A STREAM OF HISTORY
"Good-bye, fellows, wish you all kinds of luck! I won't be long behind
you."
"Good-bye," answered the four from the boat that glided out on the swift
waters of Thirty-Mile River. In the bow stood Hugh Spencer, bandaged; at
the oars were Bruce and Frank Corte; in the stern John Berwick, pale and
weak from his late fever, was resting. A new light shone in his eyes;
the lines of his face were softened. Anxieties which had been as a
weight on his soul had been removed by that revealing walk, which had
ended in catastrophe.
He had been found by the side of the trail some few hours after he had
fallen in delirium. The legs of his trousers were worn at the knees; his
flesh was cut through his struggling after he had fallen. His
finger-tips were worn to the quick; his blood had stained the ice.
The doctor, returning, had been John's rescuer, and had placed him on
the sleigh. Truly a good Samaritan, he had returned with the invalid to
the foot of Le Berge.
Berwick's delirium was the climax of half-a-dozen years of mental
strain. His old struggle as to whether he should make his vocation in
the Church, as well as his almost hopeless passion for Alice Peel, had,
though even George Bruce barely suspected it, wrought upon him. Now the
climax had come; and was passed.
George, seeing this catastrophe, had guessed much; the doctor, trained
in the study of humanity, had also guessed something. Hugh, Frank Corte,
and Haskins only knew that John had played-out on the trail.
Spencer had told his companions there was nothing much in the first six
miles of the river, but that afterwards "she is swift and crooked."
Sunken boulders were the chief danger, so he took his post in the bow to
"read" the water ahead, and to direct the course, saying "Frank" or
"George"--as he wished the one or the other to pull the harder.
After an hour the boat came to a point where the river takes a turn to
the right, on rounding which the boat's pace increased. Looking over its
side into the clear water, John saw the stones at the bottom flash by,
and noted the scurrying greyling affrighted.
The boat swept by sunken boulders, or grazed the curving shores, but
held its swift course without pause or incident. For four hours their
rapid progress continued; then the current died away, and the boat
floated upon the dead water that marks the junction of the Hootalinquia
River with the Thirty Mile, henceforth to be called the Lewis, till
Lewis is joined by the Pelly to become the Yukon.
Now that the necessity for vigilance was past, Hugh entertained his
friends with reminiscences of his first trip there, and the story of the
entrance of the gold-seekers to the Upper Yukon. They would soon be at
Cassiar Bar, and the mouth of the Big Salmon River. In 1881 miners had
crossed the Passes, and descended the lakes and rivers, to the mouth of
the Big Salmon, which they ascended, and obtained gold by washing the
bars. Cassiar Bar was not discovered till 1886, five years after the Big
Salmon party had done their mining. The men who mined Cassiar Bar had
wintered here, and their cabin came in useful for others who "mushed
out" over the ice to give word about Howard Franklin's discovery of
coarse gold on the Forty Mile, and to order more grub to be sent "up
river" by the Alaska Commercial Company's steamer. In 1880 some fellows
from Sitka had gone over, and prospected up the Hootalinquia; but they
did not strike much; while the first white man over the Passes looking
for gold was George Holt, who found a few "colours" around Lake Bennett.
In 1873 Arthur Harper and a British Columbia outfit came up the Liard
and over the Divide; but though they found "prospects" almost everywhere
in the Yukon, they did not make a real strike, so they floated to the
mouth of the Yukon and went to work for the Alaska Commercial Company.
Hugh thus told the history of Yukon--so far as the white man knows it.
Although the ice still clung along the river banks, the land was free of
snow, and vegetable life was asserting itself. The mosquito was very
little behind the grass-shoot in realizing that summer was at hand, and
that it had but a few short months in which to play its part!
It was because sleep on shore would be difficult, through the
mosquitoes, that Hugh suggested their continuing the journey through the
night. One watched and steered while the others slept. So Hugh, George,
and Frank divided the night between them. John asserted that the rest
and change of scene had done him a world of good and that he was able to
steer; but the others squashed his proposals.
"Heap dam dood! heap sick all same baby, he! he!" sniggered Frank Corte.
