Chapter XII: Down the Yukon and Home (5)

The owner was a small man--a small man who had spent his life in the new towns of the West. The passengers were mostly hulking Swedes from the lumber camps of Minnesota and Wisconsin. They longed to lay their strong hands on him for just a moment. But it was hard to lose a gold mine, and they hadn’t enough money to pay for passage on another steamer. So they slouched out of the owner’s presence more in sorrow than in anger. I heard afterward that the Nancy G. finally started on February 20th. Fate was so kind to her passengers that she did not sink until the return journey. They were more fortunate than two hundred of their fellows, who saw their outfits burned on the vessel which had reached Skaguay just in time to have disembarked them in safety.

To meet the demands of the migration to the interior, Dyea and Skaguay had sprung up as quickly as a house of cards. When Indian Charlie found his nugget there was no building at Skaguay and only a trading-store at Dyea for bartering with the Indians and furnishing any supplies to an old-time prospector which he had neglected to buy at Juneau. The two towns are situated at the heads of either of two arms of the Lynn Canal, which nature has cut through the rock as man cut that of Corinth, upon sandy deposits at the mouths of the Dyea and Skaguay Rivers, and separated by a distance of a mile in a straight line over a mountain spur or of three miles around the point of the spur by water. This spur, rising into high peaks as it reaches the summit of the main range, is a barrier separating the two rivers and the two passes.

Dyea is the gateway to Chilcoot Pass, which leads to Lake Linderman, and Skaguay is the gateway to the White Pass, which leads to Lake Bennett. They were not, as it appeared to the superficial observer, trying to excel each other in wickedness, but in the amount of business that they could do. Anyone who had been a resident of either town a single day considered it his duty to warn you as a friend against the rival town and the rival pass. In a week he had become an old citizen. The small proportion who were on hand for the rush of the late summer and autumn of 1897 were as proud as Lord Mayors. Then, thousands of pack-horses, earning as high as $50 apiece a day, died from the exertions to which they were forced by their owners. In the winter their bones sticking up through the snow were snags to catch the sleds of the pilgrims. Instead of a series of steps, the packers on Chilcoot had to walk around bowlders, slipping on the fragments of crumbling rock, and possibly, after all their exertion, reaching Linderman and building their boats only to have them blocked by ice half way to Dawson, where they were effectually stranded with their outfits.

Perhaps every fifth or sixth house in the main streets was not a gambling hall or a dance hall. With these and a large idle population it is easy to understand how men who had a few dollars in cash when they arrived were obliged to sell their outfits and return home. The enforcement of law was in the hands of a United States commissioner and three or four deputy marshals. The commissioner was a gentle optimist who spent most of his working-hours in an office with a window looking out on the river and the mountain side, where he might see no wrong-doing. “Soapy” Smith, gambler, by self-appointment, was Mayor of Skaguay and General-in-chief of the Army of Disorder, composed of characters from San Francisco and Seattle, who had no money left after their fare to Alaska was paid and were looking for something to turn up. When an atrocious murder was committed by one of his followers, “Soapy” told a body of protesting citizens that they would better mind their own business. As his army outnumbered theirs and was better armed, they accepted his advice. The United States sent out two companies of infantry, with instructions from the authorities at Washington that they should not interfere with the affairs of the two towns unless there was a riot. The Commissioner, seeming to regard their presence as an intrusion on his rights, never asked for their assistance. No murders or highway robberies were committed within sight of his little window. In time, however, “Soapy” Smith met the death that he deserved at the hands of one of his followers, and through the efforts of the merchants and the better element the towns became more orderly.

Not every pilgrim who returned home was the victim of gamblers and other parasites. For two or three days he might stop at one of the hotels until he selected the parcels of his outfit from the piles which had been thrown indiscriminately on the shore by common carriers in haste to have done with their contracts. Then, with his tent, his stove, and a cook-book, which was the gift of a baking-powder company, his journey began in earnest. The novelty of making his first flapjacks wore off by the time he had washed his dishes the second or third time. It was not long before he came to the conclusion that the fellow whom he had chosen to share all of his sorrows and joys was lazy. He blamed his own disinclination to rise in the morning and all his little failures upon him, as some men do upon their wives. Whenever he had a chance he solaced his wounded spirits by telling a stranger that he had put up with doing all of the work of his party about as long as he could.

Partnerships formed so gayly in Seattle by men who thought that being a partner was being a playfellow, could not be expected to last long at pulling sleds through the slush and going to bed in a robe or a sleeping-bag which was cheap and inefficient, with a supper of sandwiches made of sticky flapjacks and cold bacon. As he grew more angry with his partner he grew fonder of his dog. Jim might beat his poor Newfoundland, who was too nervous to pull even if he had ever been taught how; he might put up with a poor dinner; but if Tom, who was cooking, kicked the Newfoundland for stealing the bacon off the plate or sticking his nose in the butter, it was the last straw. He demanded a division of goods on the spot. But quarrels seldom resulted in blows, because they occurred when the men were too tired to do more than join in a contest of forcible language.

