In to the Yukon
We arrived at Caribou yesterday morning on the little S. S. “Scotia,” built on Lake Bennett, after a very comfortable night, and went over to Dawson Charlie’s hotel for a good breakfast. By this time H – and the Indian housekeeper had become fast friends, and the girl accordingly brought out her store of nuggets and nugget jewelry for H – to see. A lovely chain of little nuggets linked together, a yard or more long, earrings, breastpins, buckles, and sundry nuggets, large and small. It is Dawson Charlie’s habit, when in a good humor, to give her one of the pocketful of nuggets he usually carries around.
We crossed the bridge over the rushing outflow of Lake Bennett and went down to the Indian village, and called on the man whom all Canadian churchmen affectionately and reverently term the “Apostle of the North,” old Bishop Bompas and his quaint, white-haired wife. For over forty-five years he has wrought among the Indians of the Peace River, the Mackenzie and Yukon watersheds. He is an old man, but as erect as a Cree brave. His diocese is now limited to the Yukon waters, where, he says, are about 1,000 Indians, and, of course, an increasing number of white men. They lived in this back, wild country long before the white men thought of gold, or the Indian knew of its value. I took their pictures and promised to send them copies.
This morning we have walked a few miles up the river to see the celebrated White Horse Rapids, and I went four miles further, and saw also the Miles Cañon, where the waters of Lake Taggish and Fifty Mile River begin their wild six miles before reaching here. The cañon is sharply cleft in trap rock, and the sides rise sheer and pilastered as though cut into right-angled pillars. These cliffs rise up 200 feet or more and go down as deep below the foaming tide. The cleft does not seem more than 100 yards wide, and through it the waters boil and roar. How the early gold hunters ever got through the furious waters alive is the wonder, and indeed very many did lose their lives here, as well as in the dashing rapids below.
On the Yukon, September 7, 1903.We have boarded the steamer “White Horse,” whose captain is commodore of the Yukon fleet – twenty-odd large steamers owned by the White Pass & Yukon Ry. Co. We have a stateroom at the rear of the texas, with a window looking out behind as well as at the side. I can lie in my berth and see the river behind us. We swung out into the swift blue current about a quarter to seven, yet bright day, the big boat turning easily in the rather narrow channel. The boat is about the size of those running between Charleston, W. Va., and Cincinnati or Pittsburg – 165 feet long, 35 feet wide, and draws 2½ feet, with a big stern wheel: – the Columbia River type rather than the Mississippi, such as run from Dawson down – sits rather high in the water and lower parts all enclosed. She has powerful machinery fit for breasting the swift waters; a large, commodious dining salon; a ladies’ parlor in the rear; a smoking-room for gentlemen forward; lighted with electricity, and all modern conveniences. She was built at White Horse, as were also ten of the sister boats run by the railway company. Six years ago no steamboat had traversed these waters. With the current we travel fourteen to twenty miles an hour, against the current only five! The river winds among hills and flats, and mountains all fir-clad and yellowed with much golden aspen, turned by the nightly frosts.
We came down through Fifty Mile River, which is the name given to the waters connecting Lake Taggish and Lake Lebarge. The moon hung full and low in the south, giving a light as white as upon the table-lands of Mexico, so clear is the atmosphere and free from atmospheric dust. We sat upon the upper deck until late in the night, watching the varying panorama. From the window of my stateroom, lying in my berth, I looked an hour or more while we sailed through Lake Lebarge – five or six miles wide, thirty miles long – hemmed in by lofty, rounded, fir-clad limestone mountains, 4,000 or 5,000 feet in altitude – the full moon illuminating the quiet waters. Only the frequent mocking laugh of the loon echoed on the still night air – there seemed to be hosts of them. Once I heard the melancholy howling of a timber wolf among the shadows of a deep bay. From Lake Lebarge we entered the swift and dangerous currents of Thirty Mile River. Here the boats usually tie up till daylight, but with the full moon and our immense electric searchlight, the captain ventured to go down. Again I sat up watching the foaming waters behind us and how deftly we backed and swung round the many sharp bends: – high mountains quite shutting us in, the foaming waters white and black in the moonlight and shadow. At last, when the mountains seemed higher, blacker, more formidable than ever, we suddenly rounded a precipitous mass of limestone and granite and floated out into an immense pool, while away to the east seemingly joined us another river as large as our own, the Hootalinqua, fetching down the yet greater tides of Lake Teslin, and forming with the Thirty Mile, the true Yukon – though the stream is mapped as the Lewes, until joined by the Pelly, many miles below.
