In to the Yukon
We have just seen some of the magnificent Labrador dogs, with their keeper, passing along the street, owned by the Government post here – immense animals, as big as big calves, heifers, yearlings, I might say. They take the mails to outlying posts and even to Dawson when too cold for the horses – horses are not driven when the thermometer is more than 40 degrees below!
As I sat in the forward cabin the other night watching the motley crowd we were taking “out,” two bright young fellows, who turned out to be “Government dog-drivers” going to the post here to report for winter duty, fell into animated discussion of their business, and told me much dog lore. The big, well-furred, long-legged “Labrador Huskies” are the most powerful as well as fiercest. A load of 150 pounds per dog is the usual burden, and seven to nine dogs attached each by a separate trace – the Labrador harness is used with them, so the dogs spread out fan-shaped from the sledge and do not interfere with each other. The great care of the driver is to maintain discipline, keep the dogs from shirking, from tangling up, and from attacking himself or each other. He carries a club and a seal-hide whip, and uses each unmercifully. If they think you afraid, the dogs will attack you instantly, and would easily kill you. And they incessantly attack each other, and the whole pack will always pounce on the under dog so as to surely be in at a killing, just for the fun of it, ripping up the unfortunate and lapping his blood eagerly, though they rarely eat him. And as these dogs are worth anywhere from $100 up, the driver has much ado to prevent the self-destruction of his team. And to club them till you stun them is the only way to stop their quarrels. Then, too, the dogs are clever and delight to spill the driver and gallop away from him, when he can rarely catch them until they draw up at the next post house, and it may be ten or twelve or thirty miles to that, unless it be that they get tangled among the trees or brush, when the driver will find them fast asleep, curled up in the snow, where each burrows out a cozy bed. The Malamutes, or native Indian dog, usually half wolf, are driven and harnessed differently – all in a line – and one before the other. They are shorter haired, faster, and infinitely meaner than the long-haired Huskie (of which sort the Labrador dogs are). Their delight is to get into a fight and become tangled, and the only way out is to club them into insensibility, and cut the leather harness, or they will cut the seal-hide thongs themselves at a single bite if they are quite sure your long plaited whip will not crack them before they can do it. These Malamutes are the usual dogs driven in this country, for few there are to afford or know how to handle the more powerful Labrador Huskie. And the Malamute is the king of all thieves. He will pull the leather boots off your feet while you sleep and eat them for a midnight supper; he delights to eat up his seal-hide harness; he has learned to open a wooden box and will devour canned food, opening any tin can made, with his sharp fangs, quicker than a steel can-opener. Canned tomatoes, fruit, vegetables, sardines, anything that man may put in, he will deftly take out. Even the tarpaulins and leather coverings of the goods he may be pulling, he will rip to pieces, and he will devour the load unless watched with incessant vigilance night and day. Yet, with all their wolfish greed and manners, these dogs perform astonishing feats of endurance, and never in all their lives receive a kindly word. “If you treat them kindly, they think you are afraid, and will at once attack you,” the driver said; “the only way to govern them is through fear.” Once a day only are they fed on raw fish, and while the Malamute prefers to pilfer and steal around the camp, the Huskie will go and fish for himself when off duty, if given the chance. Just like the bears and lynx of the salmon-running streams, he will stand along the shore and seize the fish that is shoved too far upon the shallows. Seventy miles a day is the rule with the Indians and their dog teams, and the white man does almost as much. Forty miles is it from here to Caribou Crossing, and the Northwest Mounted Police, with their Labrador teams, take the mails when the trains are snowbound and cover the distance in four to five hours. Great going this must be!
And then the conversation turned to the great cold of this far north land, when during the long nights the sun only shows for an hour or two above the horizon.
When the thermometer falls below fifty degrees (Fahr.), then are the horses put away, what few there may be, and the dogs transport the freight and mails along the Government road between White Horse and Dawson, as well as from Dawson to the mining camps to which the stage lines usually run. Indeed, throughout all of this north land, with the coming of the snow, the dogs are harnessed to the sledges and become the constant traveling companions of man.