They had now dropped away from the great mountains, not a snow-topped
peak was in sight; but the hills stretched majestically on either side
of the river.
The routine of watches having been decided, the party settled down to
silence at nine o'clock. Towards midnight John awoke. It was now merging
upon the season of perpetual light, and the hills and the great river
were weirdly visible. George was on watch, sitting on the thwart ahead
of him, his back towards him.
The boat quietly, swiftly glided on. No effort was needed from the man
at the look-out, save an occasional stroke to keep the head straight.
John glanced at his watch and saw the hour. The fact startled him,
though he had schooled himself. In the lands where his previous
existence had been passed the haunts of men were always at this hour
illuminated by artificial light and filled with--artificiality! Here was
the opening of the months-long day; and reality--Reality, the Eternal
Verities. In that wonderful silence he needs must think, and overhaul
his spiritual condition. He could--and he would--take Holy Orders. He
would first fight the issue in the goldfields, for, if he made money,
that power would be useful. So he came to his decision; and at last he
slept.
When he awoke the boat was hauled half-way up one of the Yukon's many
islands, and breakfast was being cooked. The party had travelled one
hundred miles in twenty-four hours; three days more would carry them to
Dawson.
They re-embarked, and, as the same glorious weather prevailed, their
expedition was very like a delightful picnic. In the regions of Tantalus
Buttes the river took a number of great horseshoe bends, which induced
Hugh to remark, "We do a lot of travelling here, without much progress."
Then came Five Finger Rapids, where four great pillars of conglomerate
rock stood ranged across the river. The Yukon's waters were low; the
season of freshets was not due until the snow in the mountains was
melted and the sun had attacked the glaciers; so Hugh said the main or
right-hand channel might be run.
"Run her right on the top of the crest," he ordered.
They approached the rapid, and the current slackened almost to dead
water. They rowed the boat under the cliff to the right of the channel,
and then shot out into the middle, directly on the crest. The current
caught the little craft--there was a swish and swirl of water--she
heaved, and was over the cataract into the dancing waters beyond.
The current remained swifter than it had been above the rapids, and the
party was soon at Rink Rapids, four miles beyond Five Fingers. This
rapid was more dangerous than that of the Five Fingers had been, owing
to its being spread over a wide range of bottom and to the presence of
numerous boulders: however, they shot the boat under the right bank and
glided through in safety. There now remained uninterrupted, smooth water
to Dawson.
They breakfasted at Fort Selkirk, situate on the left bank of the river,
opposite the mouth of the large tributary, the Pelly.
Frank protested that a day's rest would do the party good, particularly
a dance that night, for there was a squaws' camp near.
"You will get all the dancing you have money to pay for in Dawson," said
Hugh.
As the party were again afloat, Hugh pointed across the river, and
remarked,
"Back at that bunch of bush are the ruins of old Fort Selkirk, which
Robert Campbell built for the Hudson Bay Company in the year 1849. In
1852 the Chilkats burned it down, because it was cutting off their trade
with the savages hereabouts. You see, before the Hudson Bay fellows got
in here, the Chilkats, who held the passes to the sea, used to give
inside Indians most nothing for their furs, and sell them at a big
profit to the white traders on the coast. The Chilkats would not let the
inside Indians out to the coast to trade for themselves. Well, when the
Hudson Bay Company showed up, it broke up the cinch the Chilkats thought
their own, and they came after the Company. The Indians then hereabouts,
the wood Indians, got hold of the plans of the Chilkats and kept watch;
but they let up for a few days, and the Chilkats came into the Fort and
told the officers they had to get. It was a ground-hog case, so they
just naturally got! Campbell found the local Indians and came back; but
the Chilkats had cleaned out. The tea, tobacco, and sugar they took away
with them, and what they couldn't take they cached. The Chilkats didn't
offer to do murder, though they are up to most anything. One thing they
took away with them was the Company's flag, which the Chilkats keep at
Kluckwan, their village on the Chilkat River which lies in the valley
just over the mountains west of Skagway. The Chilkats are very proud of
their 'King George man' flag!