We have now been descending this great river all day long; as wide as the Ohio, but swifter and deeper and always dark blue water. The valley is wide like the Ohio; the bottom lands lying higher above the water and the country rising in successive benches till the horizon is bounded by rounded mountains eight or ten miles away. Mountains green with fir, golden yellow with the aspen and the birch, and red and scarlet with the lutestring herb and lichens of the higher slopes. A magnificent panorama, an immense and unknown land, not yet taken possession of by man! The soil of many of these bottoms is rich, and will yield wonderful crops when tilled. Some distant day, towns and villages will be here. We have seen many loons upon the river, and probably twenty or thirty golden eagles soaring high in mighty circles – more than I have seen in a single day before. We caught sight of a black fox in the twilight last evening, and surprised a red fox hunting mussel shells upon a river bar to-day.
We have passed several steamers coming up the river and stopped twice to take on firewood and a few times to put off mail at the stations of the Northwest Mounted Police. About four o’clock P. M. we safely passed through the dangerous rocky pass of the Five Fingers, where five basalt rocks of gigantic size tower 100 feet into the air and block the passage of the foaming waters. Just where we passed, the cliffs seemed almost to touch our gunwales, so near are they together. The banks are high slopes of sand and gravel, now and then striped by a white band of volcanic dust. The trees are small and stunted, but growing thickly together, so as scarcely to let a man pass between. We have seen two puny coal banks where is mined a dirty bituminous coal, but worth $30.00 to $40.00 per ton in Dawson. Better than a mine of gold!
We have just now run through the difficult passage known as Hell’s Gates, where on one side a mass of cliff and on the other a shifting sand bar confine the waters to a swift and treacherous chute. So close to the rocks have we passed that one might have clasped hands with a man upon them, yet for a mile we never touched their jagged sides. Clever steering by our Norwegian pilot!
Now we are past the mouth of the great Pelly River, itself navigable for steamboats for some three hundred miles, as far as up to White Horse by the main stream, and are hove to at Fort Selkirk, an old Hudson Bay Company post. Here the mounted police maintain a considerable force. They are standing on the bank, many of them in their red coats, together with a group of the Pelly Indians, a tribe of famous fur hunters.
Passing safely through the treacherous Lewes Rapids above the mouth of the Pelly, we have swung out into the true Yukon, an immense river, wide as the Mississippi at St. Louis, many islands and sand bars. At high water the river must here be two miles across. The moon hangs round and white in the south, not much above the horizon, and we shall slowly steam ahead all night.
September 7, 1903.We are making a quick trip. We passed the mouth of the Stewart River in the early dawn. Another great stream navigable for 200 miles. By the Pelly Valley or by the Stewart, and their feeding lakes, will some day enter the railroads from the valley of the Mackenzie, coming up from Edmonton and the southeast. There is supposed to be yet much undiscovered gold on both of these streams, and fine grass land and black soil fit for root crops.
The Yukon, the mighty Yukon, is surely now become a gigantic river, its deep blue waters carrying a tide as great as the St. Lawrence. We are making a record trip, Ogilvie by 11 A. M., and Dawson, sixty miles below, in three more hours! So the captain cheerily avers – the fuller current and deeper tide of waters carrying us the more swiftly.
The mountains are lower, more rounded in outline, fir and golden aspen and now red-leaved birch forests covering them to their summits. The air is cold and keen. Ice at night, grey fogs at dawn, clear blue sky by the time the sun feebly warms at nine or ten o’clock.
We are reaching lands where the ground is frozen solid a few feet below the summer thaws, and the twilight still lingers till nine o’clock. They tell us the days are shortening, but it is hard to credit it, so long is yet the eventime.
I shall mail this letter at Dawson and send you yet another before we go down the river to the Behring Sea.
To-day I saw the first gulls, white and brown, some ducks on wing, many ravens and but few eagles. We are having a great trip, worth all the time and effort to get here – on the brink of the Arctic north, and in one of the yet but half-explored regions of the earth.
EIGHTH LETTER
DAWSON AND THE GOLDEN KLONDIKE
Dawson, Yukon Territory,Thursday,September 10, 1903.We came in on Tuesday afternoon, the steamer “White Horse” having had an unusually good run. As we descended the river the stream grew larger, wider, with more water, and when we passed the White River the blue water there changed to a muddy white, discolored by the turgid, whitish tide of that stream. It must flow somewhere through beds of the white volcanic ash, that for so many miles marks the banks of the Yukon with its threadlike white line a foot or two below the surface soil.