The air is dry in all this great interior basin of the continent, and, consequently, the great cold is not so keenly felt as in the damper airs nearer to the sea. The dogs can travel in all weathers which man can stand, and even when it becomes so cold that men dare not move. The lowest Government record of the thermometer yet obtained at Dawson City is eighty-three degrees below zero. These great falls of temperature only occasionally occur, but when the thermometer comes down to minus sixty degrees, then men stay fast indoors, and only venture out as the necessity demands; then the usually clear atmosphere becomes filled with a misty fog, often so thick that it is difficult to see a hundred yards away.
When traveling with a dog team, or, indeed, when “mushing” upon snow-shoes across streams and forests, men go rather lightly clad, discarding furs, and ordinarily wearing only thick clothes, with the long canvas parquet as protection against the wind rather than against the temperature; then motion becomes a necessity, and to tarry means to freeze. The danger of the traveler going by himself is that the frost may affect his eyesight, freezing the eyelids together, perhaps dazing his sight, unless snow-glasses are worn. And the ice forms in the nostrils so rapidly, as well as about the mouth, and upon the mustache and beard, that it is a constant effort to keep the face free from accumulating ice. In small parties, however, men travel long distances, watching each other as well as themselves to insure escape from the ravages of the frost. When the journey is long and the toil has become severe, the Arctic drowsiness is another of the enemies which must be prevented from overcoming the traveler, and the methods are often cruel which friends must exercise in order to prevent their companions from falling asleep.
During this long period of Arctic winter and Arctic night, there seems to be no great cessation in the struggle for gold; the diggings in the Klondike and remoter regions retain their companies of men toiling to find the gold. The frozen gravels are blasted out and piled up to be thawed the next summer by the heat of the sun and washed with the flowing waters.
While the Arctic night prevails for twenty-two or twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, yet so brilliant are the stars and so refulgent are the heavens with the lightening of the aurora borealis, that men work and travel and carry on the usual occupations, little hindered by the absence of the sun. Sometimes, in the very coldest days, is beheld the curious phenomenon of several suns appearing above the horizon, and these are called the “sun dogs,” the sun itself being seemingly surrounded by lesser ones. I was fortunate enough to obtain a fine photograph taken on one of these days, which I am able to send you.
The freezing of the Yukon comes on very suddenly, the great river often becoming solid in a night. The curious thing of these northern lakes and rivers is, that the ice forms first upon the bottom, and, rising, fills the water with floating masses and ice particles, which then become congealed almost immediately.
Early in last October our steamer “White Horse,” on which we are now traveling, became permanently frozen in when within one hundred miles of Dawson City, the apparently clear river freezing so quickly that the boat became fast for the winter, and the passengers were compelled to “mush” their way, as best they might, across the yet snowless country, a terrible and trying experience in the gathering cold.
You may be in a row-boat or a canoe upon ice-free waters, and, as you paddle, you may notice bubbles and particles of ice coming to the surface. Great, then, is the danger. The bottom has begun to freeze. You may be frozen in before you reach the shore in ice yet too thin to walk upon or permit escape.
For the greater part of the winter season the frozen streams become the natural highways of the traveler, and the dog teams usually prefer the snow-covered ice rather than attempt to go over the rougher surface of the land.
Another curious thing, friends tell me, affects them in this winter night-time, and that is the disposition of men to hibernate. Fifteen and sixteen hours of sleep are commonly required, while in the nightless summer-time three and four and five hours satisfy all the demands nature seems to make – thus the long sleeps of winter compensate for the lack of rest taken during the summer-time.
And yet these hardy men of the north tell me that they enjoy the winter, and that they perform their toils with deliberation and ease, and take full advantage of the long sleeping periods.
The Yukon freezes up about the 10th of October, the snow shortly follows, and there is no melting of the ice until early June. This year the ice went out from the river at Dawson upon June 10th; thus, there are seven to eight months of snow and ice-bound winter in this Arctic land.
