Transcriber's Note
There are numerous photographs included in this text. Each is indicated
using captions as [Illustration: Description.]. Italic text is shown
using underscore delimiters as _italic_. There is a single instance of
the 'oe' ligature, which is here given as 'oe'.
Spelling is generally retained, with several exceptions which appear to
be printer's errors. Details may be found in an End Note following this
text. Hyphenation can be variable and is retained as found. Where the
sole instance of a hyphenated word occurs on a line break, modern usage
is followed.
There is a single footnote, a gloss on the title of the Fifth Letter,
which has been left near the beginning of that Letter.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AND HIS WIFE UPON THE TRAIL.]
IN TO
THE YUKON
BY
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
AND MAPS
SECOND EDITION
CINCINNATI
THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1904
REPRINTED JUNE 1905
PRESS OF THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY
CINCINNATI, U. S. A.
DEDICATION.
TO THE COMRADE WHOSE CHARMING COMPANIONSHIP
ADDED SO GREATLY TO THE DELIGHTS OF MY
TWO MONTHS' OUTING, THIS LITTLE
VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED.
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
These letters were not written for publication originally. They were
written for the home circle and the few friends who might care to read
them. They are the brief narrative of daily journeyings and experiences
during a very delightful two months of travel into the far north and
along the Pacific slope of our continent. Some of the letters were
afterwards published in the daily press. They are now put into this
little book and a few of the Kodak snapshots taken are given in
half-tone prints.
We were greeted with much friendliness along the way and were the
recipients of many courtesies. None showed us greater attention than the
able and considerate officials of the Pacific Coast S. S. Co., the
Alaska S. S. Co. and the White Pass and Yukon Railway Co., including Mr.
Kekewich, managing Director of the London Board, and Mr. Newell,
Vice-President of the Company.
At Atlin and Dawson we met and made many friends, and we would here
reiterate to them, one and all, our warm appreciation of their
hospitalities.
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS.
CHARLESTON-KANAWHA, WEST VIRGINIA,
August, 1904.
CONTENTS
PAGE.
I. THE GREAT LAKES. CLEVELAND TO DETROIT 13
II. ST. PAUL, WINNIPEG AND BANFF; THE WHEAT
LANDS OF THE FAR NORTHWEST 20
III. BANFF TO VANCOUVER ACROSS THE ROCKIES
AND SELKIRKS 38
IV. VANCOUVER AND SKAGWAY; FJORDS AND FORESTS 52
V. SKAGWAY, CARIBOU CROSSING AND ATLIN 75
VI. THE GREAT LLEWELLYN OR TAKU GLACIER 109
VII. VOYAGING DOWN THE MIGHTY YUKON 112
VIII. DAWSON AND THE GOLDEN KLONDIKE 132
IX. MEN OF THE KLONDIKE 170
X. DOG LORE OF THE NORTH 180
XI. HOW THE GOVERNMENT SEARCHES FOR GOLD 195
XII. SEATTLE, THE FUTURE MISTRESS OF THE TRADE
AND COMMERCE OF THE NORTH 206
XIII. THE VALLEY OF THE WILLAMETTE 224
XIV. SAN FRANCISCO 230
XV. LOS ANGELES 249
XVI. SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY 260
XVII. A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH 282
XVIII. COLORADO AND DENVER 300
XIX. ACROSS NEBRASKA 307
XX. ALONG IOWA AND INTO MISSOURI TO ST. LOUIS 314
INDEX 333
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE.
The Author and His Wife Upon the Trail _Frontispiece_.
The Waterside, Cleveland 15
Entrance St. Clair Canal 15
White Bear Lake, St. Paul 31
Down the Silver Bow--Banff 31
A Reach of the Fraser River 41
Big Douglas Fir--Vancouver Park 45
Victoria, B. C.--The Harbor 49
Leaving Vancouver 53
Awaiting Cargo--Vancouver, B. C. 57
Totem Poles at Ketchikan 61
Glaciers on Frederick Sound 63
Approaching Fort Wrangel 67
The Pier--Fort Wrangel 67
The Pier--Skagway 71
Lynn Canal from the Summit of White Pass 71
Looking Down White Pass 73
The Summit--White Pass 73
Railway Train--Skagway 77
The International Boundary 77
Early September Snow, Caribou Crossing 79
Caribou Crossing 79
A Vista on Lake Marsh 83
Woodland Along Lake Marsh 83
On the Trail at Caribou 85
View Near Caribou Crossing 85
The Taku River 89
Lake Atlin 91
Dogs, Atlin 91
Atlin Baggage Express 95
Atlin City Waterworks 95
Government Mail Crossing Lake Atlin 99
Miner's Cabin on Spruce Creek, Atlin Gold Diggings 99
Finding "Color," a Good Strike, Otter Creek, B. C. 103
Sluicing for Gold, Otter Creek, B. C. 103
An Atlin Gold Digger 105
Bishop and Mrs. Bompas 113
Great Llewellyn or Taku Glacier 113
Fishing for Grayling, White Horse Rapids 117
Moonlight on Lake Le Barge 119
Lake Bennett, from Our Car 119
A Yukon Sunset 123
The Upper Yukon 123
A Yukon Coal Mine 125
Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon 125
Coming Up the Yukon 129
The "Sarah" Arriving at Dawson, 1,600 Miles up from
St. Michael's 133
The Levee, Dawson--Our Steamer 133
Dawson City, The Yukon--Looking Down 137
Dawson and Mouth of Klondike River, Looking Up 137
Second Avenue, Dawson 141
Dawson--View Down the Yukon 141
The Cecil--The First Hotel in Dawson 143
A Private Carriage, Dawson 143
Dog Corral--The Fastest Team in Dawson 147
A Potato Patch at Dawson 147
First Agricultural Fair Held at Dawson, September, 1903 151
Daily Stage on Bonanza 155
Discovery Claim on Bonanza of the Klondike 155