As we passed the swift water of Klondike shoals and rounded in toward the landing, our own hoarse whistle was replied to by several steamers lying at the various wharfboats. We were ahead of time; – our arrival was an event.
The town lies well, upon a wide bottom, and now begins to climb the back hill to a secondary flat. It is laid off with wide streets, the chief of which are graveled and fairly kept. There are a few brick buildings, but most are of wood, here and there an old-time (six years old) log building appearing among the more modern ones built of sawed lumber – for logs are now too precious and too costly to squander.
The town has telephones and electric lights, which latter must pay finely when you realize that for nearly seven months darkness prevails over day. There are two morning daily, and one evening daily newspapers, with all Associated Press telegraphic news. I send you a copy of one of them. Two banks handle the gold, buying the miners’ “dust” and doing a thriving business.
There are half a dozen quite handsome churches, two hospitals, government buildings, the “Governor’s Palace,” and a number of residences that would do credit to any town. There are two large sawmills near the mouth of the Klondike River, which is crossed by two fine bridges, one iron and one wood. Of foundries and machine shops there are many. The stores and shops are many of them pretentious and filled with the most expensive high-class goods and wares – for, in the first place, the gold miner is lavish, extravagant, and will only have the very best, while it costs as much freight to bring in a cheap commodity as an expensive one. You can buy as handsome things here as in San Francisco or New York, if you don’t mind the price. The daily newspapers are sold by newsboys on the streets at 25 cents a copy. Fine steaks and roasts, mutton and veal, are thirty-five to sixty-five cents per pound. Chickens, $2.00 to $3.00 each. A glass of beer, twenty-five cents.
Some elegant drags and victorias, with fine horses, as well as many superb draft horses, are seen on the streets. It only pays to have the best horses; a scrub costs as much to bring in and to keep as a good one, and hay is $60.00 to $150.00 per ton, and oats are sold by the pound, sometimes $1.00 per pound. Cows’ milk is an expensive luxury at the restaurants, and various canned goods form the staple of life.
Many large steamboats ply on the Yukon, and those running down to St. Michael, 1,800 miles below, are of the finest Mississippi type, and are run by Mississippi captains and pilots. We shall go down on one of these, the “Sarah,” belonging to the “Northern Commercial Company,” one of the two great American trading companies. Also large towboats push huge freight barges up and down the river.
Several six-horse stage lines run many times a day to the various mining camps up and adjacent to the Klondike Valley, which is itself now settled and worked for one hundred and fifty miles from Dawson. Probably thirty to thirty-five thousand people are at work in these various diggings, and trade and spend in Dawson. Hence Dawson takes on metropolitan airs, and considers herself the new metropolis of the far north and Yukon Valley.
Two things strike the eye on first walking about the town. The multitude of big, long-haired, wolflike-looking dogs, loafing about, and the smallness of the neat dwelling-houses. The dogs play in the summer and work untiringly through the long seven months of winter – a “dog’s life” then means a volume. Small houses are easier to warm than big ones, when fuel is scarce and wood $16, $20 and $50 per cord, and soft spruce wood at that!
But Dawson has an air of prosperity about it. The men and women are well dressed, and have strong, keen faces. Many of them “mushed” across Chilkoot Pass in 1897, and have made their piles. And they are ready to stampede to any new gold field that may be discovered.
It is said that there are 6,000 people here, stayers, and then there is a fluctuating horde of comers and goers, tenderfeet many of them. This year eleven millions of dust has come into Dawson from the neighboring diggings, and since 1897, they say, near a hundred millions have been found! Many men and even women have made their millions and “gone out.” Others have spent as much, and are starting in anew, and the multitude all expect to have their piles within a year or two. A curious aggregation of people are here come together, and from all parts! There are very many whom you must not question as to their past. German officers driven from their Fatherland, busted English bloods, many of these in the Northwest Mounted Police, and titled ne’er-do-wells depending upon the quarterly remittances from London, and Americans who had rather not meet other fellow countrymen; – mortals who have failed to get on in other parts of this earth, and who have come to hide for awhile in these vast, solitary regions, strike it rich if possible and get another start. And many of them do this very thing, hit upon new fortunes, and sometimes, steadied by former adversity, lead new, honorable careers; but most of the black sheep, if luck is kindly to them, only plunge the deeper and more recklessly into vice and dissipation. The town is full of splendid bar-rooms and gilded gambling-hells. Two hundred thousand a night has been lost and won in some of them.
