THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS.
Forty Mile Creek is the oldest mining camp in the Yukon country, and
the first where coarse gold or "gulch diggings" was found. In the fall
of 1886 a prospector by the name of Franklin discovered the precious
metal near the mouth of what is now called Forty Mile Creek. This
stream was put down on the old maps as the Shitando River, but miners
are very independent in their nomenclature, and often adopt a new
name if the old one does not suit them, preferring a simple term with
an evident meaning to the more euphonious ones suggestive of Pullman
cars. At the time of the discovery of gold there was a post of the
Alaskan Commercial Company at the mouth of the stream, but the trader
in charge, Jack McQuesten, was absent in San Francisco. As the supplies
at the post were very low, and a rush of miners to the district was
anticipated for the next summer, it was thought best to try to get
word to the trader, and George Williams undertook to carry out a letter
in midwinter.
Accompanied by an Indian, he succeeded in attaining the Chilkoot Pass,
but was there frozen to death. The letter, however, was carried to the
post at Dyea by the Indian, and the necessary supplies were sent, thus
averting the threatened famine. From 1887 to 1893 the various gulches
of Forty Mile Creek were the greatest gold producers of the Yukon
country, but by 1893 the supplies of gold began to show exhaustion; and
about this time a Russian half-breed, by the name of Pitka, discovered
gold in the bars of Birch Creek, some two hundred miles further down
the Yukon.
A large part of the population of the Forty Mile district rushed
to the new diggings and built the mining camp to which they gave
the name of Circle City, from its proximity to the Arctic Circle.
The Forty Mile district is partly in British and partly in American
territory, since the boundary line crosses the stream some distance
above its mouth, while Birch Creek is entirely in American territory.
The world-renowned Klondike, again, is within British boundaries. So
the tide of mining population has ebbed back and forth in the Yukon
country, each wave growing larger than the first, till it culminated
in the third of the great world-rushes after gold, exciting, wild and
romantic--the Klondike boom, a fit successor to the "forty-nine" days
of California, and to the events which followed the discovery of gold
in Australia.
At the time of our visit, in 1896, Forty Mile Post was distinctly on
the decline. Yet it contained probably 500 or 600 inhabitants, not
counting the Indians, of whom there were a considerable number. These
Indians were called Charley Indians, from their chief Charley. There
is a mission near here and the Indians have all been Christianized.
It is told that the Tanana Indians, who had no mission, and who came
here out of their wild fastnesses only once in a while to trade, did
not embrace Christianity, which rather elated Charley's followers, as
they considered that they now had decidedly the advantage; and they
openly vaunted of it. In this country at certain times of the year,
particularly in the fall, great herds of caribou pass, and then one
can slaughter as many as he needs for the winter's supply of meat,
without much hunting, for the animals select some trail and are not
easily scared from it. One fall a herd marched up one of the busiest
mining gulches of Birch Creek and the miners stood in their cabin doors
and shot them.
So the Indians always watch as eagerly for the caribou, as they do for
the salmon in the summer. But this particular fall it happened that
the animals stayed away from the Charley Indians' hunting grounds, but
passed through those of the Tananas in force. The heathen then came
down to the trading post laden with meat, and the chief, who knew a
little English, taunted Charley in it.
"Where moose, Charley?" he asked.
"No moose," said Charley.
"Woo!" said the Tanana chief, grinning in triumph. "What's the matter
with your Jesus?"
The Indians at Forty Mile Post were mostly encamped in tents or were
living in rude huts of timber plastered with mud; while the white men
had built houses of logs, unsquared, with the chinks filled with mud
and moss and the roof covered with similar material. Prices were high
throughout: A lot of land in the middle of the town, say 100 by 150
feet, was worth $7,000 or $8,000; sugar was worth twenty-five cents a
pound and ordinary labor ten dollars a day. All provisions were also
very expensive, and the supply was often short. Many common articles,
usually reckoned among what the foolish call the necessities of life,
could not be obtained by us. I say foolish, because one can learn
from pioneering and exploring, upon how little life can be supported
and health and strength maintained, and how many of the supposed
necessities are really luxuries.
The Alaskan Eskimo lives practically on fish alone throughout the year,
without salt, without bread,--just fish--and grows fat and oily and of
pungent odor. But white men can hardly become so simple in their diet
without some danger of dying in the course of the experiment, like the
famous cow that was trained to go without eating, but whose untimely
death cut short her career in the first bloom of success.
The miners have always been dependent for supplies on steamers from
San Francisco or Seattle, which have to make a trip of 4,000 miles or
more; and, in the early days, if any accident occurred, there was no
other source.
I have heard of a bishop of the Episcopal Church, a missionary in this
country, who lived all winter upon moose meat, without salt; and an old
miner told me of working all summer on flour alone. When the fall came
he shot some caribou, and his description of his sensations on eating
his first venison steak were touching. Hardly a winter has passed
until very recently when the miners were not put on rations--so many
pounds of bacon and so much flour to the man,--to bridge over the time
until the steamer should arrive. The winter of 1889-90 is known to the
old Yukon pioneer as the "starvation winter," for during the previous
summer a succession of accidents prevented the river boat from reaching
Forty Mile with provisions. The men were finally starved out and in
October they all began attempting to make their way down the Yukon,
towards St. Michaels, over a thousand miles away, where food was known
to be stored, having been landed at this depot from ocean steamers.
