Mrs. ----, are--her small boy of six, who is being greatly praised this
morning by all the company--he has just licked the big boy across the
street, who for a week or two has tried to bully him, on account of
which feat his mother is immensely proud--and a wonderful grey and white
cat that sits up and begs just like a prairie dog or a gopher. When a
kitten, pussy must have gone out and played with some of the millions of
gophers that inhabit every hillside, and learned from them how to
properly sit up. She visits each guest every morning and sits up and
folds her paws across her breast and mews so plaintively that no hand
can forbear giving her a tidbit.
"We were among the first. We came up from San Francisco in a waterlogged
schooner through the wash of ice and winter gales to Dyea, and then
mushed over Chilkoot Pass on snowshoes with the dogs. I shouldered my
pack like the men. And John--John would have backed out or died of
weariness, if I hadn't told him that if he quit, I should come on in
just all the same. Yes! I carried my gun--I didn't have to use it but
once or twice. Yes! We've done very well in Dawson, very well in the
Klondike, very well!" And a big diamond glinted as though to reenforce
the remark. She spoke rapidly, though easily, in crisp, curt sentences,
and you felt she had indeed "mushed" in, that frightful winter, over
those perilous snow and ice passes, just sure enough! As I looked into
her wide-open, brown eyes, I felt that I beheld there that spirit which
I have everywhere noted in the keen faces of the men and women of the
Yukon, the yet living spirit of the great West, of the West of half a
century ago; of Virginia and New England two hundred years ago; the
spirit which drove Drake and Frobisher and Captain Cook and their daring
mariners out from the little islands of our motherland to possess and
dominate the earth's mysterious and unchartered seas; the spirit which
still makes the name American stand for energy and power and
accomplishment in all the world; the spirit, shall I say, which gives
the future of the earth to the yet virile Anglo-Saxon race.
NINTH LETTER.
MEN OF THE KLONDIKE.
YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA, September 18, 1903.
We lingered in Dawson a week waiting for the steamers "Sarah" or
"Louise" or "Cudahy" to come up from the lower river, and though always
"coming," they never came. Meantime the days had begun to visibly
shorten, the frosts left thicker rime on roof and road each morning.
"Three weeks till the freeze-up," men said, and we concluded that so
late was now the season that we had best not chance a winter on a
sand-bar in the wide and shallow lower Yukon, and a nasty time with fogs
and floe ice in Behring Sea. So on Wednesday, the 16th, we again took
the fine steamer "White Horse," and are now two days up the river on our
way. We will reach White Horse Sunday morning, stay there till Monday
morning, when we will take the little railway to Skagway, then the ocean
coaster to Seattle and the land of dimes and nickels. We regret not
having been able to go down to St. Michael and Nome, and to see the
whole great Yukon. My heart was quite set on it, and the expense was
about the same as the route we now take, but to do so we should have had
to take too great risks at this late season.
While lingering in Dawson we were able to see more of the interests of
the community. One day we called on a quite notable figure, _a_, or
rather _the_, Dr. Grant of St. Andrews Hospital, M. D., and of St.
Andrews great church, D. D.! A Canadian Scotchman of, say, thirty-five
years, who, although a man of independent fortune, chose the wild life
of the border just from the very joy of buffet and conquest. He "mushed"
it in 1897 over the Chilkoot Pass. He built little churches and
hospitals all in one, and became the helper of thousands whom the perils
and stresses of the great trek quite overcame. So now he is a power in
Dawson. A large and perfectly equipped hospital, his creation, has been
endowed by the government; a fine, modern church holding six hundred; a
pretty manse and big mission school buildings of logs. All these
standing in a green turfed enclosure of two or three acres. The church
cost $60,000. He preaches Sundays to a packed house. He is chief surgeon
of the hospital during the rest of the time. He gives away his salary,
and the men of these mining camps, who know a real man when they see
him, can't respond too liberally to the call of the preacher-surgeon who
generally saves their bodies and sometimes their souls. I found him a
most interesting man--a naturalist, a scientific man, a man of the world
and who independently expounds a Presbyterian cult rather of the Lyman
Abbott type. He showed us all through the hospitals; many surgical
accident cases; very few fevers or sickness. The church, too, we
inspected; all fittings within modern and up to date; a fine organ, the
freight on which alone was $5,000, 40 per cent. of its cost; a furnace
that warmed the building even at 80 below zero, and a congregation of
400 to 500 people, better dressed (the night we attended) than would be
a similar number in New York. There are no old clothes among the
well-to-do; gold buys the latest styles and disdains the cost. There are
few old clothes among the poor, for the poor are very few. So as I
looked upon the congregation before Dr. Grant, I might as well have been
in New York but for a pew full of red coats of "N. W. M. P." (North West
Mounted Police).
