a very good fortune, and a safe return to God's blessed sunshine.
Come, my love, and let us wanderCross the hills and over yonder.—CY WARMAN.
Banff, in the Rocky Mountains, has been so often called the playgrounds of the West, that the words have become trite and fail to carry their true significance. This fact is inevitably borne in on the Canadian who visits the place, and he wonders to himself why he has failed to understand it before.
Assuredly this is my experience as I ride around Tunnel Mountain this beautiful August day. The road is seven miles long, and from its winding ascent, one may look across the hills and down the wide valley where the green waters of the Bow River foam into white over the rocks. This is the full-robed, full-voiced choir of the mountain temple, but I do not know what it sings.
The Valley of the Bow River with its amphitheatre of hills is the wonder picture of the Rockies, combining, as it does, all that is most beautiful in are and nature. [Transcriber's note: because of the oddness of the grammar of this sentence, it may be that one or more words are missing.]
Across it, on Tunnel Mountain, is the splendid hostelry of the Canadian Pacific Railway; warm sulphur springs that bubble up out of the earth, and a cave of waters which is an extinct geyser, but might be the matrix of the hills themselves.
Geologists say that the eastern ranges of the Rocky Mountains are of the Eocene Age, and that the western ridges are Pliocene, and eons younger. But these revelations of science are almost as overwhelming as our ignorance. They tell of the immensity of time but do not sound it. It is not possible to level them to our mental capacity.
A wealthy Sheik who once lived in the Land of Uz told us how God challenged him to answer certain questions about the mountains.
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
"Who hath stretched the line upon it?"
"Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of the waters?"
But Job could not answer so much as one question, and he said, "Behold I am vile; what shall I answer Thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth."
This Job, it would appear, was no ordinary sort of man, and one who was very wise.
And ever since, mankind has puzzled itself with these riddles, even as you and I are puzzled. Sometimes we do not so much as believe in the great Lord, who is thought to have made this world, and we say, "Aha!" and other scornful words that are wicked exceedingly. But, up in the hills, we comprehend God without so much as an effort. He is natural here. These scenes of sublimity break in on our life's dead level and show us depth within ourselves unsounded before. Impulses which have been informulate, and aspirations which the years have strangled are brought to life and sentience. "Blessed be the hills," say I, and you must reply, "Amen and Amen."
This road twists upward easily, but, in one place, they have made it into stone stairways, with each tread many feet wide so that the horses can find firm footing. This stairway looks to be a hundred feet in height. All the horses must go one way round the mountain, and not turn backwards, for there is no room to pass on the trail. Every little while, you stop to look at the savage rock forms which surround you, or at their colours. It was no stinting brush that laid them on. Opal and wine-red, purple and ochre, splash the rocks with living hues of wonderful beauty. It is a pity we have not more lavish words for these transfiguration scenes of Nature. It is foolish to try and explain them with our worn-out ones. Every traveller realizes this. For my part, in the mountains, I always feel like that Eton boy of fourteen, who was at the Battle of Waterloo. His first letter home was to this effect: "Dear Mamma: Cousin Tom and I are all right. I never saw anything like it in my life."
There are few birds hereabout. I have only seen a robin and a hawk. The hawk hovered above as if undecided what to do and then fell as if he had been dropped from a plummet. This bird has an instinct for the straight line that might shame even a Dominion land surveyor. This and the fact that the hawk has been known to eat mosquitoes, are his only claims to our attention or respect. All the world knows him for a predaceous bird, and that his heart is a fierce furnace.
A nice-seeming man who is working on the road tells me there are many kinds of animals in the Banff Park, but that they are all preserved. In the corral there are eighty buffaloes. The corral consists of two thousand acres. The white-tailed deer are so tame they come up to the village. There are wolverines, too, and these animals are of so covetous a nature they will steal even a frying pan. The Indians call themcarcajous, which means "the gluttons."
This man says he was formerly a fur-pup, by which expression he means a trapper. He left the trap-line because his partner was always objecting to bacon for dinner. Huh! Huh! to hear him complain, one might almost think the Lord grew bacon for consumption at breakfast only.