Nearly a hundred men left the post in small boats. Some travelled the
whole distance to St. Michaels, others stopped and wintered by the way
at the various miserable trading posts, or in the winter camps of the
Indians themselves, wherever food could be found. It happened that this
year the river did not freeze up so early as usual, which favored the
flight, though the journey down the lower part of the river was made in
running ice.
In connection with the shortness of provisions and supplies in these
early years, a story is told of a worthless vagabond who used to hang
around Forty Mile Post, and whose hoaxes, invented to make money, put
the wooden nutmeg and the oak ham of Connecticut to shame. There was a
dearth of candles one year at the post, and in midwinter, when, for a
while, the sun hardly rises at all, that was no trifling privation. The
weather was cold, as it always is at Forty Mile in the winter time. The
trickster had some candle molds in his possession, but no grease; so he
put the wicks into the molds, which he filled with water colored white
with chalk or condensed milk. The water immediately froze solid, making
a very close imitation of a candle. He manufactured a large number and
then started around the post to peddle them. All bought eagerly--Indian
squaws to sew by, miners, shop-keepers, everybody. One man bought a
whole case and shoved them under his bed; when he came to pull them
out again to use, he found nothing but the wicks in a pile, the ice
having melted and the water having evaporated in the warm room. What
punishment was meted out to this unique swindler I do not know, but I
could not learn that he was ever severely dealt with.
The evening of our arrival in Forty Mile Post we were attracted by
observing a row of miners, who were lined up in front of the saloon
engaged in watching the door of a large log cabin opposite, rather
dilapidated, with the windows broken in. On being questioned, they said
there was going to be a dance, but when or how they did not seem to
know: all seemed to take only a languid looker-on interest, speaking of
the affair lightly and flippantly. Presently more men, however, joined
the group and eyed the cabin expectantly. In spite of their disclaimers
they evidently expected to take part, but where were the fair partners
for the mazy waltz?
The evening wore on until ten o'clock, when in the dusk a stolid Indian
woman, with a baby in the blanket on her back, came cautiously around
the corner, and with the peculiar long slouchy step of her kind, made
for the cabin door, looking neither to the right nor to the left. She
had no fan, nor yet an opera cloak; she was not even décolleté; she
wore large moccasins on her feet--number twelve, I think, according to
the white man's system of measurement--and she had a bright colored
handkerchief on her head. She was followed by a dozen others, one far
behind the other, each silent and unconcerned, and each with a baby
upon her back. They sidled into the log cabin and sat down on the
benches, where they also deposited their babies in a row: the little
red people lay there very still, with wide eyes shut or staring, but
never crying--Indian babies know that is all foolishness and doesn't
do any good. The mothers sat awhile looking at the ground in some one
spot and then slowly lifted their heads to look at the miners who had
slouched into the cabin after them--men fresh from the diggings,
spoiling for excitement of any kind. Then a man with a dilapidated
fiddle struck up a swinging, sawing melody, and in the intoxication of
the moment some of the most reckless of the miners grabbed an Indian
woman and began furiously swinging her around in a sort of waltz, while
the others crowded around and looked on.
Little by little the dusk grew deeper, but candles were scarce and
could not be afforded. The figures of the dancing couples grew more and
more indistinct and their faces became lost to view, while the sawing
of the fiddle grew more and more rapid, and the dancing more excited.
There was no noise, however; scarcely a sound save the fiddle and the
shuffling of the feet over the floor of rough hewn logs; for the Indian
women were stolid as ever, and the miners could not speak the language
of their partners. Even the lookers-on said nothing, so that these
silent dancing figures in the dusk made an almost weird effect.
One by one, however, the women dropped out, tired, picked up their
babies and slouched off home, and the men slipped over to the saloon
to have a drink before going to their cabins. Surely this squaw-dance,
as they call it, was one of the most peculiar balls ever seen. No
sound of revelry by night, no lights, no flowers, no introductions, no
conversations. Of all the Muses, Terpsichore the nimble-footed, alone
was represented, for surely the nymph who presides over music would
have disowned the fiddle.
All the diggings in the Forty Mile district were remote from the Post,
and to reach them one had to ascend Forty Mile Creek, a rapid stream,
for some distance. Pete left us here, and we three concluded to go it
alone. Inasmuch as we were young and tender, we were overwhelmed with
advice of such various and contradictory kinds that we were almost
disheartened. Every one agreed that it would be impossible to take
our boats up the river, that we should take an "up river" boat, (that
is, a boat built long and narrow, with a wide overhang, so as to make
as little friction with the water as possible, and to make upsetting
difficult); but when we came to inquire we found there was no such boat
to be had. We were advised to take half-a-dozen experienced polers,
but such polers could not be found. Evidently we must either wait
the larger part of the summer for our preparations _à la mode_, or go
anyhow; and this latter we decided to do. We announced our intention at
the table of the man whose hospitality we were enjoying. He stared.