The succeeding day Dr. Grant called upon us, and escorted us through the
military establishment that polices and also governs the Yukon territory
as well as the whole Canadian Northwest. Barracks for 250 men,
storerooms, armory, horse barn, dog kennel--150 dogs--jail, mad-house
and courtrooms. The executive and judicial departments all under one
hand and even the civil rule as well. Everywhere evidence of the cold
and protection against it. A whole room full of splendid fur coats,
parquets, with great fur hoods. Such garments as even an Esquimaux would
rejoice in.
Later, we attended the fine public school, where are over 250 children
in attendance; all equipment the latest and up to date; kindergarten
department and grades to the top, the teachers carefully picked from
eastern Canada. The positions are much sought for by reason of unusually
high salaries paid. The new principal had just come from Toronto. He
told us that these were the brightest, most alert children he had ever
taught. Keen faces, good chins, inheriting the aggressive initiative of
the parents who had dared to come so far. In the kindergarten a little
colored boy sat among his white mates. In Canada, like Mexico, there is
no color line.
It now takes us four days to creep up the river against the strong
current and through the many shallows to White Horse. On the boat there
are all sorts. I have met a number of quaint figures. One a French
Canadian trapper, on his way to a winter camp on McMillan Creek of the
Pelly River. He will have three or more cabins along a route where he
will set his traps. About two hundred he keeps a-going, and sees as many
of them as he can each day. Mink and marten and otter and beaver, as
well as wolves and foxes, lynx and bears. For meat he prefers caribou to
moose. For many years he trapped for the "H. B. C." (Hudson Bay Company)
over east of the Rockies. But they paid him almost nothing and there
were no other buyers. Now he sells to Dawson merchants and gets $6.00
for a marten skin "all through"--the whole lot. The fur merchant in
Victoria asked $30.00 for just such, and said we might buy them as low
as $10.00 in the Yukon country, so he had heard. Another man to-day has
sat on the wood-pile with me and told me of the great North--a man with
a well-shaped face, who used language of the educated sort, yet dressed
in the roughest canvas, and who is raising hay here along the Yukon
which he "sells at three cents a pound in Dawson, or one cent a pound
in the stack," wild, native hay at that. And he had "mushed" and
"voyaged" all through the far north. He had set out from Edmonton, he
and his "pardner," and driven to "Athabasca landing" in their farm
wagon, three or four hundred miles over the "Government road;" had
passed through the beautiful, wide, gently sloping valley of the Peace
River, and through the well-timbered regions north of the Peace. At
Athabasca landing they had sold the wagon and built a stout flatboat,
and in this had floated down some three hundred miles to Athabasca Lake,
Indian pilots having taken them through the more dangerous rapids. The
Athabasca River enters the lake among swamps and low, willowy spits of
land, where grows wild hay and ducks abound, and the "Great Slave" River
flows out of it into the body of water of that name. These two rivers
enter and depart near together, and the voyager escapes the dangers of a
journey on the great and shallow Athabasca, where the surf is most
dangerous. Three or four hundred miles of a yet greater river, with many
rapids through which you are guided by Indian pilots, who live near the
dangerous waters, carry you into the Great Slave Lake, the largest body
of fresh water in Canada. Steamboats of the Hudson Bay Company run upon
it and ply upon the inflowing rivers, and even go up and down the
McKenzie to Herschell Island at its mouth, and where the "N. W. M. P."
have a post, chiefly to protect the natives from the whalers who
gather there to trade and smuggle in dutiable goods. The McKenzie is
greater than the Yukon, is wider and much deeper and carries a much
greater volume of water. Great Slave Lake, while shallow and flat toward
the eastern end, is deep and bounded by great cliffs and rocks on the
west. Storms rage upon it, and at all times the voyagers count it
dangerous water. Both it and Athabasca are full of fish, so, too, the
adjacent rivers and the McKenzie. Floating down the McKenzie, passing
the mouth of the Nelson River, they came at last to the Liard, and up
this they canoed to within half a mile of the waters of the Pelly, down
which they floated to the Yukon. The French trapper had also "come in"
by this route. "Two seasons it takes," he said, "an easy trip," and you
can winter quite comfortably in the mountains. East of the mountains
there is much big game, "plenta big game;" musk ox are there, and moose
and caribou. But the Indians and wolves kill too many of them. The
Indians catch the caribou on the ice and kill them for their tongues.