Riding up the hill through the green trees, I feel as if I were in the opening paragraph of a story, and an half expecting at each bend of the road to meet a knight in armour with a retinue of servants. As he fails to appear I talk to Swallow, my mare, and she twitches her ears as though she understands. Indeed, there is little doubt but that she does.
"Let us stay awhile here," say I, "and look at this gay young squirrel. He is enlarging his burrow as if he intended finishing it in five minutes. He is no hireling squirrel. What say you, Swallow?"
If a mare can laugh, this one does, but maybe it is only her way of coughing.
"And I have an idea, Swallow, that she is inside with four or five baby squirrels, who think the world is lined with fur and that life consists in drawing nutriment from a warm breast. This must be the way of it."
"Step along, my pretty one, and may it happen we shall find the Knight round the next turn. Do you notice how the green trees grow like a mane on the hills?"
Swallow thinks differently. It is her opinion that the dark needle-like pines stand erect in the same way as the fur on a grizzly's back. I know this, else why does she shy violently as we make the turn?
"You are wrong, my pretty one," say I. "These pine-trees are very religious and much too dignified to attack you and me. Besides, the needles of the pines drive devils away, and if you carry a sprig of spruce with you in the woods, no ill-luck will ever come to you. Théophile Trembly, who is a woodsman and a ranger, told me this.
"Do not linger, Sweet-o'-my-Heart; the world is young and you and I may ride forever.
"These are juniper-bushes, any one can see. Maybe if I were to lie under one, like the Tishbite did, an angel might touch me. And maybe I should also find 'a cake baken with coals', and a cruse of water. I would tell you, Swallow, how it tasted in my mouth, for the Tishbite forgot this thing. And I would mention where the angel got the coals. They must have been the 'coals of juniper' of which King David wrote, for these are, to this very day, the best charcoals in all the world. Where the divine visitant found the match to kindle the coals...
"Ah, well! I'll ask the Padre about this, but like as not he'll say, "An irrevelant and irreverent question, M'Dear!" although it is neither one nor the other, for it argues well for humanity that an angel, who is generally portrayed as a rather offish being, should know where to find a match and how to use it. A lot could be said on this very point. It pleasures me not a little that an angel from the skies built a fire out of doors and cooked cakes on it. This surely means that when the angels take recreation they play at being men and that they have a kindly feeling for us. It might be that there are more of them around about than we have any idea, neighbourly-like angel of sap and sinew, who occasionally bear a hand in our work and who loaf around of evenings by the campfire. If an angel can cook on an out-door fire, he must know how to hang a blanket to the windward side, and an angel who knows this is no nidnoddy fellow, I can tell you.
"If you were listening more attentively, Swallow, and if I were not afraid of the Padre finding out, I would push this idea further and say that, when the angel was through with his meal, he would in all likelihood be humanely tired and would fall asleep on a heaped up mattress of fir needles and dried juniper leaves. These, as is their wont, would whisper immemorial secrets to him, so that he might come in time to be a little more tolerant of our failings and to wonder if it were altogether fair that the soul of a man should be damned for his body's needs. He might even think the same about a woman's soul. It cannot fail to vastly affect an angel's opinions when, instead of looking down from the sky, he lies on a bed of leaves and looks up at it. The whole colour and texture of his ideas must be altered. I believe he would come to feel that religious truths should vary to suit the needs of humanity, as those needs change, and that religion should serve men rather than men religion.
"A young god-man said something about this one day in a wheatfield, but he was reproved by his wincing hearers whose descendants are with us to this very day."
This conversation has become too philosophical for Swallow, whose ears are sweetly holden and who shows her wish to change my thought by single footing whenever we come to a level stretch. Doubtless, she hopes to draw my attention to her easy and right pleasant gait. If I owned her we might become great cronies.