ELEVENTH LETTER
HOW THE GOVERNMENT SEARCHES FOR GOLD
We left White Horse by the little narrow-gauge railway, White Pass & Yukon Railway, at 9:30 – two passenger cars, one smoker, mail and express and baggage hung on behind a dozen freight cars. Our steamer brought up about one hundred passengers from Dawson and down-river points, and together with what got on board at White Horse, the train was packed. Many red-coated Northwest Mounted Police also boarded the train, and just as it pulled out, a strapping big, strong-chinned, muscular woman came in the rear door and sat down. She was elegantly gowned, dark, heavy serge, white shirt waist, embroidered cloth jacket, and much gold jewelry, high plumed hat. Presently a big man called out that all the men must go forward into the next car, and the big woman announced that she would proceed to examine all the ladies for gold dust. The paternal government of the Yukon Territory exacts a tax of 2½ per cent. of all gold found, and examines all persons going out of the territory, and confiscates all dust found on the person. Women are said to be the most inveterate smugglers, and the big woman goes through them most unmercifully. She bade the lady next her to stand up and then proceeded to feel her from stockings to chemise top, and did the same by the others. Those who wore corsets had a tough time, and some had to undo their hair. As the first victim stood up and was unbuttoned and felt over, she was greeted with an audible smile by the other ladies, but silence fell as the next victim was taken in hand. Meanwhile, during this pleasant diversion, a big red-coat stood with his back to each door, and the men were being similarly though not so ruthlessly gone through in the other cars. This trip no dust was found, I believe, but last week one woman was relieved of $1,800 sewed into the margin of her skirts and tucked deep into the recesses of her bosom. Stockings and bosom are the two chief feminine caches for gold, and when a culprit is thus discovered and relieved, many are the protestations and unavailing the clamors raised. During the past year I am told that the examiners have seized in these searches some $60,000 in dust, so I presume the happy custom will for some time continue. Detectives are kept in Dawson, travel on the boats, and so watch and scrutinize every traveler that by the time the final round-up and search takes place, the probable smugglers are all pretty well spotted. As each is examined, his or her name is checked off in a little book.We were close to Caribou Crossing when the ceremony was over, and I with others of my sex was permitted to re-enter the rear car and rejoin the company of the much beflustered ladies.
We were close to Caribou Crossing when the ceremony was over, and I with others of my sex was permitted to re-enter the rear car and rejoin the company of the much beflustered ladies.
All along the advance of winter was apparent. The green of a fortnight ago had turned into the universal golden yellow, and the fresh snow lay in more extended covering upon all the mountain summits and even far down their slopes. So it is in this far north, each day the snow creeps down and down until it has caught and covered all the valleys as well as hills.
At Caribou we met old Bishop Bompas and his good little wife, who, with a big cane, came all the way into the car to see us and say good-by. A charming couple who have given their lives doing a noble work.
Lake Bennett was like a mirror, and Lake Lindemann above it, too, seemed all the greener in contrast to the encroaching snows. We were at the White Pass Summit by 3 P. M., and then for an hour came down the 3,200 feet of four per cent. grade, the twenty miles to Skagway. The increase of snows on all the mountains seemed to bring out more saliently than ever the sharp, jagged granite rock masses. It even seemed to us that we were traversing a wilder, bolder, harsher land than when three weeks ago we entered it. And the views and vistas down into the warmer valleys we were plunging into were at times magnificent. Snow around and above us, increasing greenness of foliage below us, and beyond recurring glimpses of the Lynn fiord, with Skagway nestling at its head. In every affluent valley a glacier and a roaring torrent.
One of the newest and best boats in the trade, “The Dolphin,” was awaiting us. Our stateroom was already wired for and secured. We took our last Alaska meal at the “Pack Train Restaurant,” where we snacked sumptuously on roast beef, baked potatoes and coffee for seventy cents (in Dawson it would have been an easy $3.00), and walked down the mile-long pier to the boat. The tides are some twenty feet here, and the sandy bars of Skagway require long piers to permit the ships to land when the tides are out.
We cast off about 10 P. M., with the tide almost at its height, and only awoke to-day just as we were steaming out of Juneau. Now we are approaching the beautiful and dangerous Wrangel Narrows, and see everywhere above us the fresh snows of the fortnight’s making.
