Dawson! It was a name to stir men's blood ten years ago,--a wild,
picturesque, lawless mining-camp, whose like had never been known and
never will be known again.
All kinds and conditions of men and women were represented. Miners,
prospectors, millionnaires, adventurers, wanderers, desperadoes;
brave-hearted, earnest women, dissolute dance-hall girls, and, more
dangerous still, the quiet, seductive adventuress--they were all there,
side by side, tent by tent, cabin by cabin.
Almost daily new discoveries were made and stampedes occurred. Every
little creek flowing into the Klondike was found rich in gold. The very
names that these creeks received--All-Gold, Too-Much-Gold,
Gold-Bottom--turned men's blood to fire. The whole country seemed to
have gone mad of excitement and the lust for gold. The white mountain
passes grew black with struggling human beings--fighting, falling,
rising, fighting on. It was like the blind stampeding of crazed animals
upon a plain; nothing could check them save exhaustion or death. When
the fever burned out in one and left him low, another sprang to take his
place. Dawson, like Skaguay, grew from dozens to hundreds in a day; from
hundreds to thousands; tents gave place to cabins; cabins, to
substantial frame buildings.
Ah, to have been there in the old days! Who would not have suffered the
early hardships, paid the price, and paid it cheerfully, for the sake of
seeing the life and being a part of it before it was too late?
Now it is forever too late. The glory of what it once was is all that
remains. To-day Dawson is so quiet, so dull, so respectable, that one
unconsciously yawns in its face.
But men's eyes still kindle when their memories of old days are stirred.
"They were great times," they say, looking at one another.
"They could only come once. They were times of blood and gold; of dance
and song; of glitter and show--and starvation and death. We worked all
day and danced or gambled all night. Our only passions were for women
and gold. If we couldn't get the women we wanted, the men that did get
'em fought their way to 'em, inch by inch; if we couldn't dig the gold
out of the earth, we got it in some other way.
"All the best buildings were occupied by saloons. Every saloon had a
dance-hall in the back of it; not that the girls had to keep to their
quarters, either--they had the run of the whole shebang. Every saloon
had its gambling rooms, too--unless the tables and games were right out
in the open. I tell you, it was tough. You can't begin to understand the
situation unless you'd been here. There wasn't a hotel nor a corner
where a man could go in and get warm except in a saloon--and with the
thermometer fooling in the neighborhood of fifty below, he didn't stand
around outside with his hands in his pockets, not to any great extent.
Most likely his pockets was naturally froze shut, anyhow, and the only
way he could get 'em thawed out was to go into a saloon. _That_ thawed
'em quick enough. It not only thawed 'em out; it most gen'rally thawed
'em wide open.
"I tell you, the worst element in a mining-camp is women. They follow a
man and console him when he's down on his luck; they follow him through
thick and thin; and they get such a hold on him that, when he wants to
get back to decent ways and decent women, he just naturally can't do it.
Young fellows don't realize it. They don't see it being done; they see
it after it is done and can't be undone.
"As soon as the mounted police took holt of Dawson, with Inspector
Constantine at the head, there was a sure change. Still, even the
mounted-police doctrine does have some drawbacks. I noticed they
couldn't make the post-office clerks turn out letters unless you slipped
two-three dollars into their outstretched hands. I noticed that."
To-day Dawson is a pretty, clean-streeted town built of log and frame
buildings. In the hottest summer the earth never thaws deeper than
eighteen inches, and no foundation can be obtained for brick buildings.
For the same reason plastering is not advisable, the uneven freezing and
thawing proving ruinous to both brick and plaster.
The first objects to greet the visitor's eyes are the large buildings of
the great commercial and transportation companies of the North, along
the bank of the river. Passing through these one finds one's self upon a
busy, but unconventional, thoroughfare. Dawson is built solidly to the
hill, extending about a mile along the water-front; and the most
attractive part of the town is the village of picturesque log cabins
climbing over the lower slopes of the hill. They are not large, but they
are all built with the roof extending over a wide front porch. The
entire roof of each cabin is covered several inches deep with earth, and
at the time of our visit--the first week of August--these roofs were
grown with brilliant green grasses and flowers to a height of from
twelve to eighteen inches. They were literally covered with the bloom
of a dozen or more varieties of wild flowers. Every window had its
flaming window-box; every garden, its gay beds; and there were even
boxes set on square fence posts and running the entire length of fences
themselves, from which vines drooped and trailed and flowers blew.
Standing at the river and looking toward the hill, the whole town seemed
a mass of bloom sloping up to the green, which, in turn, sloped on up to
the blue.