"It was on August 21 the Fort was seized, so Campbell had to do
something right away quick, before the winter set in: so, after going
down the Yukon to White River, where he met the remainder of his men,
who had been to Fort Yukon and were coming back, he told them to go back
down the river and winter at Fort Yukon, and he lit out up the Pelly and
over the Divide to the Liard, and down the Liard to Fort Simpson. When
he got there the Liard was running bank full of ice."
The next place that drew reminiscences from Hugh was the mouth of
Stewart River. Here was a police-post with a few cabins.
"In 1885, thirty miles up the Stewart, the first considerable bar
diggings was struck. Dick Popham was up there in 1884, but he did not
find anything--water was too high. Frank Densmore and Johnnie Hughes
brought to Juneau, in the fall of 1885, the news of good gold on the
Stewart; and in 1886 the gang went in, about three hundred. Along with
the gang went George Carmack, but he took up with the Siwashes on the
Chilkoot. You see, when the fellows started in first, the Siwashes
packed from what is now Dyea to Lindeman for nine cents a pound; but as
the boys were in a hurry prices rose to thirty cents--and this was too
much for Carmack, who was a Missourian; besides, he got stuck on a
squaw. I guess he must have stayed with the Siwashes ever since,
travelling among them and living their life till he made the big strike
on Bonanza, which started this here stampede.
"When the boys got to the Stewart diggings, in 1886, they found them
good all right, but not enough to go round; so a lot of them lit out
down the river, away below Fort Yukon, to try some prospects reported
from there. Among the bunch was Bill Hartz--'Web-foot' the boys called
him, because he came from Oregon. Well, those boys tried the lower
diggings, and found them no good; so Web-foot started back up the river
on Jack McQuestion's steamer called the _New Racket_. Jack McQuestion
was trading in the country then, with Arthur Harper and Al Mayo as
partners. He was in the country before Harper, and used to work for the
Hudson Bay Company on the Mackenzie. At this time they had four
posts--one at Fort Selkirk, one at Stewart River, one just below Dawson,
and one about where Eagle City now is. There was a big mountain there
called by Harper Teetotalim.
"At Teetotalim there was a queer sort of fellow from back east in
Canada, a Frenchman, who was always fooling round with bits of rock, and
talking about how the mountains were made. One day a Siwash blew in with
a piece of woolly rock which the Frenchman said was 'Asiebestos,' and,
if there was much of it, it would be worth money; so McQuestion sent out
Web-foot with a grub-stake to find the place. Web-foot did not find the
'Asiebestos,' but he found gold on the Forty Mile, as also did Howard
Franklin, who was sent up the Forty Mile from its mouth by McQuestion.
They came back out, and on up the Yukon to winter at Stewart. Next year
the fellows left Stewart for the Forty Mile, and George Matlock, Billy
Leak, Oscar Ashley, and Percy Walker found Matlock Bar, with coarse
gold, which washed down out of Franklin Gulch. Franklin Gulch was found
in August, 1887. This was the first really coarse gold found in the
Yukon, and the best discovery up to that time.
"While the boys were wintering at Stewart grub got short, and Harper
passed it round, fair and square--not raising the price any. But one day
some stuff was stole, and Harper told the boys, who called a miners'
meeting right off. The boys appointed a committee to go round and search
the cabins, for every fellow was glad enough to clear himself by showing
everything he had. Nothing was found. And then the boys thought of two
fellows, Missouri Bill and Arkansaw Frank, who lived down the river a
bit. And when they struck a fresh trail leading to and from their cabin,
they became mighty interested; and when they saw where they had made a
fire, and found half-burnt-up staves of a butter firkin, they got real
hot. When they got up to the cabin the door opened and the two fellows
came out; one of them, Missouri Bill, with a Winchester in his hands,
swearing he would shoot the first man who came a step further. This
stopped the boys for a bit; but Frank Morphet got a rope off a sleigh
and slipped round back of the cabin. The first thing Missouri Bill knew
he had a rope round his neck--and the game was up! Well, the boys didn't
want to hang them, so each of the fellows gave them a handful of beans,
or a little rice, and told them to get, thinking that mushing out five
hundred miles, and breaking trail all the way, was pretty nearly as bad
as hanging. They made the trip all right, but it was only because they
met some Siwashes."