Looking Up the Klondike River 159
The Author at White Horse Rapids 159
"Mes Enfants," Malamute Pups 161
A Klondike Cabin 161
On the Yukon 175
Floating Down the Yukon 175
Approaching Seattle 181
With and Without 181
Malamute Team of Government Mail Carrier, Dawson 187
Breaking of the Yukon--May 17, 1903 187
Sun Dogs 189
Winter Landscape 189
Lake Bennett 197
The Height of Land, White Pass 197
Mt. Ranier or Tacoma 217
Along the Columbia River 221
A Big Redwood 235
Italian Fishing Craft at Santa Cruz 239
Approaching San Francisco 239
The Franciscan Garden--Santa Barbara 243
Our Franciscan Guide 243
The Sea--Santa Barbara (two views) 245
Marengo Avenue, Pasadena 251
Street View, Los Angeles 251
The Sagebrush and Alkali Desert 263
The Mormon Temple 267
The Mormon Tithing House 271
The Mormon "Lion House" 271
Great Salt Lake 277
Nuckolds Putting on the Hoodwink 285
Nuckolds, "The Broncho Busted" 285
Grimsby and the Judges 289
Bunn, Making Rope Bridle 289
Arizona Moore Up 293
Arizona Moore 293
The Crowd at the Broncho-Busting Match 298
The Dun-colored Devil 298
On the Great Kanawha 325
Our Kanawha Garden 327
Map of Route in the United States 329
Map of Upper Yukon Basin 331
IN TO THE YUKON
FIRST LETTER.
THE GREAT LAKES, CLEVELAND TO DETROIT.
STEAMER NORTHWEST, ON LAKE SUPERIOR, }
August 11, 1903. }
We reached Cleveland just in time to catch the big liner, which cast off
her cables almost as soon as we were aboard. A vessel of 5,000 tons, a
regular sea ship. The boat was packed with well-dressed people, out for
a vacation trip, most of them. By and by we began to pass islands, and
about 2 P. M. turned into a broad channel between sedgy banks--the
Detroit River. Many craft we passed and more overtook, for we were the
fastest thing on the lakes as well as the biggest.
Toward 3 P. M., the tall chimneys of the huge salt works and the church
spires of the city of Detroit began to come into view. A superb water
front, several miles long, and great warehouses and substantial
buildings of brick and stone, fit for a vast commerce.
The sail up the Detroit River, through Lake St. Clair, and then up the
St. Clair River to Lake Huron, was as lovely a water trip as any I have
made. The superb park "Belle Isle," the pride of Detroit; the many,
very many, villas and cottages all along the water-side, hundreds of
them; everywhere boats, skiffs, launches, naphtha and steam, all filled
with Sunday pleasure excursionists, the many great pleasure excursion
steamers loaded down with passengers, gave a life and liveliness to the
water views that astonished and pleased us.
The Lake St. Clair is about twenty miles across, apparently broader than
it is, for the reason that its sedgy margins are so wide that the trees
and higher land further back seem the real border of the lake. What is
called the "St. Clair Flats" are the wide, low-lying lands on each side
of the long reaches of the St. Clair River. Twenty miles of cottages,
hotels, club-houses, are strung along the water-side, each with its
little pier and its boats.
Towards dark--eight o'clock--we came to Sarnia and Port Huron, and
pointed out into the great lake, second in depth to Superior--larger
than any but Superior--a bit of geography I had quite forgotten.
At dawn on Monday, we were skirting the high-wooded southern shore, and
by 11 A. M. sighted the fir-clad heights of Mackinac where Lake Michigan
comes in. Here is a beautiful protected bay, where is a big hotel, and
the good people of Chicago come to forget the summer heats. After half
an hour, we turned again and toward the north, in a half circle, and by
4 P. M. were amidst islands and in a narrow channel, the St. Mary's
River.
[Illustration: THE WATERSIDE, CLEVELAND.]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE ST. CLAIR CANAL.]
Huron is a deep blue like Superior, and unlike the green of shallow
Erie. The channel toward the Soo is very tortuous--many windings and
sharp turns, marked by buoys and multitudinous beacon lights. All along
we had passed great numbers of steamships and barges--ore carriers, but
nowhere saw a large sailing craft, only a sail boat here and there. This
entire extensive traffic is a steam traffic, and though we see many
boats, they are black and sombre, and burdened with coal and ore.
It was late, nearly seven o'clock, when we steamed slowly into the lock
basin at the Soo. High fir-clad hills on either hand; a multitude of
channels among wooded islands. A new and vigorous manufacturing
community growing up on either shore where the electric power is being
harnessed. Many buildings, many new residences, some of them large and
imposing, covering the sloping hillsides. The rapids are a mile or more
in length and half a mile wide. The American canal with its locks is on
the south side. One, the old lock, small; the other, large and deep for
modern traffic. We were here delayed more than two hours by reason of
the pack of boats ahead of us. It was dark when we came out of the
lock--a lift of twenty-one feet. But meantime, the hills on either hand
had burst out into hundreds of electric lights, betokening a much
greater population than I had conceived. As we entered the American
lock, a big black ship, almost as large as ours, crept in behind us to
the Canadian lock on the river's further side--one of the Canadian
Pacific line going to Fort William.
