CHAPTER XXIA YUKON MINING CAMP
The supper provided by the hospitable miners was a good one, and heartily did our travellers enjoy it; but while they are appeasing the extraordinary appetites that they acquired somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, let us take a look at this most northern of American mining camps.
To begin with, although it is at the junction of Forty Mile Creek and the Yukon River, it is not in Alaska, but about twenty miles east of the boundary in Northwest Territory, which is one of the subdivisions of Canada. The most recent name of this camp is “Mitchell,” but all old Yukon miners know it as Camp Forty Mile. At the time of Phil Ryder’s visit it contained nearly two hundred log-cabins, two stores, including the one that he established in the name of his friend Gerald Hamer, two saloons, both of which were closed for the season, and a small cigar factory. Although the winter population was only about three hundred, in summer-time it is much larger, as many of the miners come out in the fall and return before the 15th of June, at which date, according to Yukon mining law, every man owning a claim must be on the ground, or it may be “jumped.”
Forty Mile is what is known as a placer camp, which means that its gold is found in minute particles or “dust” in soft earth, from which it can be washed in sluices or rockers. Into one of these a stream of wateris turned that sweeps away all the dirt and gravel, allowing the heavier gold to sink to the bottom, where it is caught and held by cross-bars or “riffles.”
Although gold has been discovered at many points along the Yukon and its branches, the deposit at Forty Mile is the richest yet worked, and has paid as high as three hundred dollars to a man for a single day’s labor. Twelve thousand dollars’ worth of gold was cleared by one miner in a three months’ season, and a five-hundred-dollar nugget has been found; but most of the miners are content if they can make “ounce wages,” or sixteen dollars per day, while the average for the camp is not over eight dollars per day during the short season of that arctic region.
Sluices can only be worked during three or four months of summer-time; then come the terrible eight or nine months of winter when the mercury thinks nothing of dropping to sixty or seventy degrees below zero, and the whole world seems made of ice. Strange as it may appear, the summer weather of this region is very hot, eighty-five degrees in the shade and one hundred and twelve degrees in the sun being frequently reached by the mercury. During the summer months, too, the entire Yukon Valley is as terribly infested with mosquitoes as is any mangrove swamp of the tropics. Thus the hardy miner who penetrates it in his search for gold is made to suffer from one cause or another during every month of the year.
In spite of the summer heat the ground never thaws to a depth of more than five or six feet, below which it is solidly frozen beyond any point yet reached by digging. Under the dense covering of moss, six to eighteen inches thick, by which the greater part of Alaska is overspread, it does not thaw more than a few inches. Consequently the most important item of a Yukon miner’s winter work is the stripping of thismoss from his claim in order that next summer’s sun may have a chance to thaw it to working depth.
There were no women nor children at Forty Mile, and there were very few amusements, but there is plenty of hard work in both summer, when the sun hardly sets at all, and in the winter, when he barely shows his face above the southern horizon. Besides the laborious task of moss-stripping, the miner must saw out by hand all lumber for sluices and rockers. He must build his own cabin and fashion its rude furniture, besides doing all of his own house-work and cooking. He also expects to do a certain amount of hunting and trapping during the winter months, so that his time, unless he be very lazy, is fully occupied. But lazy men are not apt to reach Forty Mile, for the journey from Juneau, in southern Alaska, which is the largest city in the Territory, as well as the nearest outfitting point for the diggings, is so filled with peril and the roughest kind of hard work as to deter any but men of the most determined energy.
At Juneau, Yukon travellers provide themselves with an outfit of snow-shoes, sledges, tents, fur clothing, provisions, and whatever else seems to them necessary. Starting in the early spring, they proceed by boat to the Chilkat country, seventy miles distant, and to the head of Chilkoot Inlet. From there they set forth on a terrible mountain climb over snow many feet in depth, where they are in constant danger from avalanches, and cross the coast range by a pass that rises three thousand feet above timber-line. On the opposite side they strike the head-waters of the Yukon, which they follow through a series of six lakes, sledging over their still ice-bound waters, and rafting down their connecting links, in which are seething rapids, dark gorges, and roaring cañons, around which all goods must be carried on men’s backs. After sometwo hundred miles of these difficulties have been passed, trees must be felled, lumber sawed out, and boats constructed for the remaining five hundred miles of the weary journey.
As it would not pay to transport freight by this route, all provisions and other supplies for the diggings are shipped from San Francisco by sea to St. Michaels, where they are transferred to small river steamers like theChimo, and so, after being many months on the way, finally reach their destination. By this time their value has become so enhanced or “enchanted,” as the miners say, that Phil Ryder found flour selling for $30 per barrel, bacon at 35 cents per pound, beans at 25 cents per pound, canned fruit at 60 cents per pound, coarse flannel shirts at $8 each, rubber boots at $18 per pair, and all other goods at proportionate rates. Even sledge dogs, such as he had purchased at Anvik for $5 or $6 each, were here valued at $25 apiece.