It was the man who leaves the door ajar at home who went to bed without washing his dishes. The Easterner now learned that, while he might know things that the Westerner did not, the Westerner knew better than he how to take care of himself. The Westerner always cooked a warm supper, and dried his footwear before going to work in the morning; while the self-neglect of the Easterner made hundreds of doctors at Dyea and Skaguay the busiest in the world. Spinal meningitis was often the penalty of sitting down to rest when dripping with perspiration without throwing a coat over the shoulders.

Even after their goods were on the summit of the Pass and the worst of their labors were over, many pilgrims gave up the battle. One by one they were thinned out until only thirty-five thousand were ready with their boats when the ice broke in Bennett. This far I had shared their experiences and then had gone on ahead. Mine was the privilege of having been a Cheechawko and at the same time standing on the river bank as an old-timer or among old-timers, to watch the arrival of the pilgrimage in its unpainted, unique flotilla.

X

PROFITS AND LOSSES

NEWSPAPERS AS PROFIT-WINNERS--HEARING ABOUT DEWEY--A DROP IN EGGS--MARKET ITEMS--LEMONS AGAINST SCURVY--THE MERCURY AT 110 DEGREES--AN AVERTED MOVING DAY--INDUSTRIOUS SCAVENGERS--THE KLONDYKE ITSELF--ASPECTS OF SUMMER--BANDANNA HATS AND PINK LEMONADE--A RESTAURANT TRUST--THE GRASSHOPPERS AND THE ANTS--DISILLUSIONS.

It was only to be expected that the first boat of the season to shoot around the bend above Dawson and raise a shout which would bring all the population to the shore would be manned by a resident of Seattle with the name of his beloved town painted on a huge streamer flying from the mast. Enterprising citizens of the far West such as he owned the stores at Dyea and Skaguay, the pack-mules on the trail, the restaurant tents which had sprung up in Sheep Camp, and then, following the pilgrimage on to Linderman and Bennett, generally made money out of the Klondyke without having to use a spade, because of their knowledge of the life and necessities of new communities. This proud Seattleite with the boat had two hundred dozen of nominally “fresh” eggs to sell, for which he received $3,600 within less than an hour after he had landed. Those of the crowd who could afford it hurried off to the restaurant for a “squar’” composed entirely of “ham and”. The others, having to bide their time until luxuries were cheaper, found compensation in the items of news which were passed from tongue to tongue--for it had not occurred to the Seattleite to bring a newspaper with him.

“Thought there was more money in eggs,” was his aggravating explanation. “’Sposed you fellers wanted to eat, not read.”

As he had heard it, within a week after the declaration of war with Spain, the cruiser New York, Captain Evans in command, had reduced the fortifications of Havana in three hours. The second Cheechawko to arrive assured us that this was quite untrue, and that two of Admiral Sampson’s squadron had been sunk and the Spaniards were winning on every hand. The crowd refused to believe anything of the kind, and the second Cheechawko received only $14 a dozen for his eggs.

With the next boat came a single newspaper, soiled with bacon grease. A curbstone speculator bought it for $15, stuffed it instantly into his inside coat pocket, and a few minutes later was posting signs to the effect that all might hear the news of Admiral Dewey’s victory read by paying a dollar a piece that evening. His entertainment would have netted him twice as much as it did if more than three hundred and fifty people could have been packed in the hall in which it was held. Some of the wealthy men considered this proceeding an outrage on personal liberty and made it a point to buy between them any single copy of a paper later than any others that had arrived and have it read at once in the streets.

Never did contrast better illustrate the comparative reliability of even the most unreliable of modern newspapers. All winter the camp had not had so much as a small hand printing-press, and news was carried solely by word of mouth. Most miners have the weakness of exaggeration. With some it is unconscious. Others enjoy testing a hearer’s credulity. Twice, up the creeks, I heard that the Continent had declared war against England and the United States; in the second instance, the detail of an Anglo-American naval victory off the coast of Bohemia perhaps was supplied. Such rumors were the natural fruit of the desire of Americans and Englishmen to pay compliments to one another at a juncture when the Anglo-Saxon alliance of the Klondyke was quite ready, without any assistance from London or Washington, to stand in arms against the whole world.