It was a full moon as we came out of the upper river and lost ourselves
in the blackness of Lake Superior. A keen, crisp wind, a heavier swell
than on the lakes below. We were continually passing innumerable craft
with their dancing night lights. The tonnage that now goes through the
Soo canals is greater than that of Suez. How little could the world have
dreamed of this a few years ago!
To-day when I came on deck we were just entering the ship canal that
makes the short cut by way of Houghton. A cold mist and rain, fir-trees
and birches, small and stunted, a cold land. A country smacking strongly
of Norway. No wonder the Scandinavians and Finns take to a land so like
their own.
At Houghton we were in the center of the copper region. A vigorous town,
many handsome residences. But it has been cold all day. Mercury 56
degrees this morning. A sharp wind from the north. The bulk of the
passengers are summer tourists in thin gauze and light clothing, and all
day they are shivering in the cabin under cover, while we stay warm out
on deck.
The food is excellent, and the famous planked white fish is our
stand-by.
This whole trip is a great surprise to me. The splendid great ship, the
conveniences and luxury equalling any trans-Atlantic liner. The variety
and beauty of the scenery, the differences in the lakes, their
magnitude, the islands, the tributary rivers with their great flow of
clear water, the vast traffic of multitudinous big boats. The life and
vigor and stir of this north country! Many of the passengers are going
to the Yellowstone. We will reach Duluth about 10 P. M., and leave by
the 11:10 Great Northern train for St. Paul.
SECOND LETTER.
ST. PAUL, WINNIPEG AND BANFF; THE WHEAT LANDS
OF THE FAR NORTHWEST.
ST. PAUL, Minnesota, August 13, 1903.
We have spent two delightful days in St. Paul, great city of the
Northwest that it is. We came over from West Superior by the "Great
Northern" route, very comfortably in a new and fresh-kept sleeper--a
night's ride. I was early awake and sat for an hour watching the wide
flat farming country of Minnesota. Not much timber, never a cornfield,
much wheat and oats and hay land. A black, rich soil. Still a good deal
of roll to the landscape, and, at the same time, a certain premonition
of the greater, more boundless flatness of the land yet further west.
And a land, as well, of many picturesque little lakes and pools. I now
the more perfectly comprehend why the Indian word "Minne," water, comes
in so often among the names and titles of Minne-sota.
The farm houses and farm buildings we pass are large and well built, and
here and there I see a building which might be along the Baegna Valley
or the Telemarken Fjords of Norway, it is so evidently Norse. There are,
as yet, but few people at the way-stations. We are a through flyer,
and the earlier commuters are not yet astir.
About the houses and barns, also, I notice a certain snugness,
indicative of winters that are cold.
Now, we are nearing the city, there are more men at the way-stations. It
is evident that the early morning local will follow us close behind.
We came into the big Union Depot on time. The air was crisp and dry.
There was much bustle and ado. These people move with an alert vigor,
their cheeks are rosy, their eyes are snappy, and I like the swing of
their shoulders as they step briskly along the streets. Mankind migrates
along earth's parallels of latitude, so 'tis said--and Minnesota and the
great Northwest is but another New England and New York. Vermont and New
Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York have sent her their ablest sons
and daughters, while Ontario and Quebec and the Maritime Provinces have
contributed to her population of their force and power. Upon and among
this matrix of superior American and Canadian stock, has also been
superimposed many thousands of the more energetic and vigorous men,
women and children of Europe's ancient warlike breeds--the viking
Northmen of Norway and Sweden and of Denmark, of all Scandinavia. A
still great race in their fatherlands, a splendid reinforcement to the
virtues of Puritan and Knickerbocker; while there have also come cross
currents from Virginia and the South. The type you see upon the streets
is American, but among it, and with it, is prominently evident the Norse
blue eyes and yellow hair of Scandinavia.
St. Paul is surely a great city, great in her present, great in her
future. St. Paul is builded on several hills, out along which are
avenues and boulevards and rows of sumptuous private residences, while
down in the valleys are gathered the more part of the big, modern
business blocks and store houses and manufacturing establishments, where
are centered the energies which direct her industries and commerce. St.
Paul is a rich city, a solid city. The wild boom days of fifteen and
twenty years ago are quite gone by, the bubble period has been safely
weathered, she is now settled down to conservative although keen and
active business and trade. She supplies all of that immense region lying
west and north of her, even into the now unfolding Canadian Far
Northwest. The continent is hers, even to the Pacific and the Arctic
Seas. Minnesota and the Dakotas and Montana have already poured their
wealth of grains and of ores, of wheat and of oats, of rye and of
barley, of iron and of copper, of silver and of gold, into her capacious
lap, and now Manitoba and Alberta and Assiniboia and Saskatchewan and
Athabaska, and all the unfolding regions between the Hudson Bay and the
Rocky Mountains, the fertile valleys of the Saskatchewan and Peace
Rivers, are to contribute even yet more lavishly to her future
commercial predominance as unrivalled mistress of the North. She and
Minneapolis will have this trade. She and her twin sister city are
entitled to it. And if I mistake not the spirit of the men I have talked
with upon her streets, in her shops and banks and clubs, she and
Minneapolis will secure of it their full and certain share.