On the top of the mountain to which we have come, the leaves on the deciduous trees seem smaller and about the size of rabbits' ears. On my way hither, I passed bluebells, ferns, heather, roses, wild cotton, and painter's brush, the plant which combines colour with heat. From several thousand feet below comes up to me the bellow of the train's engine, that makes long hollow echoes among the peaks. A peculiarity of the north is that the sounds seem only to emphasize the silence and loneliness. This engine makes an ill-noise, but without the railway, these mountains must have remained unseen to all except a hard-muscled and adventurous few. For this reason, we must feel something of the gratitude of the Chief of the Blackfeet Indians, who, in 1885, because of the friendly spirit of his tribe towards the builders, was given a pass ticket over the Canadian Pacific Railway by the President thereof. The ticket was given him in a carved frame. The letter in which he acknowledged the courtesy read like this: "I salute you, O Chief, O great One! I am pleased with railway key opening road free to me. The chains and rich covering of your name writing; its wonderful power to open the road show the greatness of your chieftainship. I have done.
his"Crow X Foot,"mark.
Standing on this hill and looking off into the sky, I and my horse seem poised in mid air. It wouldn't be so hard to fly. Hitherto, I have been following pleasure as something to be caught, and, of a sudden, I have ridden into it. Don't you know me? I am Columbine pirouetting on the white horse of the North.
Don't you know this is summer time on the hills where Nature has wealth to spill like a mad-woman and spills it? On this mountain-top, there is a wandering wind soft as a child's caress. I must make the best of it and of the fierce radiance of the sunshine, for, sooner than we bargain for, the Lord in his derision may send a cutting blizzard and it will be cold, so cold.
As I ride homeward down the trail, I lift up my voice and hallo to the sun for joy. You may call this mountain madness if you care to. Don't you know that it matters not a finger's fillip what any one says about a climber's mood or manner once she has reached the heights? Barbed arrows fall off in this rarefied air, and this, I take it, is the great reward of the climb.
There are other compensations on the heights. You may shut your eyes and have a vision of the land that lies beneath you ... let us say a vision of Mother Canada and her nine daughters, and of the part they are destined to play in history. You may open your eyes again to ponder how they will grapple with the problems of race assimilation; of arbitration and war; of morals and politics; and of labour and capital. You will conclude that nothing unfair can exist long in this land of wide spaces, and that Canada is sure to think and act greatly. And right here is a good place to repeat her prayer which it rests with each of us to answer—
"Bring me men to match my mountains;Bring me men to match my plains;Men with empires in their purposeAnd new eras in their brains."
When you are come down off the mountains there are other things to be seen at Banff, like the golf-links, the aviary, and the museums, but you will enjoy the water pastimes best, that is, if you are a Canadian or an American. The European will be shocked to see the sexes bathing together at this famous spa, for in Europe, it is their wish to bathe privately even in the ocean.
The outdoor swimming pool is a sulphur water, and comes up from the hot underworld. The pool is set in a splendid quadrangular court of grey stone, open to the sky, but shielded to windward with glass. Red-lipped flowers drip over its pillars, adding vastly to the charm of the scene. The pool is flanked on the hotel side by retiring-rooms which are as luxurious and sleep inviting as those of ancient Rome or Pompeii. Overhead, the guests may look down into the green waters and watch the bathers spring from the diving-boards or cavort about like young dolphins, tritons, or lightsome naiads. No matter how phlegmatic you may be, you will wish to tarry here indefinitely and to rest from your labours, for a voluptuous languor slides into your veins till even the mountains round about seem illusory and unreal. Here it is "Paradise enow." With this alchemy of water and sun and these electric currents of earth and sky, you could hardly expect aught but healing and enchantment.
But the attendants will not let you stay too long in the water, for it is not wise to accumulate any more sulphur on your person than is necessary to strike a light, for, owing to our proximity to the magnetic pole, most of us are already dynamos.
At the fall of day, a storm rises in the hills. These seem to come close together and whisper, and the sound is like the whirr of swords.