"You'll find Forty Mile Creek a hard river to go up," he said, slowly.
"Have you had much experience in ascending rivers?"
"Very little," we replied.
"Are you good polers?" asked another.
"Like the young lady who was asked whether she could play the piano,"
I answered, "we don't know--we never tried." Everybody roared;
they had been wanting to laugh for some time, and here was their
opportunity. Later a guide was offered to us, but we had got on our
dignity and refused him; then he asked to be allowed to accompany us
as a passenger, taking his own food, and helping with the boat, and we
consented to this. He had a claim on the headwaters of Sixty Mile, to
which he wished to go back, but could not make the journey up the river
alone. A year afterwards this penniless fellow was one of the lucky
men in the Klondike rush and came back to civilization with a reputed
fortune of $100,000.
We could row only a short distance up the creek from the post, for
after this the current became so swift that we could make no headway.
We then tied a long line to the bow of the boat, and two of us, walking
on the shore, pulled the line, while another stood in the bow and by
constant shoving out into the stream, succeeded in overcoming the
tendency for the pull of the line to make the boat run into the shore
or into such shallow water that it would ground. We soon reached the
canyon, supposed to be the most difficult place in the creek to pass;
here the stream is very rapid and tumbles foaming over huge boulders
which have partially choked it. We towed our boat up through this,
however, without much difficulty, and on the second night camped at the
boundary line.
Here a gaunt old character, Sam Patch by name, had his cabin. He was
famous for his patriotism and his vegetables. His garden was on the
steep side of a south-facing hill and was sheltered from the continual
frosts which fall in the summer nights, so that it succeeded well.
Foreign vegetables, as well as native plants, thrive luxuriantly in
Alaska so long as they can be kept from being frost-bitten: for in
the long sunshiny summer days they grow twice as fast and big as they
do in more temperate climates. "Sam Patch's potato patch" was famous
throughout the diggings, and the surest way to win Sam's heart was to
go and inspect and admire it. Sam was always an enthusiastic American,
and when the Canadian surveyors surveyed the meridian line which
constituted the International boundary, they ran it right through his
potato patch; but he stood by his American flag and refused to haul it
down--quite unnecessarily, because no one asked him to do so.
The next day we reached the mouth of the little tributary called Moose
Creek. From here a trail thirty miles in length leads over the low
mountains to the headwaters of Sixty Mile Creek, where several of the
richest gulches of the Forty Mile district were located. We beached
our boat, therefore, put packs on our backs and started. At this time
the days were hot and the mosquitoes vicious, and nearly every night
was frosty; so we sweat and smarted all day, and shivered by night,
for our blankets were hardly thick enough. We used to remark on rising
in the morning that Alaska was a delightful country, with temperature
to suit every taste; no matter if one liked hot weather or moderate or
cold, if he would wait he would get it inside of twenty-four hours.
We were tired when we started over the trail, and the journey was not
an easy one, for we carried blankets, food, cameras, and other small
necessaries. We camped in a small swamp the first night, where the
ground was so wet that we were obliged to curl up on the roots of
trees, close to the trunks, to keep out of the water. The second day
a forest fire blocked our journey, but we made our way through it,
treading swiftly over the burning ground and through the thick smoke:
then we emerged onto a bare rocky ridge, from which we could look down,
on the right, over the network of little valleys which feed Forty Mile
Creek, and on the other side over the tributaries of Sixty Mile Creek,
clearly defined as if on a map. The ridge on which we travelled was cut
up like the teeth of a saw, so that a large part of our time was spent
in climbing up and down.
On the latter part of the second day we found no wood, and at night we
could hardly prepare food enough to keep our stomachs from sickening.
My feet had become raw at the start from hard boots, and every step
was a torture; yet the boots could not be taken off, for the trail was
covered with small sharp stones, and the packs on our backs pressed
heavily downward. The third day we separated, each descending from the
mountain ridge into one of the little gulches, in which we could see
the white tents or the brown cabins of the miners, with smoke rising
here and there. My way led me down a rocky ridge and then abruptly into
the valley of Miller Creek. As I sat down and rested, surveying the
little valley well dotted with shanties, two men came climbing up the
trail and sat down to chat. They were going to the spot on Forty Mile
Creek which we had just left--there was a keg of whisky "cached" there
and they had been selected a committee of two by the miners to escort
the aforesaid booze into camp. They were alternately doleful at the
prospect of the sixty mile tramp and jubilant over the promised whisky,
for, as they informed us, the camp had been "dry for some time."
Descending into the camp where the men were busily working, I stopped
to watch them. Gaunt, muscular, sweating, they stood in their long
boots in the wet gravel and shovelled it above their heads into
"sluice boxes,"--a series of long wooden troughs in which a continuous
current of water was running. The small material was carried out of
the lower end of the sluices by the water. Here and there the big
stones choked the current and a man with a long shovel was continuously
occupied with cleaning the boxes of such accumulations. Everybody was
working intensely. The season is short in Alaska and the claim-owner
is generally a hustler; and men who are paid ten dollars a day for
shovelling must jump to earn their money.