Here in the splendid stores of St. Paul we have made the last few
purchases of the things we shall need for our going into the distant
Yukon. H. has bought a perfectly fitting sweater--a garment that we
searched for and ransacked through the town of Antwerp, in Belgium, two
years ago, and could not find, while I have laid in some woolen
garments, so fit and warm that they make one hanker for an Arctic
blizzard just for the joy of trying them on.
And we have been feted and wined and dined as only mortals may be, who
have fallen among long-time and well-tried friends. A sumptuous lunch
has been given us at the Merchants' Club, where old chums and classmates
of my Cornell College days did make me almost believe that it was but
yesterday that we went forth from our Alma Mater's Halls.
Later in the day we have taken one of the many suburban trains and
journeyed down ten miles to the summer country home of another old-time
friend, along the shores of White Bear Lake, and all the afternoon have
enjoyed a sail in the crack yacht of the fleet that parades these
waters. A new design of boat. Conceived and perfected in St. Paul, and
which has this summer carried havoc and defeat to every competing yacht
club of all the wide country of the western and northern lakes, and even
caused perturbation among the proud salt-water skippers of the east. I
send you a snap-shot of the prize yacht as she lies floating at her
little pier.
And when we came back and landed from our voyage, we found assembled an
even greater company than we had yet met, to again give us welcome
without stint. We gathered in the commodious dining-hall of our host, a
delightful company, these men who once with me were boys, and their
cultivated wives! Long and late we sat, and old college songs we sang,
until the eastern sky was already lightening with the approach of dawn.
Many of us had not met for nigh twenty years, when we had parted to go
forth to fight life's battles and to win or lose.
Then, in the second afternoon, yet other friends, of yet later knowing,
have taken us in hand and have trollied and driven us to see St. Paul's
twin sister, Minneapolis. With her monstrous flouring mills along the
Mississippi, she is become the wheat milling center of the world, but
she has never succeeded in rivalling St. Paul in the reach and volume of
her jobbing trade. Once bitter enemies, rivals for the supremacy of the
trade and commerce of the Northwest, their borders have now met, their
streets have coalesced, and it will not be many years before the two
will have fused and melted into one, even as Canada will one day
inevitably become knitted and commingled with the great Republic, for
there is room for but one nationality, one English-speaking nationality
upon the northern continent of the western world.
In the long gloaming of the waning eventide we were driven in an easy
victoria behind a pair of spanking bays and threaded our way among and
along the lawns and lakes and avenues of the twin cities' splendid
parks. The deciduous trees do not here grow as large as with us further
to the south. The conifers, the pines and firs, are here necessarily
more frequently employed by the landscape artist to perfect his plans,
but the flowers seemed just as big, just as fine in coloring and in
wealth of leaf.
The day was ended with another elaborately served dinner, with other
intelligent and cultivated friends, and then, before the night quite
fully fell, we were driven to the big station which first we had
entered, and were bidden a hearty farewell. We have boarded the sleeper
for Winnipeg. A white porter now makes up our berths, and tells us we
shall travel in his company some sixteen hours, so long is now the
journey to Canada's nearest city in the north.
WINNIPEG, August 14, 1908.
We left St. Paul in the Winnipeg sleeper on the Great Northern Railroad
at 8:06 P. M. When we awoke this morning we were flying through the
wheatfields of North Dakota, passing Grand Forks at about 9 A. M., and
reaching Neche, on the Canadian border, at eleven, and arriving at
Winnipeg at 1:40 P. M., a longer journey to the north--440 miles--than
I had realized. It was my first sight of a prairie--that vast stretch of
wheat country reaching 1,000 miles west of St. Paul, and as far to the
north of it. In the States it was wheat as far as the eye could reach in
all directions--ripening wheat, waving in the keen wind like a golden
sea, or cut and stacked wheat in innumerable piles, in countless shocks.
A few miles north of the boundary the wheat land gradually changed to
meadow and grass land, with many red cattle. Huge hay stacks here and
there--the country flat.
Winnipeg holds about 60,000 people, they tell me. Wooden houses mostly,
but some fine modern ones of stone and brick. Hundreds of new houses
built and houses a-building. Fine electric tramway system, on which we
have been riding all the afternoon. Many paved streets, some wood-paved,
but mostly the native black earth of all this northland. A vigorous,
hustling town, with now a big boom on, owing to the rapid development of
the far north wheat lands--"the Chicago of the far Northwest," they call
it. We go on to-night by 6 P. M. train, and should reach Banff in two
nights and a day. There we rest a day.
BANFF SPRINGS HOTEL, BANFF, CANADA, }
August 18, 1903. }
We had intended leaving Winnipeg by the through train called the
"Imperial Limited," which crosses the continent three times a week each
way, but to do so we should have had to lie over in Winnipeg a full day
and a half longer, and we had already seen the shell of the town in our
first afternoon, so we mended our plans, paid our modest dinner bill of
fifty cents each at the Clarendon Hotel, and took the ordinary daily
through Pacific express which, leaving Winnipeg at 6 P. M., would yet
bring us to Banff, even though it would take a half day longer in doing
it, earlier than the Imperial Limited train. A good many people seemed
to be of our mind, and so the railway people attached an extra sleeper
to the already crowded train. We were fixed in this. A sumptuous car,
finished in curled maple and brass, longer, wider, higher than even the
large cars run on the N. Y. C. & H. R. R., that traverse no tunnels.
These Canadian Pacific Railway cars are built by the railway company,
owned and run by it. No "Pullman conductor;" the porter, be he white or
black, runs the car and handles the tickets and the cash.
The company were mostly Canadians, going out to Regina, Calgary,
Edmonton, etc., large towns toward which Winnipeg bears the same
relation as does Cincinnati to our country (West Virginia), and many
Australians en route to take ship at Vancouver.