"Smoked caribou tongue mighta nice." They leave the carcasses where they
fall, and then come the foxes for the feast. "Thousands of fox, red fox,
silver fox, black fox, white fox. Mr. Fox he eat caribou, he forget
Indian--Indian set the trap and fox he caught. The wolf, too, he creep
up upon the caribou, even upon the moose when he alone, when he lying
down; the wolf he bites the hamstring. He kill many moose. That a grand
country for to trap, but the Hudson Bay Company it pay nothing for the
fur. A sack of flour I see them give one Indian for a black fox. Now
since Hudson Bay lose his exclusive right, no man trade with him or sell
him fur except he must for food."
[Illustration: ON THE YUKON.]
[Illustration: FLOATING DOWN THE YUKON.]
We have just passed a little log cabin beneath great firs and amidst a
cluster of golden aspen. Its door and solitary window are wide open. No
one occupies it, or ever will. Wild things may live in it, but not man.
Near the cabin, where the Yukon makes a great sweeping bend, and the
swift water purls round into bubbling eddies, a narrow trail cut from
the river bank leads up among the trees. The dweller in the cabin could
see far up the great river; he could espy the raft or skiff or barge
descending and mark its occupants; then he used to take his trusty
rifle, step across to the opening in the trees at the point, and pick
off his victims. Sometimes their bodies fell into the deep, cold,
swift-running waters. The wolves and foxes picked their bones on the
bars below. Sometimes he captured the body as well as the outfit, and
sunk and buried them at leisure. The pictures of the three last men he
murdered hang in the office of the chief of the Northwest Mounted
Police, at Dawson, beside his own. It took three years to gather the
complete chain of circumstantial evidence, but at last they hanged him,
two years ago. In the beginning there were many other crimes quite as
atrocious committed in this vast region of the unknown north, but soon
the efficiency and systematic vigilance of the Northwest Mounted Police
broke up forever the bandits and thugs who had crowded in here from all
the earth, and Uncle Sam's dominion in particular. Many were hanged,
many sent up for long terms, many run out. Life sentences were common
for robbery. To-day the Yukon country is more free from crime than West
Virginia, and Dawson more orderly than Charleston.
TENTH LETTER.
DOG LORE OF THE NORTH.
WHITE HORSE, Sunday, September 20, 1903.
We arrived about nine o'clock this morning. The voyage up the Yukon from
Dawson has taken us since Wednesday at 2:30, when we cast off and
stemmed the swift waters--twenty-four hours longer than going down.
During the week of our stay at Dawson the days grew perceptibly shorter
and the nights colder. There is no autumn in this land. Two weeks ago
the foliage had just begun to turn; a week ago the aspens and birches
were showing a golden yellow, but the willows and alders were yet green.
Now every leaf is saffron and golden--gamboge--and red. In a week or
more they will have mostly fallen. As yet the waters of the Yukon and
affluent rivers show no ice. In three weeks they are expected to be
frozen stiff, and so remain until the ice goes out next June. The
seasons of this land are said to be "Winter and June, July and August."
To me it seems inconceivable that the Arctic frosts should descend so
precipitately. But on every hand there is evident preparation for the
cold, the profound cold. Double windows and doors are being fastened on.
Immense piles of sawed and cut firewood are being stored close at hand.
Sleighs and especially sledges are being painted and put in order;
the dogs which have run wild, and mostly foraged for themselves during
the summer, are being discovered, captured and led off by strings and
straps and wires about their necks. Men are buying new dogs, and the
holiday of dogkind is evidently close at an end. Women are already
wearing some of their furs. Ice half to a full inch forms every night,
and yesterday we passed through our first snow storm, and all the
mountains round about, and even the higher hills, are to-day glistening
in mantles of new, fresh, soft-looking snow. The steamers of the White
Pass and Yukon Railway Company will be laid up in three weeks now, they
tell us, and already the sleighs and teams for the overland stage route
are being gathered, the stage houses at twenty-four-mile intervals being
set in order, and the "Government road" being prepared afresh for the
transmission of mails and passengers.