Strangers were rare on Miller Creek in those days, and everybody
stopped a minute to look and answer my greetings politely, but there
was no staring, and everybody went on with his work without asking
any questions. Men are courteous in rough countries, where each one
must travel on his merits and fight his own battles, and where social
standing or previous condition of servitude count for nothing. I
wandered slowly down from claim to claim. They were all working, one
below the other, for this was the best part of one of the oldest and
richest gulches of the Forty Mile district. One man asked me where I
was going to sleep, and on my telling him that I had not thought of it,
replied that there were some empty log cabins a little distance below.
Further down a tall, dark, mournful man addressed me in broken English,
with a Canadian French accent, and put the same question.
"I work on ze night shift to-night," he continued, "so I do not sleep
in my bed. You like, you no fin' better, you is very welcome, sair, to
sleep in my cabine, in my bed."
I accepted gratefully, for I was very tired; so the Frenchman conducted
me to a cabin about six feet square and insisted upon cooking a little
supper for me. He was working for day's wages, he answered to my rather
blunt questions, but hoped that he would earn enough this summer and
the next winter to buy an outfit and enough "grub" to go prospecting
for himself, on the Tanana, which had not been explored and where he
believed there must be gold; prospectors get very firmly convinced of
such things with no real reason.
After supper he darkened the windows for me and went to work. I sought
the comfort of a wooden bunk, covering myself with a dirty bed-quilt.
It was very ancient and perhaps did not smell sweet, but what did I
care? It was Heaven. The darkness was delicious. I had not known real
darkness for so long throughout the summer--always sleeping out of
doors in the light of the Alaskan night--that I had felt continually
strained and uncomfortable for the lack of it, and this darkened cabin
came to me like the sweetest of opiates.
When I awoke the Frenchman was preparing breakfast. I had slept some
ten hours without moving. There was only one tin plate, one cup, and
one knife and fork, and he insisted upon my eating with them, while he
stood by and gravely superintended, urging more slapjacks upon me. I
suddenly felt ashamed that I had told him neither my name nor business,
for although I had questioned him freely, he had not manifested
the slightest curiosity. So without being asked I volunteered some
information about myself. He listened attentively and politely,
but without any great interest. It was quite apparent that the most
important thing to him was that I was a stranger. Soon after breakfast
I thanked him warmly and went away--I knew enough of miners not to
insult him by offering him money for his hospitality.
The night shift of shovellers had given way to the day shift, and work
was going on as fiercely as ever. The bottoms of all these gulches are
covered with roughly stratified shingle, most of which slides down from
the steep hillsides of the creek. Among the rocks on the hillsides
are many quartz veins, which carry "iron pyrite" or "fool's gold";
these often contain small specks of real gold. So when all the rubble
gets together and is broken up in the bottom of the stream, where the
water flows through it, the different materials in the rocks begin to
separate one from another, more or less, according to the difference
in their weights and the fineness of the fragments into which they
are broken. Now gold is the heaviest of metals, and the result is,
that through all this jostling and crowding it gradually works itself
down to the bottom of the heap, and generally quite to the solid rock
below. This has been found to be the case nearly everywhere. In process
of time the gravel accumulations become quite thick; in Miller Creek,
for example, they varied from three or four feet at the head of the
valley, where I was, to fifty or sixty at the mouth. But all the upper
gravels are barren and valueless. Where the gravels are not deep, they
are simply shovelled off and out of the way, till the lower part, where
the gold lies, is laid bare; this work generally takes a year, during
which time there is no return for the labor.
Once the pay gravel--as it is called--is reached, a long wooden trough
called a "sluice," is constructed, the current turned through it,
and the gravel shovelled in. This work can only be carried on in the
summer-time, when the water is not frozen, so that the warm months are
the time for hustling, day and night shifts being employed, with as
many men on each as can work conveniently together. In case the barren
overlying gravel is very deep, the miners wait until it is frozen
and then sink shafts to the pay dirt, which they take out by running
tunnels and excavating chambers or "stopes" along the bed rock. In
this work they do not use blasting, but build a small fire wherever
they wish to penetrate, and as soon as the gravel thaws they shovel it
up and convey it out, meanwhile pushing the fire ahead so that more
may thaw out. In this way they accumulate the pay dirt in a heap on
the surface, and as soon as warm weather comes they shovel it into the
sluices as before.
At the time of my visit, the construction of the sluices was a work of
considerable labor, for as there was no sawmill in the country, the
boards from which they were made had to be sawed by hand out of felled
trees.
In the last few of the trough-sections or sluice-boxes, slats are
placed, sometimes transverse, sometimes lengthwise, sometimes oblique,
sometimes crossed, forming a grating--all patterns have nearly the same
effect, namely, to catch the gold and the other heavy minerals by means
of vortexes which are created. Thus behind these slats or "riffles"
the gold lodges, while the lighter and barren gravel is swept by the
current of water out of the trough, and the heavy stones are thrust
out by the shovel of the miner. Nearly the same process as that which
in nature concentrates gold at the bottom of the gravels and on top of
the bed-rock is adopted by man to cleanse the gold perfectly from the
attendant valueless minerals.