We had heard so much about the exorbitant prices of the Klondike, that
we were simply speechless when a very jolly, sandy-haired Scotch
gentleman offered to take our two steamer trunks, three heavy suit
cases, and two shawl-straps to the hotel which we had blindly chosen,
for the sum of two dollars. We had expected to pay five; and when he
first asked two and a half, we stood as still as though turned to
stone--and all for joy. He, however, evidently mistaking our silence,
doubtless felt the prick of the stern conscience of his ancestors, for
he hastily added:--
"Well, seeing you're ladies, we'll call it an even two."
We agreed to the price coldly, pretending to consider it an outrage.
"My name is Angus McDonald," said he, with reproach. "When a McDonald
says that his price is the lowest in the town, his word may be taken. If
you come to Dawson twenty years from now, Angus will be standing here
waiting to handle your baggage at the lowest price."
We gave him our keys and he attended to all the customs details for us.
We had left Seattle on the evening of the 24th of July; had stopped for
several hours at Ketchikan, Wrangell, Metlakahtla, Juneau, Treadwell,
and Taku Glacier; a day and a night at Skaguay; two nights and a day at
White Horse; had made short pauses at Selkirk and Lower Lebarge--to say
nothing of hours spent in "wooding-up," which is a picturesque and sure
feature of Yukon voyages; and at noon on the fifth day of August we were
settled at the "Kenwood"--the dearest hotel at which it has ever been my
good fortune to tarry even for a day. I do not mean the most stylish,
nor the most elegant, nor even the most comfortable; nor do I mean the
dearest in price; but the dearest to my heart. It is kept in a neat,
cheerful, and homelike style by Miss Kinney--who had almost as many
malamute puppies, by the way, as she had guests.
When we gave Mr. Angus McDonald our keys, it was not quite decided as to
our hotel; but when we learned that we were sufficiently respectable in
appearance to be accepted by Miss Kinney, we telephoned for our trunks.
Then we forgot all about paying for them, and set out for a walk. When
we returned, luncheon was being served; our trunks were in our rooms,
but--Mr. Angus McDonald had gone off with our keys! We did not know then
what we know now; that Mr. Angus McDonald and his retained keys are a
Dawson joke. It seems that whenever one does not pay in advance for the
delivery of his trunks, Mr. McDonald drives away with the keys in his
pocket, whistling the merriest of Scotch tunes.
The joke has its embarrassments, particularly when one has descended to
the Grand Canyon of the Yukon in a sand-slide.
The traveller in Alaska who desires to retain his own self-respect and
that of his fellow-man will never criticise a price nor ask to have it
reduced. He is expected to contribute liberally to every church he
enters, every Indian band he hears play, every charitable institution
that may present its merits for his consideration, every purse that may
be made up on steamers, whatsoever its object may be. Fees are from
fifty cents to five dollars. A waiter on a Yukon steamer threw a quarter
back at a man who had innocently slipped it into his hand. Later, I saw
him in the centre of a group of angry waiters and cabin-boys to whom he
was relating his grievance.
[Illustration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle
FAMILY OF KING'S ISLAND ESKIMOS LIVING UNDER SKIN BOAT, NOME]
Since one is constantly changing steamers, and has a waiter, a
cabin-boy, a night-boy, and frequently a stewardess to fee on each
steamer, this must be counted as one of the regular expenses of the
trip.
Other expenses we found to be greatly exaggerated on the "outside."
Aside from our amusing experience with soap-bubble soda at White Horse
and a bill for eight dollars and fifty cents for the poor pressing of
three plain dress skirts and one jacket at Nome, we found nothing to
criticise in northern prices.
The best rooms at the "Kenwood" were only two dollars a day, and each
meal was one dollar--whether one ate little or whether one ate much. It
was always the latter with us; for I have never been so hungry except at
Bennett. I am convinced that the climate of the Yukon will cure every
disease and every ill. We walked miles each day, drank much cold, pure
water, and ate much wholesome, well-cooked, delicious food--including
blueberries three times a day; and our sleep was sound, sweet, and
refreshing.
Dawson has about ten thousand inhabitants now; it once had twice as
many, and it will have again. Mining in the Klondike is in the
transition stage. It is passing from the individual owners to large
companies and corporations which have ample capital to install expensive
machinery and develop rich properties. It is the history of every mining
district, and its coming to the Klondike was inevitable. Its first
effect, however, is always "to ruin the camp."
"Dawson's a camp no longer," said one who "went in" in 1897, sadly.
"It's all spoiled. The individual miner has let go and the monopolists
are coming in to take his place. The good days are things of the past.
Pretty soon they'll be giving you change when you throw down two-bits
for a lead pencil!" he concluded, with a lofty scorn--as much as to say:
"It will then be time to die."