Many people who are wise talk about storm spirits, so there must be such ... poor distracted beings who wring their hands and moan in black discord. It may be they are the souls of murdered folk, and those who have been executed, and they cry curses on all who live and love and laugh. You must be afraid of them if you are like me. My windows look down on the Valley of the Bow and out upon a riot of hills. There is nothing more beautiful in the girth of the Seven Seas, but, to-night, this scene is awesome and full of strangeness. The black clouds are laced with streaks of lightning, or it may be that the spirits thrust out red tongues in derision.
Lord, how it blows! and I am afraid of this thunder and the shouting of the storm. The wind grapples with the trees as though they were living creatures and it makes no difference that they crouch and cry for mercy. It is Bendan, the Pine Wrestler, who is out there, and when angry he can pluck up a young tree with his little finger or break it with a push of his shoulder. But he does not do this often; he only wrestles to make them strong.
It is better for a woman to go down to the great stone dining-hall with its yellow floor, where there is music, and dancing, and love-making. It is a pretty play even to the onlooker. Or in the big central rotunda, which is the heart of this hostelry in the hills, she will find "there is always fine weather," and "the good fellows" are from all over the world and have strange stories to tell Canadian folk who stay in the North. In the cavernous fireplace, spruce logs burn redly, and by their light you may decipher the words on the mantelpiece: "The world is my school; travel our teacher; Nature our book, and God our friend." Overhead, in the fourth gallery, a deep-voiced singer is taking us into captivity. Listen, then, for it is only in music that critics are taken captive: literature has no such thraldom. It is about a perfect day that the singer sings, and this is what she says—
"And this is the end of a perfect day,Near the end of a journey too;But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,With a wish that is kind and true.For Memory has painted this perfect dayWith colours that never fade,And we find at the end of a perfect dayThe soul of a friend we've made."
Out of the North there rang a cry of Gold!—TOM McINNES.
Only this spring, a widow near Edmonton sold her quarter-section to a real-estate syndicate for eighty thousand dollars. She was one of the women who "stayed at home with the stuff" while her husband fared forth in search of gold at the time of the Klondike stampede in 1897-8. He died on the trail, and ever since the woman has ploughed the lone furrow both literally and metaphorically.
The handsome reward of her industry and pertinacity calls to mind that fable of Æsop's where the young men found that the hidden treasure their father had described to them was in the yield the soil had given after they had industriously digged it over.
We were talking about this the other night, and the humour and tragedies of the gold stampede, over the last bottle of champagne—-positively the last—that remained of the most prolonged and celebrated spree that ever took place in the North. The vintage was aKoch Filsof 1892 and, therefore (to save your mental arithmetic), I may add, twenty-one years old. It was brought in by the Helpman Expedition, familiarly known to the local wiseacres of the day as "The Helpless Proposition."
Did it taste well?
I do not know.
I like lemonade with maraschino cherries better than champagne, but the party were agreed that it was excellent drinking. One said it had a pulse; another, that European grapes sucked in more sun than those grown in America; "The stuff that makes the world go round," remarked a third. Assuredly it looks well, thought I, and the bubbles caper like they were alive.
Under the balm and stimulus of the champagne, the men (all of them old-timers) were not indisposed to talk concerning the party who brought it into the country and of the things that befell them. Also, they tell about the other parties who attempted to reach the gold-diggings by the overland route from Edmonton. These were heart-breaking tales, with, here and there, a golden thread of humour showing up in the black fabric of despoliation and defeat.
The thirty members of the Helpman Party came from Great Britain. They were unfortunate from the start. They arrived at Edmonton on Christmas Eve, one of them, Captain Alleyn, being ill with pneumonia, from which disease he died a couple of days later. He was the artist of the party, and correspondent of Reuter's News Agency.
His was the first military funeral held in the North, so that it was an event around which much interest centred.
The expedition was under the command of Colonel Helpman and Lord Avonmore of Gortmerron House, County Tyrone, known to the local folk by the unkind name of "Lord 'Ave-one-more." He died last year in Ireland. "A truly remarkable man, my dear," said an old lady of our lemonade group, "and always he talked of smashing niggers."