[Illustration: WASHING THE GRAVEL IN SLUICE-BOXES.]
Everybody was hospitable along the gulch. I had five different
invitations to dinner,--hearty ones, too--and some were loath to be
put off with the plea of previous engagement. They were all eager for
news from the outside world, from which they had not heard since the
fall before; keenly interested in political developments, at home and
abroad. They were intelligent and better informed than the ordinary
man, for in the long winter months there is little to do but to sleep
and read. They develop also a surprising taste for solid literature;
nearly everywhere Shakespeare seemed to be the favorite author, all
nationalities and degrees of education uniting in the general liking.
A gulch that had a full set of Shakespeare considered itself in for a
rather cozy winter; and there were regular Shakespeare clubs, where
each miner took a certain character to read. Books of science, and
especially philosophy, were also widely sought. It has been my theory
that in conditions like this, where there are not the thousand and one
stimuli to fritter away the intellectual energy, the mental qualities
become stronger and keener and the little that is done is done with
surprising vigor and clearness.
Down the creek I found a Swede, working over the gravels on a claim
that had already been washed once. He had turned off the water from the
sluice-boxes and was scraping up the residue from among the riffles.
Mostly black heavy magnetic iron particles with many sparkling yellow
grains of gold, green hornblendes and ruby-colored garnets. He put
all this into a gold pan, (a large shallow steel pan such as used in
the first stages of prospecting), and proceeded to "pan out" the gold
yet a little more. He immersed the vessel just below the surface of
a pool of water, and by skillful twirlings caused the contents to be
agitated, and while the heavier particles sank quickly to the bottom,
he continuously worked off the lighter ones, allowing them to flow
out over the edge of the pan. Yet he was very careful that no bit of
gold should escape, and when he had carried this process as far as he
could, he invited me into his cabin to see him continue the separation.
Here he spread the "dust" on the table and began blowing it with a
small hand-bellows. The garnets, the hornblendes and the fragments
of quartz, being lighter than the rest, soon rolled out to one side,
leaving only the gold and the magnetic iron. Then with a hand magnet he
drew the iron out from the gold, leaving the noble yellow metal nearly
pure, in flakes and irregular grains. As the material he had separated
still contained some gold, he put this aside to be treated with
quicksilver. The quicksilver is poured into the dust, where it forms
an amalgam with the gold: it is then strained off, and the amalgam is
distilled--the quicksilver is vaporized, leaving the gold behind.
This man had his wife with him, a tired, lonely looking woman. I asked
her if there were no more women on the creek. She said no; there was
another woman over on Glacier Creek, and she wanted so much to see her
sometimes, but she was not a good woman, so she could not go. She was
lonely, she said; she had been here three years and had not seen a
woman.
From some of the miners I obtained a pair of Indian moccasins, which
I padded well with hay and cloth to make them easy for my chafing
feet; then I slung my own heavy boots on top of my pack and the next
morning bade the gulch good-bye, feeling strengthened from my rest. As
I climbed out of the gulch I met the miners who had gone as a committee
to escort the whisky, arriving with it, white and speckled with
fatigue, speaking huskily, (but not from drinking), yet triumphant. The
day was cool and when one is alone one is apt to travel hard; but the
unwonted lightness of my feet and the freedom from pain encouraged me,
so I set my Indian moccasins into a regular Indian trot, and by noon
had covered the entire fifteen miles that constituted the first half of
the journey. This brought me to a locality dignified by the name of the
"Half-Way House," from a tent-fly of striped drilling left by some one,
in which the miners were accustomed to pass the night in their journeys
over the trail. Here I found Schrader, who had arrived late the night
before and was preparing to make a start. We lighted a fire and made
some tea, which with corned beef and crackers, made up our lunch.
While we were eating, our old companion Pete, with two more miners,
came in from the opposite direction to that from which we had come; he
was on his way to visit his old claim on Miller Creek. Afterwards we
got away, and kept up a steady Indian trot till we reached our camp on
Forty Mile Creek at about six o'clock.
We found Goodrich already arrived and wrestling with the cooking,
with which he was having tremendously hard luck. This travelling
thirty miles in one day, carrying an average of thirty-five pounds, I
considered something of an achievement; but the tiredness which came
the next day showed that the energy meant for a long time had been
drawn upon.
[Illustration: "TRACKING" A BOAT UPSTREAM.]
For four days after that we worked our way up Forty Mile Creek, making
on an average seven or eight miles a day. Mosquitoes were abundant,
and the weather showery. We used the same method of pulling and poling
as before,--a laborious process and one calculated to ruin the most
angelic disposition. The river was very low and consequently full of
rapids and "riffles," as the miners call the shallow places over which
the water splashes. On many of these riffles our boat stuck fast, and
we dragged it over the rocks by sheer force, wading out and grasping
it by the gunwale. Again, where there were many large boulders piled
together in deep water, the boat would stick upon one, and we would be
obliged to wade out again and pilot it through by hand, now standing
dry upon a high boulder, and now floundering waist deep in the cold
water at some awkward step--maybe losing temper and scolding our
innocent companions for having shoved the boat too violently.