For a long distance the track seemed to be perfectly straight, and miles
and miles west of Winnipeg, the city still peeped far distant between
the rails. We rose a little, too, just a little, but steadily,
constantly. And on either hand and before and behind spread out the
wonderful flatness of the earth. The real prairie now. Not even a tree,
not a bush, not a hill, just as smooth as a floor, like an even sea, as
far as the eye could reach and out beyond.
A good deal of wheat grows west of Winnipeg, as well as south and north
and east of it. We were still in wheat land when we awoke yesterday
morning, though the now intervening patches of green grass grew larger
and larger until the grass covered and dominated everything. And then we
had miles and miles of a more rolling country. Here and there began to
appear pools of water, ponds, even small lakes and deep sunk streams
bordered with rushes and scrub willow and stunted alders.
Every bit of water was alive with wild fowl. Each pool we hurried by was
seemingly packed with geese, brant and ducks. All the myriads of the
north land water birds seemed to be here gathering and resting
preparatory to their long flight to the distant south. Many plover,
snipe and some herons and even cranes I noted along the margins of the
pools and streams. And this prolific bird life cared but little for the
presence of man. Our rushing train did not frighten them, none ever
took to wing, too much engrossed were they in their own pursuits.
Through the flat wheat land the farmsteads were few and far between, and
the towns only at long intervals. Nor is there here the population seen
among the many and thrifty towns and villages of Minnesota and Dakota.
In the grass lands we saw no towns at all, nor made many stops, while
herds of cattle began to increase in number; of horses, also, as we drew
further and further west and north.
Toward evening, through the long twilight, we entered a hill country,
where were a great many cattle and horses, and some Mexican cowboys
rounding up the stock ere nightfall.
Here, also, the wilder life of the hills came close upon us. Just as we
drew beyond the prairie a large grey wolf had crossed our way. He had no
fear of the iron horse; he stood and watched us with evident curiosity,
lifting one forepaw as he gazed upon the flying train, not fifty feet
away. When we were gone by, he turned and trotted leisurely into the
bush.
New buildings with added frequency met our view. Sometimes whole new
towns. All this I afterward learned is largely owing to the present
American immigration.
At dusk we stopped at the bustling town of Dunmore, just where the
railway crosses the broad Assiniboia River on a long bridge. Here many
of our fellow sleepers left us, and several new passengers got into our
car to ride through to Calgary, the largest town in the Northwest
Territory--seven or eight thousand inhabitants--and where the Edmonton
branch goes off two hundred miles into the north, and will soon go three
or four hundred miles further through the opening wheat country which
the world is now pouring into.
This morning we were following the Silver Bow River, past a long lake
which it widens into in the journey of its waters toward Hudson's Bay;
then we were among fir-clad foot-hills, and then, quite suddenly, as the
enveloping mist lifted, there were revealed upon either side of us the
gigantic, bare, rocky, snow-capped masses of the real Rocky Mountain
chain. I have never yet seen as immense and gigantic masses of bare
rock, unless it be the Cordillera of Michoacan, in Mexico.
Here we are at a fine modern hotel kept by the Canadian Pacific
Railroad. It is cool, even cold, almost. As cold as on Lake Superior, 54
and 56 degrees, and as in St. Paul the days we were there, but here the
air is so much drier that one sits by the open window and does not feel
the cold.
[Illustration: WHITE BEAR LAKE--ST. PAUL.]
[Illustration: DOWN THE SILVER BOW--BANFF.]
Among the passengers on our train I fell in with several of those who
now make their homes in this booming land--from Winnipeg west and north,
all this vast country is now on what is called a boom--a wheat-land
boom, a cattle boom, a town boom! One, a vigorous six-footer from
Wisconsin, a drummer for an American harvesting machine, has put and
is now putting all the money he can raise into the buying of these
northern wheat lands. And there is no finer wheat land in all the world,
he said, than the rich, warm Peace River valley, four hundred or five
hundred miles north of Edmonton. A Canadian drummer, who had won a medal
fighting in South Africa, also told me much of the awakening up here.
The Hudson Bay Company had for years kept secret the fatness of this
north land, although they and their agents had (for more than a century)
raised great wheat harvests on their own hidden-away farms along the
distant Peace River, where their mills made it into flour for their own
use, and to feed the fur-trapping Indians. But never a word had they or
their close-mouthed Scotch servants said about all the richness of which
they so well knew. But little by little had the news of these wheat
crops leaked out into the world beyond, and little by little, after the
opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and cession to Canada of their
exclusive rights, had the pioneer settlers quietly crept into the hidden
country. Now there were many farmers snugly living on their own lands
along the Peace River valley and in that neighboring region. Every year
there are more of them. They haul their supplies three hundred miles
north from Edmonton, or buy direct of the nearest Hudson Bay Post. Soon
the railways will be up among them, soon the greatest export of Canadian
wheat will come from that now far-away country. And here is where the
hustling American comes in. The Canadian has been slow to "catch on."
The dull farmer of Ontario has scoffed at the notion of good wheat land
so far north. He preferred to stay at home and raise peas and barley.