[Illustration: APPROACHING SEATTLE.]
[Illustration: WITH AND WITHOUT.]
We have just seen some of the magnificent Labrador dogs, with their
keeper, passing along the street, owned by the Government post
here--immense animals, as big as big calves, heifers, yearlings, I might
say. They take the mails to outlying posts and even to Dawson when too
cold for the horses--horses are not driven when the thermometer is more
than 40 degrees below!
As I sat in the forward cabin the other night watching the motley crowd
we were taking "out," two bright young fellows, who turned out to be
"Government dog-drivers" going to the post here to report for winter
duty, fell into animated discussion of their business, and told me much
dog lore. The big, well-furred, long-legged "Labrador Huskies" are the
most powerful as well as fiercest. A load of 150 pounds per dog is the
usual burden, and seven to nine dogs attached each by a separate
trace--the Labrador harness is used with them, so the dogs spread out
fan-shaped from the sledge and do not interfere with each other. The
great care of the driver is to maintain discipline, keep the dogs from
shirking, from tangling up, and from attacking himself or each other. He
carries a club and a seal-hide whip, and uses each unmercifully. If they
think you afraid, the dogs will attack you instantly, and would easily
kill you. And they incessantly attack each other, and the whole pack
will always pounce on the under dog so as to surely be in at a killing,
just for the fun of it, ripping up the unfortunate and lapping his blood
eagerly, though they rarely eat him. And as these dogs are worth
anywhere from $100 up, the driver has much ado to prevent the
self-destruction of his team. And to club them till you stun them is the
only way to stop their quarrels. Then, too, the dogs are clever and
delight to spill the driver and gallop away from him, when he can rarely
catch them until they draw up at the next post house, and it may be ten
or twelve or thirty miles to that, unless it be that they get tangled
among the trees or brush, when the driver will find them fast asleep,
curled up in the snow, where each burrows out a cozy bed. The
Malamutes, or native Indian dog, usually half wolf, are driven and
harnessed differently--all in a line--and one before the other. They are
shorter haired, faster, and infinitely meaner than the long-haired
Huskie (of which sort the Labrador dogs are). Their delight is to get
into a fight and become tangled, and the only way out is to club them
into insensibility, and cut the leather harness, or they will cut the
seal-hide thongs themselves at a single bite if they are quite sure your
long plaited whip will not crack them before they can do it. These
Malamutes are the usual dogs driven in this country, for few there are
to afford or know how to handle the more powerful Labrador Huskie. And
the Malamute is the king of all thieves. He will pull the leather boots
off your feet while you sleep and eat them for a midnight supper; he
delights to eat up his seal-hide harness; he has learned to open a
wooden box and will devour canned food, opening any tin can made, with
his sharp fangs, quicker than a steel can-opener. Canned tomatoes,
fruit, vegetables, sardines, anything that man may put in, he will
deftly take out. Even the tarpaulins and leather coverings of the goods
he may be pulling, he will rip to pieces, and he will devour the load
unless watched with incessant vigilance night and day. Yet, with all
their wolfish greed and manners, these dogs perform astonishing feats of
endurance, and never in all their lives receive a kindly word. "If you
treat them kindly, they think you are afraid, and will at once attack
you," the driver said; "the only way to govern them is through fear."
Once a day only are they fed on raw fish, and while the Malamute prefers
to pilfer and steal around the camp, the Huskie will go and fish for
himself when off duty, if given the chance. Just like the bears and lynx
of the salmon-running streams, he will stand along the shore and seize
the fish that is shoved too far upon the shallows. Seventy miles a day
is the rule with the Indians and their dog teams, and the white man does
almost as much. Forty miles is it from here to Caribou Crossing, and the
Northwest Mounted Police, with their Labrador teams, take the mails when
the trains are snowbound and cover the distance in four to five hours.
Great going this must be!
And then the conversation turned to the great cold of this far north
land, when during the long nights the sun only shows for an hour or two
above the horizon.
When the thermometer falls below fifty degrees (Fahr.), then are the
horses put away, what few there may be, and the dogs transport the
freight and mails along the Government road between White Horse and
Dawson, as well as from Dawson to the mining camps to which the stage
lines usually run. Indeed, throughout all of this north land, with the
coming of the snow, the dogs are harnessed to the sledges and become the
constant traveling companions of man.