Dawson is connected with the "outside" by telegraph. It has two daily
newspapers,--which are metropolitan in style,--an electric-light plant,
and a telephone system. Its streets are graded and sidewalked, and it is
piped for water; but its lack of systematized sewerage--or what might be
more appropriately called its systematized lack of sewerage--is an
abomination. It is, however, not alone in its unsanitation in this
respect, for Nome follows its example.
Both homes and public buildings are of exceeding plainness of style,
owing to the excessive cost of building in a region bounded by the
Arctic Circle. The interiors of both, however, are attractive and
luxurious in finish and furnishings; and owing to the sway of the
mounted police, the town has an air of cleanliness and orderliness that
is admirable.
A creditable building holds the post-office and customs office, and
there is a public school building which cost fifty thousand dollars. The
handsome administration building, standing in a green, park-like place,
cost as much. There is a large court-house, the barracks of the mounted
police, and other public buildings. Only the ruins remain of the
executive mansion on the bank of the river, which was destroyed by fire
two years ago and has not been rebuilt. It was the pride of Dawson. It
was a large residence of pleasing architecture, lighted by electricity
and finished throughout in British Columbia fir in natural tones. It
contained the governor's private office, palatial reception rooms and
parlors, a library, a noble hall and stairway, a state dining room, a
billiard room and smoking room, and spacious chambers.
The governor's office in the administration building is large and
handsomely furnished. The commissioner of Yukon Territory is called by
courtesy governor, and the present commissioner, Governor Henderson, is
a gentleman of distinguished presence and courtly manners. He had just
returned from an automobile tour of inspection among "the creeks."
Governors, elegant executive mansions and offices, and automobile
tours--where eleven years ago was nothing but the creeks and the virgin
gold which brought all that is there to-day! We did not rebel at
anything but the automobile; somehow, it jarred like an insult. An
automobile up among the storied creeks!
There is a railroad, also, on which daily trains are run for a distance
of twenty miles through the mining district. Six and eight horse stages
will make the trip in one day for a party of six for fifty dollars.
Thirty dollars is first asked. When that price is found to be
satisfactory, it is immediately discovered that the small stage is
engaged or out of repair; a larger one must be used, for which the price
is forty dollars. When this price is agreed upon, some infirmity is
discovered in the second stage; a third must be substituted, for whose
all-day use the price is fifty dollars. If one cares to see the
"cricks," with no assurance that he will stumble upon a clean-up, at
this price, he meekly takes his seat and is jolted up into the hills,
paying a few dollars extra for his meals.
He may, however, take an hour's walk up Bonanza Creek and see the great
dredges at work and the steam-pipes thawing the frozen gravel; and if he
should voyage on down to Nome, he may take an hour's run by railway out
on the tundra and see thirty thousand dollars sluiced out any day.
Almost anything is preferable to the "graft" that is worked by the stage
companies upon the helpless cheechacos at Dawson.
The British Yukon is an organized territory, having a commissioner,
three judges, and an executive legislature, of whose ten members five
are elected and five appointed. The governor is also appointed. He
presides over the sessions of the legislature, giving the appointed
members a majority of one.
The Yukon has a delegate in parliament, a gold commissioner, a land
agent, and a superintendent of roads. Three-fourths of the population of
the territory are Americans, yet the town has a distinctly English, or
Canadian, atmosphere. In incorporated towns there is a tax levy on
property for municipal purposes.
Order is preserved by the well-known organization of Northwest Mounted
Police, whose members might be recognized anywhere, even when not in
uniform, by their stern eyes, set lips, and peculiar carriage.
The first station of mounted police in the Yukon was established at
Forty-Mile, or Fort Cudahy, in 1895, when the discovery of gold was
creating a mild excitement. Although so many boasts have been made by
the British of their early settlement of the Yukon, not only was Mr.
Ogilvie compelled to cross in 1887 under protection of the American
Commander Newell, but in 1895 the members of the first force of mounted
police to come into the country were forced to ascend the Yukon, by
special permission of the United States government, so difficult were
all routes through Yukon Territory.
There are at the present time about sixty police stations in the
territory, as well as garrisons at Dawson and White Horse. The smaller
stations have only three men. They are scattered throughout the mining
country, wherever a handful of men are gathered together. Between Dawson
and White Horse, where travel is heavy, a weekly patrol is maintained,
and a careful register is kept of all boats and passengers going up or
down the river. On the winter trail passengers are registered at each
road house, with date of arrival and departure, making it easy to locate
any traveller in the territory at any time. In the larger towns the
mounted police serve as police officers; they also assist the customs
officers and fill the offices of police magistrate and coroner. A police
launch to patrol the river in summer has been recommended.