The French habitan, too, did not take stock in the tales of a land so
far from church and kindred. Nor did the Englishman do more than look
blandly incredulous at whatever secret tales he might hear. He would
just inquire of the office of the Hudson's Bay Company, where he always
learned that the tale was a joke out of the whole cloth. Not even the
bankers of now booming Winnipeg would invest a dollar in buying
Government land beyond the already well-defined wheat limits of
Manitoba. It was the keen-scented Yankee who caught on. A group of
bright men in St. Paul and Minneapolis heard in some way of the
possibilities of the far north. They quietly sent their own experienced
Minnesota and Dakota farm land experts and practical wheat judges up
into Saskatchewan and Assiniboia to look, examine and report. This they
did, and then the Americans began to buy direct of the Canadian
Government at Ottawa. Their expert investigators also had friends and
neighbors who had money, who had made money in farming, and some of them
went up. All who went up staid, and sent back word of having got hold of
a good thing. The first the world knew, fifty thousand American farmers
went in last year, more than two hundred thousand have gone in this
year, and the Canadian world and the English world have awakened to the
fact that the bulk of the rich wheat lands of the far north are already
owned by the American land companies, American banks and American
farmers. In St. Paul to-day you can learn more about all this rich far
north, and buy its best lands, rather than in Toronto or even in
Winnipeg. Now the railroads are also beginning to stir themselves. The
Canadian Pacific Railway is to build more north branch lines. The Grand
Trunk Pacific is to be built right through the Peace River country to
Port Simpson, and everybody is astir to get a chance at the golden
future. But the Americans have the cinch. And what is more, they do
better and succeed when the Canadians, from Quebec or Ontario, and,
above all, the Englishmen, make rank failures. The Americans have been
farming on the same sort of land in Minnesota, in Iowa and in the
Dakotas. They go into this new land with the same machinery and same
methods. They all do well. Many of the Canadians fail, most of the
English likewise, and the prospering American buys them out. Now, also,
the Americans are beginning to find out that there is much good cattle
range in this north land. The American cattle men are coming up with
their herds, even with their Mexican cowboys.
No blizzards here, such as freeze and destroy in Montana. No lack of
water here the year round. No drouths like those of Texas. Nor is the
still, quiet, steady cold of these plains more fatal, not as much so,
as the more variable temperatures of the States. Not much snow over
these northern plains, rarely more than a foot. The buffalo grass may be
always reached through it. The mercury rarely more than fifty below
zero, and so dry is the air and so still that no one minds that
temperature.
So we have it, that this entire rich wheat-yielding land of the far, far
north, that the bulk of these grazing lands, tempered as the winter is
by the warm Pacific climate, which here climbs over the rather low
barrier of the Rockies, are falling into alert American hands. Even the
storekeepers, they tell me, would rather trade with the American--he
buys more freely, buys higher-priced machinery and goods; he is better
pay in the end. "The Englishman brings out money, but after the first
year or two it is gone." "The American brings some and then keeps making
more." So my Canadian drummer friend tells me, and he gathers his
information from the storekeepers in all these northwest towns with whom
he deals. "Some even tell me," he said, "that if it wouldn't make any
disturbance, why they would do better if all this country was part of
the States." So the American is popular here, and he is growing rich,
richer than the Canadian and Englishman, and in course of time, I take
it, he will even yet the more completely dominate the land. It is
strange how the American spirit seems to have an energy and force that
tells everywhere, in Canada as well as in Mexico. The information I give
you here comes to me from the intelligent fellow-travelers I have
chanced to meet, and, I take it, is probably a fair statement.
We are some 4,500 feet above the sea, and the highest summits near us
rise to about 10,000 or 11,000 feet. There is none of the somber
blackness of the Norwegian rocks, nor the greenness of the Swiss slopes,
while the contour of the summits and ridges is much like that of the
volcanic, serrated summits of the mountains I saw in Mexico.
THIRD LETTER.
BANFF TO VANCOUVER ACROSS THE ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS.
HOTEL VANCOUVER, VANCOUVER, B. C., }
August 19, 1903. }
Our day crossing the Rockies was delightful. We left Banff about 2 P. M.,
following up the valley of the Silver Bow River to its very head. A
deep valley, shut in on either hand by gigantic granite mountains,
rising to 10,000 and 12,000 feet, their lower slopes covered with small
fir, aspen, birch, then a sparse grass, and lichens, and then rising up
into the clouds and eternal snows. Snow fields everywhere, and many
glaciers quite unexplored and unnamed. The rise was so easy, however,
that we were surprised when we actually attained the summit of the
divide, where a mountain stream forks and sends its waters, part to
Hudson's Bay, part to the Pacific. But the descent toward the west was
precipitous. Since leaving Winnipeg, two days and nights across plains
and prairie, and a night and day up the valley of the Silver Bow River,
we had steadily risen, but so gradually that we were almost unconscious
of the ascending grade, but now we were to come down the 5,000 feet from
the height of land and reach the Pacific in little more than a single
day. Not so sheer a ride as down the Dal of the Laera River in Norway,
3,000 feet in three hours behind the ponies, but yet so steep that the
iron horse crept at a snail's pace, holding back the heavy train almost
painfully, and descending into gorges and cañons and shadowy valleys
until one's hair nearly stood on end. How on earth they ever manage to
pull and push the long passenger and short freight trains up these
grades for the east-bound traffic, is a matter of amazement; that is,
shove them up and make the business pay.