We generally worked till late, and began cooking our supper in
the dusk--which was now beginning to come--over a camp-fire whose
glare dazzled us so that when we tossed our flapjack into the air,
preparatory to browning its raw upper side, we often lost sight of it
in the gloom, and it sprawled upon the fire, or fell ignominiously over
the edge of the frying-pan. Those were awful moments; no one dared to
laugh at the cook then. We took turns at cooking, and patience was
the watchword. The cook needed it and much more so, those on whom
he practiced. One of our number produced a series of slapjacks once
which rivalled my famous Chilkoot biscuit. They were leaden, flabby,
wretched. We ate one apiece, and ate nothing else for a week, for, as
the woodsmen say, it "stuck to our ribs" wonderfully.
"How much baking powder did you put in with the flour?" we asked the
cook.
"How should I know?" he answered, indignantly. "What was right, of
course."
"Did you measure it?" We persisted, for the slapjack was irritating us
inside.
"Anybody," replied the cook, with crushing dignity, "who knows
anything, knows how much baking powder to put in with flour without
measuring it. I just used common sense." So we concluded that he had
put in too much common sense and not enough baking powder.
Just above where the river divides into two nearly equal forks, the
water grew so shallow that we could not drag our boat further, so we
hauled it up and filled it with green boughs to prevent it from drying
and cracking in the sun; then we built a "cache."
It may be best to explain the word "cache," so freely used in Alaska.
The term came from the French Canadian voyageurs or trappers; it is
pronounced "cash" and comes from the French _cacher_, to hide. So a
cache is something hidden, and was applied by these woodsmen to hidden
supplies and other articles of value, which could not be carried about,
being secreted until the owners should come that way again. In Alaska,
when anything was thus left, a high platform of poles was built,
supported by the trunks of slender trees, and the goods were left on
this platform, covered in some way against the ravages of wild animals.
To this structure the name "cache" came to be applied; and later was
extended to the storehouses wherein the natives kept their winter
supplies of fish and smoked meat, for these houses have a somewhat
similar structure, being built on top of upright poles like the old
Swiss lake-dwellings.
[Illustration: A "CACHE."]
The next morning we shouldered our pack-sacks, containing our
blankets, a little food, and other necessities, and were again on the
tramp, this time having no trail, however, but being obliged to keep on
the side of the stream. Here, as below, the river flowed in one nearly
continuous canyon, but on one side or the other flats had been built
out on the side where the current was slackest, while on the opposite
side was deep water quite up to the bold cliffs; and since the current
sweeps from side to side, one encounters levels and gravel flats, and
high rocks, on the same side. Many of the cliffs we scaled, crawling
gingerly along the almost perpendicular side of the rock. The constant
temptation in such climbing is to go higher, where it always looks
easier, but when one gets up it seems impossible to return. However, we
had no accidents, which, considering how awkward our packs made us, was
lucky. At other times we waded the stream to avoid the cliffs.
At night we reached the mouth of Franklin Gulch, where active mining
had been going on for some time. The miners were almost out of food,
the boat which ordinarily brought provisions from Forty Mile Post
having been unable to get up, on account of the low water. Yet they
gave us freely what they could. We took possession of an empty log
cabin, lighted a fire and toasted some trout which they gave us,
and this with crackers and bacon made our meal; then we discovered
some bunks with straw in them, which we agreed were gilt-edged, and
proceeded to make use of them without delay. Only a few of the total
number of miners were here, the rest having gone over the mountain to
Chicken Creek, where the latest find of gold was reported. The men had
not heard from "the outside" for some time. Even Forty Mile Post was a
metropolis for them and they were glad to hear from it. They had few
books and only a couple of newspapers three years old.
"Doesn't it get very dull here?" we asked of an old stager; "what do
you do for amusement?"
"Do!" he echoed with grave humor, "Do! why, God bless you, we 'ave very
genteel amusements. As for readin' an' litrachure an' all that, wy,
dammit, wen the fust grub comes in the spring, we 'ave a meetin' an' we
call all the boys together an' we app'int a chairman an' then some one
reads from the directions on the bakin'-powder boxes."
I set out alone for Chicken Creek the next morning, following a line
of blazed trees up over the mountain from Franklin Creek. I had been
told that once up on the divide one could look right down into Chicken
Creek, and I have no doubt that this is true, for on attaining the top
of the hill a stretch of country twenty miles across was spread out
before me as on a map, while directly below was a considerable branch
of Forty Mile Creek, divided into many closely adjacent gulches. One
of these must be Chicken Creek, but which? There were no tents and no
smoke visible, much as the eye might strain through the field-glasses.
Just here the trail gave out, the blazer having evidently grown tired
of blazing. Thinking to obtain a better view into the valley, I set
out along the hill which curved around it, tramping patiently along
until nearly night over the sharp ridges, but without ever seeing any
signs of life in the great desolate country below me. When the dark
shadows were striking the valleys, I caught sight of what appeared to
be a faint smoke in the heart of a black timbered gulch, and I made
straightway down the mountain-side for it, hurrying for fear the fire
should be extinguished before I could get close enough to it to find
the place. I had no doubt that this came from the log cabin of some
prospector, who would be only too glad to welcome a weary stranger with
a warm supper and a blanket on the floor.