All provisions and supplies for the gold crusade were brought from England, except the horses, and the duty thereon amounted to several thousand dollars. In truth, they were provisioned under War Office approval, for, said they, "We are English gentlemen and must travel as English gentlemen." Baled hay and hay-choppers, baths, beds, tents, sanitary conveniences, and other impedimenta were imported by the train-load.
These Canadian men will have it, moreover, that the Britishers brought in snowshoes for their horses, which gear they were wont to designate as "bloomin' tennis racquets." I might have believed this extraordinary statement had I not guessed that my narrator gleaned his idea from theVoyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain, for these imperturbable northmen never so much as blink an eye when adding the inevitable pinch of spice to a story.
It is quite true though that the party did bring enormous supplies of "arrested" foods, egg powders, Westphalian hams, almost unlimited quantities of tinned ptarmigan, woodcock, plum-pudding, and other toothsome delicacies well calculated to pique the most jaded and club-debauched palate. Unfortunately, on being opened, nearly all these delicate edibles were found to be spoiled, so that the travellers were forced to exist on such crude diet as pig's face, rice, and beans.
But the liquors still remained. Allah be praised!—barrels and cases of it; yes! even kegs and demi-johns—brandy, burgundy, benedictine, claret, champagne, and canary—these and other brands which I forget, for my interest was attracted from the list to the wistful faces of these historians who think with love and longing on those rare old, fair old golden days that are gone beyond recall.
On their arrival at Edmonton, the commanders of the expedition were informed that a prohibition law was in force in the Yukon and that, in consequence, no spirituous liquors could be carried across its borders. This being the case, there was nothing for it but to drink the liquors in Edmonton. They had no licence to sell it, and to pour it upon the unappreciative prairie would be manifestly absurd—even wicked. This is why I was correct in saying that our vintage of the night was the last bottle of the most prolonged and celebrated spree that ever took place in the North. In truth, it was an Homeric carousal.
The spree lasted for six weeks, and fights with their legal sequences were frequent. To use the most generally approved northern expression of the day, "They just fit and fit," so that more than once the good Archdeacon of Alberta had to pour oil and balm into the broken bones and brittle nerves of the combatants. Indeed, he went so far as to have them nursed in his own home. He is a hale-hearted, fine-fibred gentleman, our Archdeacon.
It is hardly fair, however, to lay the entire spree to the credit of the stampeders. The population of Edmonton, in the late nineties, consisted of fifteen hundred people, and all the male portion of it used their utmost endeavours to prevent any good liquor going to waste. The gentry of the community were invited to partake, but the hewers of wood and drawers of water who had been engaged to exercise the pack-horses by walking them up and down, these, and the disorderly arrant idlers who hung on the borders of the camp, helped themselves. Their motto was the same as Lord Nelson's—"Touch and take." Indeed, the speedy manner in which they relieved the expedition of any encumbering wealth was truly most astonishing. They have a theory in the North that everything belongs by right to the man who has the greatest need. Now, the need of the North is a very big pocket and there are holes in it.
Ultimately, the party got away. They took the Swan Hill route that leads to the Old Assiniboine Crossing, but spring had already set in so that the trails were deep with water, and the muskegs were bottomless pits.
The leader of the expedition (by which they meant the foreman as distinct from the director) was Mr. Matthew Evanston O'Brien, an Irish solicitor and erstwhile Chief of Police in Australia. It is also said he was an English secret-service man. He died in April of this year at Wetaskawin, Alberta, where he was practising law.
The breeds and other packers who accompanied the party became insolent and purposely lost their loads. One man smashed the camp stove and dropped it into a river; others lost tents; while some found hay and oats as hard to hold as quicksilver. Being badly sheltered and underfed, nearly all of their hundred horses died, so that long afterwards teamsters coming to the south picked up wagon loads of harness besides other useful gear. In a word, like the man who tried all the rheumatism cures, the members of the Helpman Expedition were "done good."
Some of the party got as far as Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River, but in the end every man, greatly chastened in spirit, turned back to Edmonton, where some of them were stranded for several months before money came to take them on to England.