[Illustration: MALAMUTE TEAM OF GOVERNMENT MAIL-CARRIER--DAWSON.]
[Illustration: BREAKING OF THE YUKON--MAY 17, 1903.]
[Illustration: SUN DOGS.]
[Illustration: WINTER LANDSCAPE].
The air is dry in all this great interior basin of the continent, and,
consequently, the great cold is not so keenly felt as in the damper airs
nearer to the sea. The dogs can travel in all weathers which man can
stand, and even when it becomes so cold that men dare not move. The
lowest Government record of the thermometer yet obtained at Dawson City
is eighty-three degrees below zero. These great falls of temperature
only occasionally occur, but when the thermometer comes down to minus
sixty degrees, then men stay fast indoors, and only venture out as the
necessity demands; then the usually clear atmosphere becomes filled with
a misty fog, often so thick that it is difficult to see a hundred yards
away.
When traveling with a dog team, or, indeed, when "mushing" upon
snow-shoes across streams and forests, men go rather lightly clad,
discarding furs, and ordinarily wearing only thick clothes, with the
long canvas parquet as protection against the wind rather than against
the temperature; then motion becomes a necessity, and to tarry means to
freeze. The danger of the traveler going by himself is that the frost
may affect his eyesight, freezing the eyelids together, perhaps dazing
his sight, unless snow-glasses are worn. And the ice forms in the
nostrils so rapidly, as well as about the mouth, and upon the mustache
and beard, that it is a constant effort to keep the face free from
accumulating ice. In small parties, however, men travel long distances,
watching each other as well as themselves to insure escape from the
ravages of the frost. When the journey is long and the toil has become
severe, the Arctic drowsiness is another of the enemies which must be
prevented from overcoming the traveler, and the methods are often cruel
which friends must exercise in order to prevent their companions from
falling asleep.
During this long period of Arctic winter and Arctic night, there seems
to be no great cessation in the struggle for gold; the diggings in the
Klondike and remoter regions retain their companies of men toiling to
find the gold. The frozen gravels are blasted out and piled up to be
thawed the next summer by the heat of the sun and washed with the
flowing waters.
While the Arctic night prevails for twenty-two or twenty-three hours out
of the twenty-four, yet so brilliant are the stars and so refulgent are
the heavens with the lightening of the aurora borealis, that men work
and travel and carry on the usual occupations, little hindered by the
absence of the sun. Sometimes, in the very coldest days, is beheld the
curious phenomenon of several suns appearing above the horizon, and
these are called the "sun dogs," the sun itself being seemingly
surrounded by lesser ones. I was fortunate enough to obtain a fine
photograph taken on one of these days, which I am able to send you.
The freezing of the Yukon comes on very suddenly, the great river often
becoming solid in a night. The curious thing of these northern lakes and
rivers is, that the ice forms first upon the bottom, and, rising, fills
the water with floating masses and ice particles, which then become
congealed almost immediately.
Early in last October our steamer "White Horse," on which we are now
traveling, became permanently frozen in when within one hundred miles of
Dawson City, the apparently clear river freezing so quickly that the
boat became fast for the winter, and the passengers were compelled to
"mush" their way, as best they might, across the yet snowless country, a
terrible and trying experience in the gathering cold.
You may be in a row-boat or a canoe upon ice-free waters, and, as you
paddle, you may notice bubbles and particles of ice coming to the
surface. Great, then, is the danger. The bottom has begun to freeze. You
may be frozen in before you reach the shore in ice yet too thin to walk
upon or permit escape.
For the greater part of the winter season the frozen streams become the
natural highways of the traveler, and the dog teams usually prefer the
snow-covered ice rather than attempt to go over the rougher surface of
the land.
Another curious thing, friends tell me, affects them in this winter
night-time, and that is the disposition of men to hibernate. Fifteen and
sixteen hours of sleep are commonly required, while in the nightless
summer-time three and four and five hours satisfy all the demands nature
seems to make--thus the long sleeps of winter compensate for the lack of
rest taken during the summer-time.
And yet these hardy men of the north tell me that they enjoy the winter,
and that they perform their toils with deliberation and ease, and take
full advantage of the long sleeping periods.