On getting down, away from the bare rocks on the mountain ridge, I
found deep moss, tiresome to my wearied limbs, and further down great
areas of "niggerheads"--the terror of travellers in the northern
swamps. These niggerheads are tufts of vegetation which grow upwards by
successive accumulations till they are knee high or even more. They are
scattered thickly about, but each tuft is separated completely from all
the rest, leaving hardly space to step between; if one attempts to walk
on top of them he will slip off, so there is nothing to do but to walk
on the ground, lifting the legs over the obstacles with great exertion.
The tops of the tufts are covered with long grass, which droops down on
all sides, whence the name niggerheads,--_têtes de femme_ or women's
heads is the name given them by the French Canadian voyageurs.
Still lower the brush and vines became so thick that it was almost
impossible to force the way through in places. At last I emerged upon
a grey lifeless area which seemed to have been burned over. There were
no trees or plants, but the bare blackened sticks of what had once
been a young growth of spruce still stood upright, though some trunks
had fallen and lay piled, obstacles to travelling. The whole looked
peculiarly forlorn. A little further I came to the spot where I had
seen the smoke. There was nothing but a stagnant pool covered so deep
with green scum that one caught only an occasional glimpse of the black
water beneath, and from this, unsavory mists were rising in the chill
of the evening air. I had mistaken these vapors for smoke from my post
miles up the mountain. My dream of a log cabin and a blanket went up
likewise in smoke.
It was now eleven o'clock at night, and twilight; I had walked at least
twenty miles through a rough country and could go no further. So I
broke off the smaller dried trees and sticks and lighted a fire, then
I ate some crackers and bacon that I had with me, but I did not dare
to drink the water of the stagnant pool, which was all there was to
be had. The night grew frosty, and I had no blankets; but I lay down
close to the fire and caught fifteen-minute naps. Once I woke with
the smell of burning cloth in my nostrils: in my sleep I had edged
too close to the grateful warmth, and my coat and the notebook in my
pocket, containing all my season's notes, had caught fire. I rolled
over on them and crushed out the fire with my fingers, and after that
I shivered away a little further from the fire. At about three o'clock
it grew light enough to see the surrounding country, and I started
out again for the first point I had reached on the ridge the morning
before, thinking to get back to Franklin Gulch, for I was thoroughly
exhausted. On reaching the ridge, however, I met a miner coming over
the trail; he agreed to pilot me to the new prospects, so I turned back
again.
There were fifteen or twenty men in the gulch which we finally reached,
all living in tents in a very primitive way, and all very short of
provisions, yet, hospitable to the last morsel, they freely offered
the best they had. They were poor, too; everybody does not get rich in
the gold diggings, even in Alaska. In fact, previous to the Klondike
discovery, the largest net sum of money taken out by any one man was
about $30,000, while hundreds could not pay for their provisions or
get enough to buy a ticket out of the country. The Klondike, too, has
been badly lied about. Not one man in twenty who goes there makes more
than a bare living, and many have to "hustle" for that harder than
they would at home. So the hospitality of the miners, such as I found
it nearly everywhere on the Yukon, is not a mere act of courtesy which
costs nothing, but the genuine unselfishness which cheerfully divides
the last crust with a passing stranger.
Having been strengthened by two square meals, simple but sufficient,
I started back for Franklin Gulch the same night. It began to rain in
torrents on the way, and this, as usual, drove out the mosquitoes and
made them unusually savage. They attacked me in such numbers that in
spite of my gloves and veil I was nearly frantic. The best relief was
to stride along at a good round pace, for this kept most of the pests
at my back, and gave me a vent for my wrought-up nerves; and at the
same time I had the satisfaction of knowing I was "getting there." The
thong of my moccasin became undone, but I did not dare to stop to tie
it, but kept plunging along, shuffling it with me. I reached our cabin
at the mouth of Franklin Gulch, and the sight of the bunk with straw in
it, and the familiar grey blanket, was sweet to me.
Next day we bade the miners at the creek's mouth good-bye, with
promises to hurry up the provision-boat if possible, and made our way
to where we had left our boat and cache. The next morning we launched
the Skookum again, and began our journey back. Going down was quicker
work than coming up, not so laborious, and far more exciting. Owing
to the lowness of the water, the stream was one succession of small
rapids, which were full of boulders; and to steer the boat, careering
like a race horse, among these, was a pretty piece of work. One pulled
the oars to give headway, another steered, and the third stood in the
bow, pole in hand, to fend us off from such rocks as we were in danger
of striking. We soon found that the safest part of such a rapid is
where the waves are roughest, for here the water, rebounding from the
shallow shore on either side, meets in a narrow channel, where it
tosses and foams, yet here is the only place where there is no danger
of striking.