Do not laugh at their misfortune. It is not seemly so to do, for, in all this wildly-warring world, there are few more bitter cups than the failure of a big financial coup in the which you have invested your own (and alas!) other people's money.
Besides, few of the scores of parties who started fared any better, while many faced worse. Some of them, like the Moody Expedition, returned because they could not make over two or three miles a day, they having to fell the impeding timber. At this rate of travel, the journey would have occupied five years.
Other crusaders returned because they had no food or money, a condition that scarcely makes for progress or health.
Still others came back because they had fallen out by the way, for the trail has the satanic peculiarity of developing all that is surly, selfish, or yellow in human nature. People who are tired, ill, and hungry lift the curtain of their character and forget to let it fall, so that the result is disillusionment to all concerned. Not a few men who started in on pronouncedly amicable terms, eating from the same plate both actually and figuratively, came out brimful with umbrage, hatred and pique. Murder on the trail may be almost a natural impulse.
But all the derelicts who returned had one well-defined peculiarity (albeit a negative one), they came in quietly by the back trails—they who had gone forth full-fed and wanton as young gophers. The North had rolled out their individuality like one might roll out dough. They were "the bitten;" gaunt-eyed starvelings; tatterdemalions who might have posed for Rip Van Winkle or The Ancient Mariner. The North is a goodly country and attracts goodly men, yet, even here, one may lose both his sense and his competence.
"Did no one succeed?" I ask.
"Oh yes!" replies a jocund old gentleman who has lived here these thirty years. "One man got through by hook or crook—chiefly crook. He was a real-estate agent and insurance broker."
Further questions elicit the fact that this broker was not so much a stampeder as an absconder. He was short in his returns to the insurance company and took this means of avoiding arrest. At least, so it was rumoured. He left Edmonton in the late winter with no money, no food—nothing but a small hand-satchel containing collars and blank premium forms. All the way along he insured the trailers on the straight life, endowment, or accident policies, or for sick benefits. They were far enough on the trail to realize that there was a distinct possibility of their requiring one, if not all these premiums, so our broker found fat pickings. Resides, each trailer had begun to think lovingly and longingly of his family at home, and of what a comforting compensation a ten-thousand dollar policy might be to them in the event of his death. Indeed, it seemed almost like swindling the company to take out a policy on this journey. But what would you? Here was their properly certified agent with the requisite papers to boot. One must take what the gods send.
At Athabasca Landing, our broker man stole a boat and made his way down the river. He fed at each camp he encountered; related how he had become separated from his party, and how he was hurrying forward to rejoin them. Under the circumstances, it was only natural that his hosts should supply him with enough food for a day or two. Besides, it would never do to let him die of starvation and he carrying their good money and insurance policies in his satchel—the little black hand-satchel wherein he kept his collars.
He reached Dawson early in the rush, but we do not know how it fared with him there—-whether he crushed his money from stones or bones—for it was probable he took a new name, and, needless to say, he did not return via the overland route to Edmonton.
Two others who reached the northern Eldorado were Jim Kenealey and Jack Russell. It took them two years to get in. Russell struck pay-dirt in the Cape Nome District, but Kenealey, after abandoning several claims, came out penniless. He died recently at the Cameron House, Strathcona, of which hotel he was proprietor. Kenealey, who came from Peterboro', Ontario, in the early eighties, was a clever sleight-of-hand artist and one time had an encounter with an Indian, it being natural and entirely reasonable that the Indian should demand the fifty cents that Kenealey claimed to have taken from his ear.
"But there were others who reached the gold zone," explains a lawyer who was, in those days, a cub-reporter, type-setter, and I know not what besides. "I have forgotten their names, but you may find them in the files ofThe Bulletin."
One of these parties comprised four men, Martin McNeeley from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, George Baalam, W. Schreeves and W. J. Graham.
Schreeves and Baalam reached Dawson safely; Graham was drowned on the way, and McNeeley, who injured his foot, was left behind by the others somewhere near the Devil's Portage.