WILD SEAS AMONG THE FJORDS
Wednesday, September 23rd.It is the middle of the afternoon and we are just safely through the – to-day – tempestuous passage of “Dixon’s Entrance,” the thirty-three-mile break in the coast’s protecting chain of islands and the outlet for Port Simpson to the open sea. Yesterday we passed through the dangerous twenty miles of the Wrangel Narrows just before dark, and only the swift swirls of the fighting tides endangered us; they fall and rise seventeen feet in a few hours, and the waters entering the tortuous channels from each end meet in eddying struggle somewhere near the upper end. The boats try and pass through just before the flood tide or a little after it, or else tie up and wait for the high water. If we had been an hour later, we should have had to lie by for fifteen hours, the captain said. As we turned in from Frederick Sound, between two low-lying islands all densely wooded with impenetrable forests of fir, the waters were running out against us almost in fury, but in a mile or two they were flowing with us just as swiftly.
To-day we saw a good many ducks, chiefly mallard and teal, and small divers, and my first cormorant, black, long-necked and circling near us with much swifter flight than the gull. In the narrows we started a great blue heron and one or two smaller bitterns.
From the narrows we passed into Sumner Strait, and then turning to the right and avoiding Wrangel Bay and Fort Wrangel, where we stopped going up, passed into the great Clarence Strait that leads up direct from the sea. A sound or fiord one hundred miles or more long, ten or fifteen miles wide.
The day had been clear, but, before passing through the narrows, clouds had gathered, and a sort of fierce Scotch mist had blown our rain-coats wet. On coming out into wider waters, the storm had become a gale. The wildest night we have had since twelve months ago in the tempest of the year upon the Gulf of Finland. To-day, until now, the waters have been too boisterous to write. All down Clarence Strait, until we turned into Revilla and Gigedo Channels – named for and by the Spanish discoverers – and across the thirty-three miles of Dixon’s Entrance, we have shuttlecocked about at the mercy of the gale and in the teeth of the running sea. The guests at table have been few, but now we are snug behind Porcher Island and passing into the smooth waters of Greenville Channel, so I am able to write again. The Swedish captain says the storm is our equinoctial, and that may be, and now that the sun is out and the blue sky appearing, we shall soon forget the stress, although to-night, as we pass from Fitzhugh Sound into Queen Charlotte Sound, we shall have a taste of the Pacific swell again, and probably yet have some thick weather in the Gulf of Georgia. Considering the lateness of the season, we are, all in all, satisfied that we rightly gave up the St. Michaels trip, though it has sorely disappointed us not to have seen the entire two thousand miles of the mighty Yukon.
Already we notice the moderation of the temperature and the greater altitude of the sun, for we are quite one thousand miles south of Dawson, while the air has lost its quickening, exhilarating, tonic quality.
We are becoming right well acquainted with our sundry shipmates, particularly those who have “come out” from the Yukon with us. Among them we have found out another interesting man. Across the table from us on the steamer “White Horse” sat a shock-headed man of about thirty years, tall, very tall, but muscularly built, with a strong, square jaw and firm, blue eyes. A fellow to have his own way; a bad man in a mix-up. A flannel shirt, no collar, rough clothes. Possibly a gentleman, perhaps a boss tough. We find him a graduate of the University of Michigan. He has lived in Mexico, and now for five straight years has been “mushing it,” and prospecting in the far north; has tramped almost to the Arctic Sea, into the water-shed of the Mackenzie, and bossed fifty to one hundred men at the Klondike and Dominion diggings. His camera has always been his companion, and for an hour yesterday he sat in our cabin and read to us from the MSS. some of the verse and poems with which his valise is stacked. Some of the things are charming and some will bring the tears. This far north land of gold and frost has as yet sent out no poet to depict its hopes, its perils, its wrecks. It may be that he is the man. His name is Luther F. Campbell, and you may watch for the name. And so we meet all sorts.
Friday, September 25th.Yesterday was a “nasty” day, as was the day before. Early, 2 or 3 A. M., we passed through the ugly waters of Millbank Sound, where the sweeping surge of the foam-capped Pacific smashes full force against the rock-bound coast. We were tossed about greatly in our little 400-ton boat, until at last, passing a projecting headland, we were instantly in dead quiet water and behind islands once more. About 10 A. M. we came again into the angry Pacific, and for fifty miles – four hours – were tossed upon the heavy sea, Queen Charlotte Sound. The equinoctial gales have had a wild time on the Pacific, and the gigantic swell of that ocean buffeted our little boat about like a toy. But she is a fine “sea boat,” and sat trim as a duck, rolling but little, nor taking much water. Toward middle afternoon we were in quiet waters again, and by nightfall at the dangerous Seymour Narrows, where Vancouver Island leans up against the continent, or has cracked off from it, and a very narrow channel separates the two. Here the tides – twelve feet – rise, rush and eddy, meet and whirl, and only at flood stage do boats try to pass through.