I drove past a large, fine-looking man, but possessed of a weak, dissipated mouth, on Eldorado Creek yesterday. His claim has been one of the fabulously rich, a million or more out of a patch of gravel 1,000 feet by 250, and he has now drunk and gambled most of it away, divorced a nice wife “in the States outside,” then married a notorious belle of nether Dawson, and will soon again be back to pick and pan and dogs. Another claim of like size on Bonanza Creek was pointed out to me where two brothers have taken out over a million and a quarter since 1897, and have been ruined by their luck. They have recklessly squandered every nugget of their sudden riches in drunkenness and with cards and wine and women to a degree that would put the ancient Californian days of ’49 in the shade. On the other hand, there are such men as Lippy, who have made their millions, saved and invested them wisely, and are regarded as veritable pillars in their communities. Lippy has just given the splendid Y. M. C. A. building to Seattle.
There is now much substantial wealth in Dawson and the Klondike. Most of the large operations are in the hands of Americans, especially of the American companies who have bought up the claims after the individual miner, who just worked it superficially and dug out the cream, has sold the skim milk. And even the major part of the original “stakers” seem to have been Americans. There are many good people in Dawson among these. Then, too, there is the body of Canadian officials who govern the territory of Yukon – political henchmen of Laurier and the Liberal party, many of them French Canadians. The governor himself and the chief of these officials live here, and their families form the inner circle of select society. Very anti-American they are said to be, and they do not mix much with the Americans who, of equal or superior social standing at home, here devote themselves to business and gold getting and let Canadian society and politics altogether alone. But while the alert American has been the first to stake, occupy and extract the wealth of the Klondike, and while by his energy and tireless perseverance he has made the Yukon Territory the greatest placer mining region of the world, yet this acquirement of vast wealth by Americans has not really been pleasing to the Canadians, nor to the government of Ottawa. So these governing gentlemen in Ottawa have put their heads together to discover how they, too, might profit, and especially profit, by the energy of the venturesome American. How themselves secure the chestnuts after he had, at peril of life and fortune, securely pulled the same out of the fire – in this case, frightful frost and ice! And they hit upon this plan: They resolved themselves into little groups, and the government then began granting extensive and exclusive blanket concessions to these groups. Just now a great row is on over some of these private concession grants. One man, Treadgold by name, turns up and discovers himself to be possessed of an exclusive blanket grant to all the water rights of the Klondike Valley and its affluent creeks, as well as the exclusive right to hold and work all gold-bearing land not already occupied, and also to hold and have every claim already staked, or worked, which for any reason may lapse to the crown either for non-payment of taxes or any other reason, thus shutting out the individual miner from ever staking a new claim within this region should he discover the gold, and from taking up any lapsed claim, and from re-titling his own claim, should he be careless and neglect to pay his annual taxes by the appointed day!
Another man, named Boyle, also appears with a similar concession covering the famous Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks, where land is valued by the inch, and millions beyond count have in these few years been dug out. Such flagrant and audacious jobbery as the creation and granting of these blanket concessions in the quiet of Ottawa, presents to the world, has probably never before been witnessed, unless it be among the inner circle of the entourage of the Russian Czar. These steals have been so bold and unabashed that this entire mining region has risen as a unit in angry protest. While the miner has been prospecting, discovering, freezing, digging in these Arctic solitudes, the snug, smug politician of Ottawa has fixed up a job to swipe the whole find should the innocent, ignorant prospector happen to make one. So vigorous has been the protest against these daring abuses of a government clique, that this summer what is called a “Dominion Royal Commission”has been sent here to investigate the situation. The papers are full of the matter. The citizens have met in mass-meeting and unanimously joined in the protest against the concessions, calling for their revocation, and Judge – “Justice” – Britton, the head of the commission, is bitterly denounced as a partisan here simply on a whitewashing trip to exculpate Laurier and his friends. And the result of what has unquestionably been crooked jobbery at Ottawa is said to be that hundreds of prospectors and miners are moving out of the Yukon and into Alaska, where they say “there is fair play,”and a man may have what he finds. What I here tell you is the current talk in Dawson – quite unanimous talk – and I should like to have heard the other side, if there is one.
To-day H – and I have been across the river to visit a characteristic establishment of these far northern lands – a summer “dog ranch” – a place where, during the summer months, the teams of “Huskies” and “Malamutes” may be boarded and cared for till the working-time of winter comes again. Here are some seventy-five dogs in large kennels of rough timber, each team of six dogs having its own private kennel, with a large central yard inside the tiers of pens, into which the whole pack are turned once a day for exercise. We hoped to find the proprietor at home and induce him to give his pets a scamper in the central yard, but he was away. The only visitors besides ourselves were two strange dogs which stood outside, running up and down the line and arousing the entire seventy-five to one great chorus of barks and howls. Some of the groups of dogs were superb. And two teams of Huskies – the true Esquimaux – must have been worth their weight in gold – six dogs – $1,000.00 at the very least. We tried to get some kodak shots, but a cloudy sky and pine log bars made the result doubtful.
