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THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS
[Illustration: Publisher logo]
THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS
A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse
by
HAMLIN GARLAND
Author of
Rose of Dutcher's Coolly
Main Travelled Roads
Prairie Folks
Boy Life on the Prairie, etc.
New York
The MacMillan Company
London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd.
1906
Copyright, 1899,
by Hamlin Garland.
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1899. Reprinted January,
1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Coming of the Ships 3
II. Outfitting 11
III. On the Stage Road 21
IV. In Camp at Quesnelle 33
V. The Blue Rat 37
VI. The Beginning of the Long Trail 45
VII. The Blackwater Divide 53
VIII. We swim the Nechaco 63
IX. First Crossing of the Bulkley 73
X. Down the Bulkley Valley 81
XI. Hazleton. Midway on the Trail 97
XII. Crossing the Big Divide 107
XIII. The Silent Forests 119
XIV. The Great Stikeen Divide 131
XV. In the Cold Green Mountains 139
XVI. The Passing of the Beans 151
XVII. The Wolves and the Vultures Assemble 163
XVIII. At Last the Stikeen 175
XIX. The Goldseekers' Camp at Glenora 185
XX. Great News at Wrangell 195
XXI. The Rush to Atlin Lake 207
XXII. Atlin Lake and the Gold Fields 217
XXIII. The End of the Trail 231
XXIV. Homeward Bound 241
XXV. Ladrone travels in State 251
XXVI. The Goldseekers reach the Golden River 259
POEMS
Anticipation 1
Where the Desert flames with Furnace Heat 2
The Cow-boy 9
From Plain to Peak 19
Momentous Hour 31
A Wish 32
The Gift of Water 35
Mounting 35
The Eagle Trail 36
Moon on the Plain 43
The Whooping Crane 51
The Loon 51
Yet still we rode 61
The Gaunt Gray Wolf 79
Abandoned on the Trail 80
Do you fear the Wind? 95
Siwash Graves 105
Line up, Brave Boys 106
A Child of the Sun 117
In the Grass 118
The Faithful Broncos 129
The Whistling Marmot 130
The Clouds 137
The Great Stikeen Divide 138
The Ute Lover 147
Devil's Club 150
In the Cold Green Mountains 150
The Long Trail 159
The Greeting of the Roses 161
The Vulture 172
Campfires 173
The Footstep in the Desert 182
So this is the End of the Trail to him 190
The Toil of the Trail 193
The Goldseekers 205
The Coast Range of Alaska 215
The Freeman of the Hills 229
The Voice of the Maple Tree 230
A Girl on the Trail 239
O the Fierce Delight 249
The Lure of the Desert 258
This out of All will remain 262
Here the Trail ends 263
ANTICIPATION
I will wash my brain in the splendid breeze,
I will lay my cheek to the northern sun,
I will drink the breath of the mossy trees,
And the clouds shall meet me one by one.
I will fling the scholar's pen aside,
And grasp once more the bronco's rein,
And I will ride and ride and ride,
Till the rain is snow, and the seed is grain.
The way is long and cold and lone--
But I go.
It leads where pines forever moan
Their weight of snow,
Yet I go.
There are voices in the wind that call,
There are hands that beckon to the plain;
I must journey where the trees grow tall,
And the lonely heron clamors in the rain.
Where the desert flames with furnace heat,
I have trod.
Where the horned toad's tiny feet
In a land
Of burning sand
Leave a mark,
I have ridden in the noon and in the dark.
Now I go to see the snows,
Where the mossy mountains rise
Wild and bleak--and the rose
And pink of morning fill the skies
With a color that is singing,
And the lights
Of polar nights
Utter cries
As they sweep from star to star,
Swinging, ringing,
Where the sunless middays are.
THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS
CHAPTER I
COMING OF THE SHIPS
I
A little over a year ago a small steamer swung to at a Seattle wharf,
and emptied a flood of eager passengers upon the dock. It was an
obscure craft, making infrequent trips round the Aleutian Islands
(which form the farthest western point of the United States) to the
mouth of a practically unknown river called the Yukon, which empties
into the ocean near the post of St. Michaels, on the northwestern
coast of Alaska.
The passengers on this boat were not distinguished citizens, nor fair
to look upon. They were roughly dressed, and some of them were pale
and worn as if with long sickness or exhausting toil. Yet this ship
and these passengers startled the whole English-speaking world. Swift
as electricity could fly, the magical word GOLD went forth like a
brazen eagle across the continent to turn the faces of millions of
earth's toilers toward a region which, up to that time, had been
unknown or of ill report. For this ship contained a million dollars
in gold: these seedy passengers carried great bags of nuggets and
bottles of shining dust which they had burned, at risk of their
lives, out of the perpetually frozen ground, so far in the north that
the winter had no sun and the summer midnight had no dusk.
The world was instantly filled with the stories of these men and of
their tons of bullion. There was a moment of arrested attention--then
the listeners smiled and nodded knowingly to each other, and went
about their daily affairs.
But other ships similarly laden crept laggardly through the gates of
Puget Sound, bringing other miners with bags and bottles, and then
the world believed. Thereafter the journals of all Christendom had to
do with the "Klondike" and "The Golden River." Men could not hear
enough or read enough of the mysterious Northwest.