Some months afterwards, Mr. E. T. Cole of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, with his party, stumbled upon a small tent in which they found a terribly decomposed body. It was McNeeley's. By his side there was a knife, a compass, a rifle, twenty-five rounds of cartridges, twenty pounds of flour, some meat, matches and wood. The following excerpts are from his diary—
"December 28, 1897—My partners deserted me and tried to cripple me further by taking my grub.
"January 5, 1898—Walked eight miles on my awful foot and am crippled on an Island alone. The pain of my foot is terrible."
The files reveal another tragedy in which two men from Brantford, Ontario, were the principals—the Strathdees.
Mr. A. C. Strathdee was one of the early stampeders. He went north with sixteen pack-horses. His only companion was his son, aged twenty-two, W. Harvey Strathdee, a member of the Dufferin Rifles. They camped one night beside the Taylor Trail that leads to Nelson. In the morning, while cooking breakfast, Harvey sighted a moose and, straightway, started in pursuit. At noon he had not returned and his father, becoming anxious, tried to follow the trail, but unsuccessfully. At night, the now frantic man lit a fire and shot off his rifle in the hope that Harvey might see or hear them. He did this for eight terrible days and eight more terrible nights, till he realized that further delay would endanger his own life. In these eight days, half of his horses died from lack of food, the man being afraid to shift camp in case Harvey might find his way back.
Further on, he met James and John Fair of Elkhorn, Manitoba, who returned with him to spend yet eight other days in unavailing search. At Dunvegan, Mr. Strathdee engaged a white man, an Indian, and a dog-train to go in and make quest till spring. Then he came back to Edmonton, where he exacted promises from the journalists to forward to him at Brantford any report that might come in from the trails regarding the lost youth.
For a long time nothing came but, one day, some Indians brought in word how on their way north nearly a year before, they fell on the fresh trail of a lost white man and had followed it up. They knew he was white for he wore boots, and that he was lost because of his uncertain, round-about course. They found his body on a mountain between two logs. His arms were outspread and his cartridge belt and rifle lay by his side. The trees around had been burned, and the Indians were of the opinion that he had set them on fire to try and attract his father's attention.
That the public of Canada and the United States had little idea of the hardships to be endured on the overland trail was evidenced by the fact that a number of women attempted to take it. Some of them wore ordinary clothes with plumes in their hats, but the more knowing ones were attired in jaeger skirts and jerseys, also they wore jaeger caps that covered the face except for the nose and mouth. In their belts they carried six-shooters.
Letters were received here asking if the writers could get through to the Klondyke on bicycles; if there were good boarding-houses on the way, and if the Indians were troublesome.
For the instruction of the stampeders, the Honourable the Minister of the Interior, then Mr. Frank Oliver, issued a special number ofThe Bulletin, which was the farthest north newspaper, mapping out the route and the distances between the points.
By the shortest and best travelled trails, the entire distance from Edmonton to the Klondyke was 2,728 miles. This route was via the Athabasca, Great Slave, Mackenzie and Peel Rivers. From thence it crossed to Summit, La Pierre House, and down the Porcupine River to its junction with the Yukon River. From this point to Dawson was the home-run.
There are said to be sixty-eight roads to heaven, but this road to Dawson is not one of them.
Each man had six pack-ponies to carry in his supplies, which consisted of 900 lb. of food and 150 lb. of clothing and hardware, making in all, 1,050 lb. The ponies cost from twenty-five to thirty dollars, and it was conservatively estimated that the supplies cost $250.00.
The food was calculated on the basis of the Mounted Police rations and was supposed to last a year, being doled out at the following ration per man, per day: flour 1-¼ lb., beef 1-½ lb., bacon 1 lb., potatoes 1 lb., apples 3 oz., beans 4 oz., coffee or tea ½ oz., salt ½ oz., butter 2 oz., sugar 3 oz.