In 1875, a U. S. man-of-war tried to pass through when the tides were low, and, caught in the swirling maelstrom, sank in one hundred fathoms of water. In 1883, a coastwise steamer ventured at improper moment to make the passage, was caught in the mad currents, and was engulfed with nearly all on board; half a dozen men alone were saved. Hence the captains are now very careful in making the passage, and so we lay at anchor – or lay to – from seven to twelve, midnight, waiting for the tide.
To-day we are spinning down the Gulf of Georgia and Puget Sound, the wind direct astern, and have already left Vancouver and Victoria to the north. The sun is clear and soft, not hard and brilliant as in Dawson. Whales are blowing at play about the ship, gulls skimming the air in multitudes. All our company are over their seasickness and now mostly on deck. We are repacking our bags and the steamer trunk, taking off heavy winter flannels and outer wear, and preparing to land at Seattle clad again in semi-summer clothes.
TWELFTH LETTER
SEATTLE, THE FUTURE MISTRESS OF THE TRADE AND COMMERCE OF THE NORTH
The Portland Hotel,Portland, Oregon, October 3, 1903.Just one week ago to-day the steamer “Dolphin” landed us safely at the pier at Seattle. The sail on Puget Sound, a body of deep water open for one hundred miles to the ocean, was delightful. We passed many vessels, one a great four-masted barque nearing its port after six or eight months’ voyage round the Horn from Liverpool.
Seattle lies upon a semi-circle of steep hills, curving round the deep waters of the Sound like a new moon. An ideal site for a city and for a mighty seaport, which some day it will be. Many big ships by the extensive piers and warehouses. The largest ships may come right alongside the wharves, even those drawing forty feet. The tracks of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways bring the cars along the ship’s side, and there load and unload. All this we noted as our boat warped in to her berth. A great crowd awaited us. Many of our passengers were coming home from the far north after two and three years’ absence. Friends and families were there to greet them; hotel runners and boarding-house hawkers; citizens, too, of the half world who live by pillage of their fellowmen were there, and police and plain clothes men of the detective service were there, all alike ready to greet the returning Klondiker with his greater or lesser poke of gold. It was exciting to look down upon them and watch their own excitement and emotion as they espied the home-comers upon the decks. We, as well, had all sorts of people among our passengers. Mostly the fortunate gold-finders who had made enough from the diggings to “come out” for the winter, and some, even to stay “out” for good. A young couple stood near me; they were on their wedding trip; they would spend the winter in balmy Los Angeles and then return to the far north in the spring. An old man stood leaning on the rail. Deep lines marked his face, on which was yet stamped contentment. He had been “in” to see his son who had struck it rich on Dominion Creek, who had already put “a hundred thousand in the bank,” he said. He had with him a magnificent great, black Malamute, “leader of my boy’s team and who once saved him from death. The dog cost us a hundred dollars. I am taking him to Victoria. I couldn’t let him go. His life shall be easy now,” the old man added. Just then I noted a tall man in quiet gray down on the dock looking intently at two men who stood by one another a little to my left. They seemed to feel his glance, spoke together and moved uneasily away. They were a pair of “bad eggs” who had been warned out of the Yukon by the Mounted Police, and who were evidently expected in Seattle. One, who wore a green vest and nugget chain, played the gentleman. The other, who worked with him, did the heavy work and had an ugly record. He was roughly dressed and wore a blue flannel shirt and a cap. A bull neck, face covered with dense-growing, close-cropped red beard, shifty gray eyes. He had been suspected of several murders and many hold-ups. Detectives frequently travel on these boats, keeping watch upon the “bad men” who are sent out of the north. We probably had a few on board. In the captain’s cabin, close to our own, were piled up more than half a million dollars in gold bars; the passengers, most of them, carried dust. But the pair, and any pals they may have had along, had kept very quiet. They were spotted at the start. They knew it. Now they were spotted again, and this, too, they discerned.