At once, so soon as the divide was crossed, the influence of the warm,
moist air of the Pacific was apparent. No longer the bare, bleak, naked
masses of granite, no longer the puny firs and dwarf aspen and birches,
but instead, the entire vast slopes of these gigantic mountain masses
were covered with a dense forest. The tall Douglas firs stood almost
trunk to trunk, so close together that the distant slopes looked as
though covered with gigantic coverlets of green fur. The trees seemed
all about of one height and size. And the slopes were green right up to
the snow field's very edge. Our way wound down the profound cañon of the
Kicking Horse River, sometimes sheer precipices below and also above us,
the road blasted out of the granite sides, then we swept out into the
beautiful Wapta Valley, green as emerald, the white snow waters of the
river--not white foam, but a muddy white like the snow-fed waters of the
streams of Switzerland--roaring and plunging, and spreading out into
placid pools. At last we emerged through a gorge and came into the
great wide, verdant valley of the British Columbia, from which the
province takes its name. A river, even there on its upper reaches, as
wide as the Ohio, but wild and turbulent, and muddy white from the
melting snows. Behind us the towering granite masses of the Rocky
Mountains--a name whose meaning I never comprehended before--their peaks
lost in clouds, their flanks and summits buried in verdure. The valley
of the Columbia is wide and fertile. Many villages and farms and
saw-mills already prospering along it. Here and there were indications
of a developing mine upon the mountain slopes. We followed the great
river until we passed through a narrow gorge where the Selkirk Mountain
range jams its rock masses hard against the western flanks of the
Rockies and the river thrusts itself between, to begin its long journey
southward through Washington and Oregon to the Pacific; and then turning
up a wild creek called Six Mile, we began again to climb the second and
last mountain chain before we should reach the sea. These grades are
very heavy. Too heavy, I should say, for a railroad built for business
and traffic and not subsidized by a government, as in practical effect
the Canadian Pacific is. The pass at the divide is almost as high as
that at the source of the Silver Bow, and much more impeded in winter
with snowfalls and avalanches, which require many miles of snow-sheds
to save the road.
[Illustration: A REACH OF THE FRASER RIVER.]
We dined about 8 P. M., in a fine large hotel owned by the railroad
company at a station called "Glacier," for it is right at the foot of
one of the most gigantic glaciers of the Selkirks, and many tourists
tarry here to see it and climb upon it; Swiss guides being provided by
the railway company for these adventures. And then we came down again,
all night and half the next day, following the valley of the Fraser
River until it debouched into level tidal reaches a few miles from Puget
Sound.
The Fraser River is a magnificent stream; as great as the Columbia, as
wild as New River of West Virginia. We stood upon the platform of the
rear car and snapped the kodak at the flying gorges, tempestuous rapids
and cascades. All along, wherever the water grew angry and spume spun,
were Indians fishing for salmon, sometimes standing alert, intent, spear
in hand poised and ready, or, more often, watching their nets or drawing
them in. And every rocky point held its poles for drying the fish,
belonging to some individual Indian or tribe, safe from trespass or
molestation by immemorial usage. The sands of the river are said to also
have been recently discovered to hide many grains of gold, and we saw in
several places Chinamen industriously panning by the water-side. Near
Vancouver we passed several extensive salmon canneries, and their catch
this year is said to be unusually large.
As we came nearer to the sea the air grew warmer, the vegetation more
luxuriant, the flowers more prolific, and the Douglas fir more lofty and
imposing. A single shaft, with sparse, ill-feathered limbs, down-bent
and twisted, these marvelous trees lift their ungainly trunks above
every other living thing about. The flowers, too, would have delighted
you. Zinnias as tall as dahlias, dahlias as tall as hollyhocks,
nasturtiums growing like grape vines, roses as big as peonies, geraniums
and heliotropes small trees. Great was the delight of our trainload of
Australians. They had never seen such luxuriance of foliage, such wealth
of flowers, except under the care of a gardener and incessant laying on
of water. We came across with a car full of these our antipodean kin.
Most have been "home," to England, and had come across to Canada to
avoid the frightful heats of the voyage by Suez and the Red Sea. And
they marveled at the vigor and the activity of both Canada and the
States. Some had lingered at the fine hotels up in the mountains now
maintained by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. All were sorry to go back
to the heats of the Australian continent.
[Illustration: BIG DOUGLAS FIR--VANCOUVER PARK.]
The building and maintaining of this railway has been accomplished by
the giving of millions of dollars in hard cash, and millions of acres in
land grants, to the railway company by the government of the Dominion.
Fortunes were made and pocketed by the promoters and builders, and the
Canadian people now hold the bag--but although as a mere investment it
can never pay, yet as a national enterprise it has made a Canadian
Dominion possible. It owns its terminals on the Atlantic and on the
Pacific. It owns its own telegraph lines, its own cars, sleeping-cars,
and rolling stock; it owns and runs ten, a dozen, a score of fine
hotels; it is a vast land-owner. Its stock can never be bought up and
owned out of Canadian hands. A Morgan or a Gould can never seize it,
manipulate it, or wreck it. It is a good thing for Canada to have it so.
It is a good thing for the people of the United States that it is so.
The Canadian Rockies are the most beautiful and picturesque of any
section of the mountain chain from Mexico north. The air is cooler in
the far northern latitude, keener, more bracing, and the hustling
American has begun to find this out. The great hotels of the Canadian
Pacific are already best patronized by the American visitor, and this
year the sun-baked Californians have come up in swarms and promise
another year even greater numbers. And the Canadian Pacific Railroad
welcomes them all--all who can pay. At Banff, too, were the advance
guard of the English Colony from China, brought over from Shanghai by
the sumptuous steamships of the Canadian Pacific Railway, taken to and
kept at their great hotels, and carried home again, at so low a
round-trip rate that these Rocky Mountain resorts promise to become the
summering-place of the Oriental Englishmen as well as Australian and
Californian! How these things bring the world together!