In less than ten days after the landing of the second ship, all
trains westward-bound across America were heavily laden with
fiery-hearted adventurers, who set their faces to the new Eldorado
with exultant confidence, resolute to do and dare.
Miners from Colorado and cow-boys from Montana met and mingled with
civil engineers and tailors from New York City, and adventurous
merchants from Chicago set shoulder to shoemakers from Lynn. All
kinds and conditions of prospectors swarmed upon the boats at
Seattle, Vancouver, and other coast cities. Some entered upon new
routes to the gold fields, which were now known to be far in the
Yukon Valley, while others took the already well-known route by way
of St. Michaels, and thence up the sinuous and sinister stream whose
waters began on the eastern slope of the glacial peaks just inland
from Juneau, and swept to the north and west for more than two
thousand miles. It was understood that this way was long and hard and
cold, yet thousands eagerly embarked on keels of all designs and of
all conditions of unseaworthiness. By far the greater number
assaulted the mountain passes of Skagway.
As the autumn came on, the certainty of the gold deposits deepened;
but the tales of savage cliffs, of snow-walled trails, of swift and
icy rivers, grew more numerous, more definite, and more appalling.
Weak-hearted Jasons dropped out and returned to warn their friends of
the dread powers to be encountered in the northern mountains.
As the uncertainties of the river route and the sufferings and toils
of the Chilcoot and the White Pass became known, the adventurers cast
about to find other ways of reaching the gold fields, which had come
now to be called "The Klondike," because of the extreme richness of a
small river of that name which entered the Yukon, well on toward the
Arctic Circle.
From this attempt to avoid the perils of other routes, much talk
arose of the Dalton Trail, the Taku Trail, the Stikeen Route, the
Telegraph Route, and the Edmonton Overland Trail. Every town within
two thousand miles of the Klondike River advertised itself as "the
point of departure for the gold fields," and set forth the special
advantages of its entrance way, crying out meanwhile against the
cruel mendacity of those who dared to suggest other and "more
dangerous and costly" ways.
The winter was spent in urging these claims, and thousands of men
planned to try some one or the other of these "side-doors." The
movement overland seemed about to surpass the wonderful
transcontinental march of miners in '49 and '50, and those who loved
the trail for its own sake and were eager to explore an unknown
country hesitated only between the two trails which were entirely
overland. One of these led from Edmonton to the head-waters of the
Pelly, the other started from the Canadian Pacific Railway at
Ashcroft and made its tortuous way northward between the great
glacial coast range on the left and the lateral spurs of the
Continental Divide on the east.
The promoters of each of these routes spoke of the beautiful valleys
to be crossed, of the lovely streams filled with fish, of the game
and fruit. Each was called "the poor man's route," because with a few
ponies and a gun the prospector could traverse the entire distance
during the summer, "arriving on the banks of the Yukon, not merely
browned and hearty, but a veteran of the trail."
It was pointed out also that the Ashcroft Route led directly across
several great gold districts and that the adventurer could combine
business and pleasure on the trip by examining the Ominica country,
the Kisgagash Mountains, the Peace River, and the upper waters of the
Stikeen. These places were all spoken of as if they were close
beside the trail and easy of access, and the prediction was freely
made that a flood of men would sweep up this valley such as had never
been known in the history of goldseeking.
As the winter wore on this prediction seemed about to be realized. In
every town in the West, in every factory in the East, men were
organizing parties of exploration. Grub stakers by the hundred were
outfitted, a vast army was ready to march in the early spring, when a
new interest suddenly appeared--a new army sprang into being.
Against the greed for gold arose the lust of battle. WAR came to
change the current of popular interest. The newspapers called home
their reporters in the North and sent them into the South, the Dakota
cow-boys just ready to join the ranks of the goldseekers entered the
army of the United States, finding in its Southern campaigns an
outlet to their undying passion for adventure; while the factory
hands who had organized themselves into a goldseeking company turned
themselves into a squad of military volunteers. For the time the gold
of the North was forgotten in the war of the South.
II
However, there were those not so profoundly interested in the war or
whose arrangements had been completed before the actual outbreak of
cannon-shot, and would not be turned aside. An immense army still
pushed on to the north. This I joined on the 20th day of April,
leaving my home in Wisconsin, bound for the overland trail and
bearing a joyous heart. I believed that I was about to see and take
part in a most picturesque and impressive movement across the
wilderness. I believed it to be the last great march of the kind
which could ever come in America, so rapidly were the wild places
being settled up. I wished, therefore, to take part in this tramp of
the goldseekers, to be one of them, and record their deeds. I wished
to return to the wilderness also, to forget books and theories of art
and social problems, and come again face to face with the great free
spaces of woods and skies and streams. I was not a goldseeker, but a
nature hunter, and I was eager to enter this, the wildest region yet
remaining in Northern America. I willingly and with joy took the long
way round, the hard way through.
THE COW-BOY
Of rough rude stock this saddle sprite
Is grosser grown with savage things.
Inured to storms, his fierce delight
Is lawless as the beasts he swings
His swift rope over.--Libidinous, obscene,
Careless of dust and dirt, serene,
He faces snows in calm disdain,
Or makes his bed down in the rain.