Dawson is laid out in rectangular shape, with streets about seventy feet
wide and appearing wider because the buildings are for the most part
low. In 1897 town lots sold for five thousand dollars, when there was
nothing but tents on the flat at the mouth of the Klondike. The
half-dollar was the smallest piece of money in circulation, as the
quarter is to-day. Saw-mills were in operation, and dressed lumber sold
for two hundred and fifty dollars a thousand feet. Fifteen dollars a
day, however, was the ordinary wage of men working in the mines; so that
such prices as fifty cents for an orange, two dollars a dozen for eggs,
and twenty-five cents a pound for potatoes did not seem exorbitant.
There are rival claimants for the honor of the first discovery of gold
on the Klondike, but George Carmack is generally credited with being the
fortunate man. In August, 1896, he and the Indians "Skookum Jim" and
"Tagish Charlie,"--Mr. Carmack's brothers-in-law--were fishing one day
at the mouth of the Klondike River. (This river was formerly called
Thron-Dieuck, or Troan-Dike.) Not being successful, they concluded to go
a little way up the river to prospect. On the sixteenth day of the month
they detected signs of gold on what has since been named Bonanza Creek;
and from the first pan they washed out twelve dollars. They staked a
"discovery" claim, and one above and below it, as is the right of
discoverers.
At that time the gold flurry was in the vicinity of Forty-Mile. The
first building ever done on the site of Dawson was that of a raft, upon
which they proceeded to Forty-Mile to file their claims. On the same day
began the great stampede to the little river which was soon to become
world-famous.
The days of the bucket and windlass have passed for the Klondike.
Dredging and hydraulicking have taken their place, and the trains and
steamers are loaded with powerful machinery to be operated by vast
corporations. It is certain that there are extensive quartz deposits in
the vicinity, and when they are located the good and stirring days of
the nineties will be repeated. Ground that was panned and sluiced by the
individual miner is now being again profitably worked by modern methods.
Scarcity of water has been the chief obstacle to a rapid development of
the mines among the creeks; but experiments are constantly being made in
the way of carrying water from other sources.
It was perplexing to hear people talking about "Number One Above on
Bonanza," "Number Nine Below on Hunker," "Number Twenty-six Above on
Eldorado," and others, until it was explained that claims are numbered
above and below the one originally discovered on a creek. Eldorado is
one of the smallest of creeks; yet, notwithstanding its limited water
supply, it has been one of the richest producers. One reach, of about
four miles in length, has yielded already more than thirty millions of
dollars in coarse gold.
The gold of the Klondike is beautiful. It is not a fine dust. It runs
from grains like mustard seed up to large nuggets.
When one goes up among the creeks, sees and hears what has actually been
done, one can but wonder that any young and strong man can stay away
from this marvellous country. Gold is still there, undiscovered; it is
seldom the old prospector, the experienced miner, the "sour-dough," that
finds it; it is usually the ignorant, lucky "cheechaco." It is like the
game of poker, to which sits down one who never saw the game played and
holds a royal flush, or four aces, every other hand. How young men can
clerk in stores, study pharmacy, or learn politics in provincial towns,
while this glorious country waits to be found, is incomprehensible to
one with the red blood of adventure in his veins and the quick pulse of
chance. Better to dare, to risk all and lose all, if it must be, than
never to live at all; than always to be a drone in a narrow, commonplace
groove; than never to know the surge of this lonely river of mystery and
never to feel the air of these vast spaces upon one's brow.
No one can even tread the deck of a Yukon steamer and be quite so small
and narrow again as he was before. The loneliness, the mystery, the
majesty of it, reveals his own soul to his shrinking eyes, and he
grows--in a day, in an hour, in the flash of a thought--out of his old
self. If only to be borne through this great country on this wide
water-way to the sea can work this change in a man's heart, what miracle
might not be wrought by a few years of life in its solitude?
* * * * *
The principle of "panning" out gold is simple, and any woman could
perform the work successfully without instruction, success depending
upon the delicacy of manipulation. From fifty cents to two hundred
dollars a pan are obtained by this old-fashioned but fascinating method.
Think of wandering through this splendid, gold-set country in the
matchless summers when there is not an hour of darkness; with the health
and the appetite to enjoy plain food and the spirit to welcome
adventure; to pause on the banks of unknown creeks and try one's luck,
not knowing what a pan may bring forth; to lie down one night a
penniless wanderer, so far as gold is concerned, and, perhaps, to sleep
the next night on banks that wash out a hundred dollars to the
pan--could one choose a more fascinating life than this?
Rockers are wooden boxes which are so constructed that they gently shake
down the gold and dispose of the gravel through an opening in the
bottom. Sluicing is more interesting than any other method of extracting
gold, but this will be described as we saw the process separate the
glittering gold from the dull gravel at Nome.