The second day out we ran twenty-five or thirty of these rapids. In
running through one we pulled aside to avoid a large boulder sticking
up in midstream, and then saw in front of us another boulder just at
the surface, which we had not before noticed. It was too late, however,
and the boat stuck fast in a second, and began to turn over from the
force of the water behind. With one accord we all leaped out of the
boat, expecting to find foothold somewhere among the boulders, and
hold the boat or shove her off so that she should not capsize; but
none of us touched bottom, though we sank to our necks, still grasping
the gunwale of the boat. Our being out, however, made the boat so much
lighter that she immediately slipped over the rock and went gloriously
down the rapid, broadside, we hanging on. As soon as we could we
clambered in, each grasped a paddle or oars or pole, and by great good
luck we had no further accident.
Some distance further down we again sighted white water ahead, where
the stream ran hard against a perpendicular cliff. Some miners were
"rocking" gravel for gold in the bars just above; and we yelled to them
to know if we could run the rapids.
"Yes," came the answer, "if you're a d----d good man!"
"All right--thanks!" we cried, and sailed serenely through. This was
known by the cheerful name of Dead Man's Riffle. Owing to the strong
wind blowing, the mosquitoes were not very annoying these few days;
the sun was warm and bright, and the hillsides were covered thickly
with a carmine flower which gave them a general brilliant appearance.
These things, with the exhilaration of running rapids, made a sort of
vacation--an outing, a picnic, as it were--in contrast to our previous
hard work. When we got to the Miller Creek trail we took on a couple
of miners who wanted to get out of the country, but had no boat in
which to go down to Forty Mile Post. They had worked for some time and
had barely succeeded in making enough to buy food, and now, a little
homesick and discouraged, they had made up their minds to try to get
out and back to "God's country" as they called it--Colorado. With their
help we let our boat down through the "Cañon" safely, and the next
day,--the 29th of July,--arrived at Forty Mile Post.
At the Post we found that plenty was reigning, for the first steamboat
had arrived, bringing a lot of sorely-needed provisions. The trader in
charge gave us a fine lunch of eggs, moosemeat, canned asparagus, and
other delicacies, and then we took possession of a deserted log cabin.
On ransacking around we found a Yukon lamp, consisting of a twisted bit
of cotton stuck into a pint bottle of seal oil, and when it began to
grow dusk we lighted it and sat down at the table and wrote home to our
friends; for the steamer had gone further up the river and would return
in a few days, so that letters sent down by her would probably be ahead
of us in getting home--eight thousand miles! We had laid in a new stock
of provisions. Flour, I remember was $8.00 for 100 pounds, and we
managed to get a few of the last eggs which the steamer had brought,
at $1.00 a dozen.
The Skookum had suffered considerably in our Forty Mile trip, and we
spent a large part of the next day in patching her, plugging her seams
with oakum and sealing them with hot pitch. One of our number, who was
cooking for the boat-menders, suddenly appeared on the scene, chasing
a pack of yelping dogs with our long camp-axe. He had gone to the
woodpile for a moment, leaving the door ajar. At this moment a grey
dog whose tail had been cut off somehow, was looking around the log
house opposite--he had been on guard and watching our door for the last
twenty-four hours. He uttered a low yelp which brought a dozen others
together from all quarters, all lean, strong and sneaking; and they
slipped into our door. When the cook turned from the woodpile a minute
later he was just in time to aim a billet at the last one as he emerged
from the cabin with our cheese in his mouth. They fled swiftly and were
not to be caught: and an examination showed that they had, in their
silent and well organized raid, cleaned our larder thoroughly, having
eaten the delicacies on the spot and carried off nearly all the rest.
[Illustration: NATIVE DOGS.]
The Indian dog is a study, for he is much unlike his civilized brother.
He rarely barks, never at strangers, and takes no notice of a white man
who arrives in the village,--even though the village may never have
seen such a thing, and the children scream, the women flee, and the
men are troubled and silent--but he howls nights. A dog wakes up in
the middle of the night, yawns, looks at the stars, and listens. There
is not a sound. "How dull and stupid it is here in Ouklavigamute,"
he thinks; "not nearly as lively as it was in Mumtreghloghmembramute.
There we had fights nearly every night, sometimes twice. If I only
knew a dog I was sure I could lick--anyhow, here goes for a good long
howl. I'll show them that there is a dog in town with spirit enough to
make a noise, anyhow." With that he tunes up--do, re, mi, tra-la-la,
dulce, crescendo, grand Wagnerian smash. The other dogs wake up and one
nudges the other and says, "Oh, my, what a lark! Isn't it fun! Let's
yell too--whoop, roo, riaow!" And just as men get excited at a football
game, or an election, or when the fire-alarm rings, these dogs yell
and grow red in the face. Then the inhabitants wake up and get out
after the dogs, who run and yelp; and after a while each cur crawls
into a hiding-place and goes to sleep. In the morning they wake up and
wriggle their tails. "What enthusiasm there was last night--but--er--I
didn't quite catch on to the idea--of course I yelled to help the other
fellows--it's such fun being enthusiastic, you know."
This happens every night. The Indian dog makes it a point to stand
around like a bump on a log and look stupid; when he has fooled you to
that extent he will surprise you some day by a daring theft, for he is
clever as a man and quick as an express train.