Our journey from Kanawha, across Ohio, from Cleveland through the Great
Lakes, across the wheatfields of Minnesota and Dakota and Manitoba, and
over the wonderful prairies and plains of the opening far Northwest,
has had a fit ending in the last few days climbing and plunging over and
down the wildest, most picturesque, most stupendous valleys and passes
of the Rocky Mountain and Selkirk Mountain ranges. How vast and varied
and splendid is the continent we live on, and which one of these days
the people of the United States will inevitably wholly possess!
And now the wonders of these Pacific slopes and waters! All the
afternoon we have been wandering through Vancouver's superb Natural
Park, among its gigantic trees, and gazing westward over and across the
waters of Puget Sound, the most mighty fjord of the Pacific seas, the
most capacious land-locked harbor of the world. I must not say more
about this now. I have not yet seen enough. I am only beginning dimly to
comprehend what is the future power of our race and people in the
development of this side of the earth.
VICTORIA A SLEEPY ENGLISH TOWN.
THE DRIARD HOTEL, VICTORIA, B. C., }
August 21, 1903. }
We came over here yesterday, leaving Vancouver by a fine new 1,800-ton
steamer "Princess Victoria," and making the voyage in four hours,--all
the way in and out among the islands and straits and inlets. The shores
of the mainland high, lofty;--the mountain summits rising right up till
snow-capped, six or seven thousand feet in the air, their flanks green
with the dense forests of fir that here everywhere abound. The
islands all fir-clad, the trees often leaning out over the deep blue
waters. Many fishing-boats were hovering about the points and shoals
below the mouth of the Fraser River, awaiting the autumnal rush of
salmon into the death-traps of that stream. I hope to see one of these
salmon stampedes--they often pushing each other high and dry on the
shores in their mad eagerness to go on.
[Illustration: VICTORIA, B. C.--THE HARBOR.]
Tuesday we reached Vancouver. Wednesday we consumed seeing the lusty
little city.
Yesterday we spent the morning in picking up the few extra things needed
for the Yukon--among others a bottle of tar and carbolic--a mixture to
rub on to offend the yet active mosquito.
Vancouver is a city of some 30,000 people, full of solid buildings,
asphalted streets, electric car lines, bustle and activity. Much of the
outfitting for the Canadian Yukon is done there, though Seattle gets the
bulk of even this trade.
To-day we are in Victoria, a town of twelve or fifteen thousand, a fine
harbor, and near it the British naval and military station of
Esquimault, the seat of its North Pacific war power. The town is sleepy,
the buildings low and solid, the air of the whole place very English.
The capitol building is an imposing structure of granite, surmounted by
a successful dome.
FOURTH LETTER.
VANCOUVER AND SKAGWAY; FJORDS AND FORESTS.
FIRST AND SECOND DAY OUT, }
August 23, 1903. }
We arrived in Vancouver by the steamer "Charmer" from Victoria about ten
o'clock A. M.--two hours late--a small boat, packed with passengers. We
could not get a state-room to ourselves, so were glad of berths, while
many people lay on mattresses in the cabin and many sat up. Tourist
travel surprises the slow-going Canadian, and he does not catch up with
it.
We went to the Hotel Vancouver, where we had been staying, and there
breakfasted.
Our boat, "City of Seattle," is roomy and comfortable. We have a large
upper state-room on the starboard side, plenty of fresh air and
sunlight. It is loaded down with an immense cargo of miscellaneous
freight, from piles of boxes of Iowa butter and fresh eggs, to sheep and
live stock, chickens and pigs, vegetables and canned goods, most of it
billed to Dawson and even to points below. The Yukon has been so low
this year--less snow than usual falling last winter--that the bulk of
the freight "going in" has had to be shipped via these Skagway boats and
the White Pass Railway, despite the exorbitant freight rates they are
charging for everything.
[Illustration: LEAVING VANCOUVER.]
The travellers are of two sorts. A good many making the round trip from
Seattle to Skagway, and the Yukoner "going in" for the winter. The
former are not of much concern to us, but among the latter I have found
a number of interesting acquaintances. One, a man who hunts for a
business, and is full of forest lore and hunting tales. He is also
something of a naturalist and taxidermist, and I have been showing him
our volumes of the report of the Harriman Expedition, to his delight. He
has also explored along the Kamtschatka coasts of Siberia, and describes
it as a land stocked with salmon and fur animals. He says, too, that I
have done right to bring along my gun, for there are lots of ptarmigan
as well as mountain sheep and goats in the Yukon Valley, and caribou and
moose are also plentiful.
Another man has spent a year or more on the Yukon--our chief
engineer--and thinks we will have no difficulty in getting a boat down
from Dawson, and the scenery he says is grand. Another is a lumber-man
of Wrangel--from Pennsylvania--and tells me they have some fine timber
there, though most of that of these far northern latitudes is too small
to now profitably compete with the big logs of Washington.
Our vis-a-vis at table is going up to the Porcupine Placer district to
try his luck with finding gold, and several men are going into
Atlin--whither we are bound--to find work at big pay.
The atmosphere of the company is buoyant and hopeful, even the women
have a dash of prosperity about them--gold chains and diamonds--of which
there are not a few.
From all I can pick up, an immense trade is already developed with
Alaska and is still growing with bounds. The United States Government
statisticians give thirty-seven millions as the figure for the trade of
the past year. Already three or four lines of steamers ply between
Skagway alone and Puget Sound ports, and several more run to St.
Michaels and Nome.