We have just returned from an evening at the first annual show of the Dawson or Yukon “Horticultural Society.” The name itself is a surprise; the display of vegetables particularly and flowers astonished me. The biggest beets I have ever seen, the meaty substance all clear, solid, firm and juicy. Potatoes, Early Rose and other varieties, some new kinds raised from seed in three years – large, a pound or more in size. And such cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce as you never saw before! Many kinds, full-headed and able to compete with any produced anywhere. All these raised in the open air on the rich, black bottom and bench land of the Yukon. Squashes and also tomatoes, but these latter, some of them, not fully ripened. Also a display of fine strawberries just now ripe. We bought strawberries in the markets of Cristiania and Stockholm upon the 12th and 13th of September, last year, and now we find a superior ripe fruit here at just about the same degree of north latitude. The wild currants, blueberries and raspberries with which these northern latitudes abound are notorious. And the show of oats, rye, barley, wheat and timothy and native grasses, as well as of red and white clover, was notable, proving beyond a doubt that this Yukon region is capable of raising varied and nutritious crops necessary for man’s food and for the support of stock, horses and cattle. Already a good many thrifty mortals, instead of losing themselves in the hunt for gold, are quietly going into the raising of vegetables and hay and grain, and get fabulous prices for what grows spontaneously almost in a night. And the show of flowers grown in the open air would have delighted you. All of these products of the soil have been grown in sixty or seventy days from the planting of the seed, the almost perpetual sunlight of the summer season forcing plant life to most astonishing growth.
September 11th.Day before yesterday I took the six-horse stage up Bonanza Creek of the Klondike and rode some thirteen miles over the fine government road to “Discovery” claim, where a Cleveland (O.) company is using a dredge and paying the Indian “Skookum Jim,” whose house we saw at Caribou, a royalty that this year will place $90,000.00 to his credit, I am told.
The Klondike is a large stream, about like Elk River of West Virginia, rising two hundred miles eastward in the Rockies, where the summer’s melting snow gives it a large flow of water. The valley is broad – a mile or more. The hills are rolling and rounded, black soil, broad flats of small firs and birches. Bonanza Creek, on which Skookum Jim and “Dawson Charlie” and the white man, discovered the first gold in 1897, has proved the richest placer mining patch of ground the world has ever known. For a length of some twenty miles it is occupied by the several claim-holders, who are working both in the creek bed and also ancient river beds high up on the rolling hill slopes, a thing never known before. Here the claims are larger than at Atlin, being 1,000 feet wide and 250 feet up and down the creek. The claim where a discovery is made is called “Discovery Claim,” and the others are named “No. 1 above” and “No. 1 below,” “No. 2 above” and “No. 2 below,” etc., and so entered of record. I had seen the dredge being built on Gold Run at Atlin. I wished to see one working here. I found a young American named Elmer in charge, and he showed me everything. Then he insisted that I dine with him, and took me up to his snug cottage, where I was cordially greeted by his American wife, and taken to the mess tent, where a Japanese cook set a good dinner before us. Then Mrs. Elmer said that if I would like she would be delighted to drive me still further up Bonanza, and up the equally famous Eldorado Fork, and show me the more noted claims. Her horse was a good one, and for nearly three hours we spanked along. At “16 Eldorado below” I saw the yawning gravel pit from which $1,200,000 has already been taken out by the lucky owner. From “28 Eldorado above” I saw where the pay gravel yielded another enormous sum. And all along men were still digging, dumping, sluicing and getting gold. At “18 Bonanza above,” yet another particularly rich strike was shown me, and at “28 Bonanza above,” working in the mud and gravel, were men already enormously rich, who in 1897 owned nothing but their outfit. And up along the hillsides, too, near the tops, were other gashes in the gravel soil where gold in equally fabulous sums has been taken out and is still being got, for all these rich sands are yet far from being worked out or exhausted. The first mad rush is over. Men do not now merely pick out the big nuggets, but are putting in improved machinery and saving the finer dust. Along the roadside we also saw many men digging and “rocking” for gold, who have leased a few square yards or an acre or two on a royalty and who are said to be “working a lay.” After our drive, I caught the returning stage and came home in the long twilight.