In view of these facts it is no wonder that the news of another steamer on the river bringing a saw-mill to supply them with lumber, machinery with which to work the frozen but gold-laden earth of their claims, and a large stock of goods to be sold at about one-half the prevailing prices, created a very pleasant excitement among the miners of that wide-awake camp.
On the day following his arrival, and after a careful survey of the situation, Phil rented the largest building in the place, paying one month’s rent in advance, and giving its owner an order on Gerald Hamer for the balance until the time of theChimo’sarrival. This building had been used as a saloon, and was conveniently located close by the steamboat-landing facing the river. Into it the sledge party moved all their belongings, including the seventeen wolf-skins, which now formed rugs for their floor as well as coverings for severalsplit-log benches. Serge and the two Indians at once started up the river with the sledges for a supply of firewood, which was a precious article in Forty Mile at that time, leaving Phil and Jalap Coombs to clean the new quarters and render them habitable. While the latter, with a sailor’s neat deftness, attended to this work, Phil busied himself with a pot of black paint and a long breadth of cotton cloth. At this he labored with such diligence that in an hour’s time a huge sign appeared above the entrance to the building and stretched across its entire front. On it, in letters so large that they could be plainly read from the river, was painted the legend, “Yukon Trading Company, Gerald Hamer, Agent.”
This promise of increased business facilities was greeted by a round of hearty cheers from a group of miners who had assembled to witness the raising of the new sign, and when Jalap Coombs finished tacking up his end one of these stepped up to him with a keen scrutiny. Finally he said, “Stranger, may I be so bold as to ask who was the best friend you ever had?”
“Sartain you may,” replied the sailor-man, “seeing as I’m allers proud to mention the name of old Kite Roberson, and likewise claim him for a friend.”
“I thought so!” cried the delighted miner, thrusting out a great hairy paw. “I thought I couldn’t be mistook in that figger-head, and I knowed if you was the same old Jalap I took ye to be that Kite Roberson wouldn’t be fur off.Why, matey, don’t you remember the old brigBetsy?Have you clean forgot Skiff Bettens?”
“WHY, MATEY, DON’T YOU REMEMBER THE OLD BRIG ‘BETSY’?”
“WHY, MATEY, DON’T YOU REMEMBER THE OLD BRIG ‘BETSY’?”
“Him that went into the hold and found the fire and put it out, and was drug up so nigh dead from smoke that he didn’t breathe nateral agin fur a week? Not much I hain’t forgot him, and I’m nigh about asglad to see him as if he were old Kite hisself!” exclaimed Jalap Coombs, in joyous tones. Then he introduced Mr. Skiff Bettens, ex-sailor and now Yukon miner, to Phil, and pulled him into the house, and there was no more work to be got out of Jalap Coombs that day.
Phil had also been recognized. That is, Mr. Platt Riley had asked him if he were the son of his father, and when Phil admitted the relationship, told him that he had a father to be proud of every minute of his life. Didn’t he know? for hadn’t he, Platt Riley, worked side by side with Mr. John Ryder prospecting in South Africa, where every ounce of grit that a white man had in him was bound to show itself? “To be certain he had,” and now he was proud to shake the hand of John Ryder’s son, and if there was anything John Ryder’s son wanted in that camp, why he, Platt Riley, was the man to get it for him.
So our sledge travellers found that even in that remote mining camp, buried from the world beneath the snows of an arctic winter, they were among friends. This, coupled with all that they had undergone in reaching it, made it seem to them a very pleasant and comfortable place in which to rest awhile.
And it was necessary that they should stay there for a time. They must cultivate friendly business relations with the miners on Gerald Hamer’s account, and find out what class of goods were most in demand; for never until now had Phil realized the responsibility with which he had been intrusted. He must prepare a full report to send back by Kurilla and Chitsah, who could not be tempted to venture any farther away from their homes. The dogs must be well rested before they would be fitted for the second and most difficult half of the long journey. Above all, Phil felt that, as representative of the Yukon Trading Company,he must be on hand to meet the agents of its old-established rival, and defend his far-away friend from the false reports they were certain to spread concerning him.
He wondered why Goldollar and Strengel did not appear, and dreaded to meet them, but at the same time longed to have the disagreeable encounter over with as quickly as possible. So, many times each day did he gaze long and fixedly across the broad white plain of the Yukon. At length, on the eighth day after their arrival at Forty Mile, his eye was caught by some moving black dots that he felt certain must be the expected sledges.