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