With praiseworthy discretion, many of the Old-Timers opened up depots to supply the parties with outfits, but, on the whole, there was no over-charging or money-grabbing such as one might have expected. On the contrary, the prices that prevailed were from 25 to 75 per centum less than those of to-day. Flour was $2.50 per hundredweight; bacon 11 cents per pound, evaporated apples 8 cents, rolled-oats 3 cents, raisins 10 cents, and black tea from 25 to 40 cents. Pack-saddle blankets cost $2.00 a pair, and large grey blankets $3.25. Long arctic socks cost from 50 cents to $1.00, sweaters from $1.00 to $1.50, and cardigan jackets from $1.00 to $2.00.
Many kinds of costumes were affected. Some men were clad in fur from head to feet; others wore khaki, or sheepskin coats; and in one party every man had a coonskin coat.
Nothing, however, caused so much excitement in the burgh as the various modes of conveyance that were planned and built by the gold-seekers.
"Texas" Smith started alone on the longish trail with all his provisions packed in three barrels. These were equipped as rollers or wheels with a platform on top for sleeping purposes. He calculated that on the rivers the barrels would act as floaters and so could be comfortably navigated.
Texas travelled nearly nine miles before the hoops came off. He was able to retrace his steps to town by the beans the barrels shed on the road. They took his photograph, and that of his conveyance, before he started but, on his return, good-naturedly refrained, for it was distinctly noticeable that Texas had the air of having eaten the canary.
Breneau Fabian, a Belgian, invented a boat which, being intended for all elements, was constructed from galvanized iron. He called it Noah's Ark. It was built in two parts with a hinge in the middle. When open, it could be used on the river, for it had a keel; or on the snow, for it had runners. If he cared to, he could close up his boat by means of the hinge—that is, it would turn over, one part on top of the other, in which shape it was a caravan with wheels attached. His yoke of oxen were to be killed at Athabasca Landing and salted down as food for the journey.
For the information of the curiously inclined, I might say that until recently, Fabian's Ark served as a float at all civic processions such as Labour Day and the Queen's Jubilee, but it has had its day and its scrap heap.
Another man, whose name I could not learn, built an ice-boat on the Saskatchewan River. He had figured out that he could reach the placer-diggings by means of sails, thus acquiring a distinct monetary advantage over the folk and fellows who had horses, in that sails would not require to be fed with hay and oats.
Be it said to the credit of the folk and fellows that they cherished no grudge in their hearts, for, the sails refusing to act, they loaned him fourteen teams wherewith to haul his ice-boat on to the bank.
Considering the length and nature of the trail, perhaps the most bird-witted scheme of reaching the Klondike was that evolved by the "I Will" Steam-Sleigh Company of Chicago. They ought to have known better.
They built a train of four cabooses or cars, the motive power of which was steam. A marine boiler and engine were imported from the United States, upon which they paid $500.00 custom toll. Also, they imported a revolving drum equipped with teeth, similar to those used on the log-roads in the big timber-limits, and sprocket-wheels, band-chains, and other things no mortal woman could be expected to remember. All the cars were on steel-runners. The one behind the engine contained fuel; the second was the living car, while the third held supplies.
Everything was packed and loaded ready for the hour of starting before the builders had tested the machine. All Edmonton was assembled to see the sight, while scores of Indians squatted around and stared like gargoyles. The workmen, with an air of high concern, twisted a bolt here, or a belt there; oiled a hub, or did one of the hundred things a mechanic does to an engine and boiler when he would have you believe he is earning his pay.
It was a proud moment when one of the builders stepped forward and touched his hat to a blue-uniformed official—a moment, too, that was fraught with serious issues, for the blue-uniform said, "Let her go!" All Edmonton ceased to breathe and the Indians looked almost pale.
There was a vast creaking; a shudder as if the caverns of the deep were opened; the wheels turned—and turned—and turned, and with each turn buried the machine deeper into the earth, there to remain till the day that Kenneth Macleod bought the marine boiler and engine for his sawmill. They say he bought it for a song, but no one ever heard the song. Ah! but those were right royal days for the Old-Timers, the like of which can never be.
I nearly forgot about the three cabooses. These stampeders who did not die of scurvy, hardship, starvation, or accident, and who returned via Edmonton, used the cabooses for shelter while they wrote home for money.
It was a long time before they were free of occupants.