Within a week some thirty boats all bringing merchandise had arrived. In momentary anxiety of being lodged on a sandbar, without stopping to make camps, their crews bending to the oars night and day, they had raced with one another to the goal of high prices. Too many had placed their speculative trust in eggs. After all, there were only four hundred working claims, and the stomachs of each of their owners, and of the chief gamblers and business men, were little if any larger than that of the average human being. Eggs fell in five days from $18 to $4 a dozen and finally to $3.

A stock of fine millinery and ladies’ apparel, sold to the women of the town, gave to one fellow a profit of $5,000. The first condensed milk to arrive brought $1 a can; the first butter, $2.50 a pound; the first ham, $1.25 a pound, and the first sugar, $1.50 a pound. Lemons were more in demand in a scurvy-ridden country than oranges and bananas and sold for double their price, which was seventy-five cents apiece. But the happiest of all the newcomers was the one who had the only boat-load of boots for a community which was miserable in moccasins in warm weather. He received $15 a pair for fifteen hundred pairs which had cost him $1.75 a pair in Montreal. A five-cent bottle of ink cost $1; a fifteen-cent golf cap, $2.50; a pen-holder, fifty cents--the smallest amount of dust that anyone cared to weigh out; socks $2 a pair; a broad-brimmed summer hat, $20 to $40; a small whisk broom, $2.50; a ready-made suit of clothes, from $50 to $200; canned roast beef, $2.50 a can; canned oysters, a great luxury, $5 for a pound or pint can, and cigars, fifty cents to $1 apiece.

Against the profits which such prices represented the speculator had to set the original cost of the articles, the expense of transporting them to Dyea or Skaguay and over the one hundred and seventy-five miles to the foot of Lake Le Barge, his own fare on a steamer out of the country, and the loss of from three to six months’ time.

During the lull between the arrivals of the few speculators from Le Barge and the main body of the pilgrims from Linderman and Bennett, it seemed at one time not unlikely that Dawson might be carried down the river and a new town established on some sandbar. But there was not enough snow left on the mountain sides to allow the tropical sun, shining eighteen hours out of the twenty-four and raising the mercury to 110 degrees, to accomplish its apparent purpose. Never had the old-timers known it to be so warm so early in May, and never had they known the river to be so high. They held that the Lord was displeased with the prospective defilement of the country by an army of “clerks, farmers, and dudes.” The Indians knew better. White man might be very cunning in making a boat go up stream by burning wood in an iron box, but Indian could tell him some things besides how to kill moose. Old Indian could count off on his fingers some twenty years ago when the canoeing was good on the whole town-site of Dawson. That was why Indian never lived in Dawson but at Klondyke City.

Day by day we saw the water approaching a few inches nearer to our door-sill. It began to fall just as we were thinking of putting up our tent on the mountain side. Only the roofs of some cabins in Dawson were above the level of the stream. The suspension bridge between Dawson and Klondyke City, whose woven wire cables were earning two or three hundred fifty-cent tolls a day for their owners, was carried away along with a great pile of débris that it had collected. You paid fifty cents for being ferried from one island to another in the main street. Along the bank, standing in their boats, pike poles in hand, were those easy-going ones of the inhabitants who raised husky dogs for sale, did a little freighting in the winter, and took naturally to odd jobs--and I might say to squaw wives--now, in the heyday of importance, as they rowed out in the strong current and brought in a tree which had been uprooted by the flood. If the tree was suitable only for firewood it was probably worth a quarter of an ounce, or four dollars; if large enough for sawing, half an ounce. The average Klondyker’s dislike for such work being quite as strong as that of the average man at home for scavenging, the easy-going had a free field and earned enough in a few days to buy winter outfits for themselves and their families. A few had even better luck. They caught portions of rafts--in two instances whole rafts--which had slipped their moorings up the river, and steering the sum of two or three months’ labor of men probably unknown to them up to the bank, let the owners of the saw-mill have it at a bargain.

A source of amusement if not of income was a ditch in one of the back streets, hidden under three or four inches of water. As you stepped into it up to your thighs you heard a roar of laughter from several men sitting on a prominence near by.

“If you don’t tell your friends, pardner,” said one of them, “there’s room up here for another, and you can enjoy yourself watchin’ the others tumble in.”

With all the snow gone and no rainfall, the Yukon fell as rapidly as it had risen. The thawing and crumbling soft earth of the embankments of the upper reaches made it muddier than the Missouri at its worst. For drinking water one had either to resort to the rivulets on the hill-side, amber-colored from the moss, or go to the Klondyke, which, once sluicing was nearly finished, became so clear that the bottom was visible at a depth of ten or twelve feet, while the eddies and rapids of its current as seen from the mountain tops, left a dark, comet-like streak, stretching from its mouth for a distance of two or three miles on the café-au-lait surface of the mother stream.

By the fifteenth of June the river-bank was lined with the boats of the pilgrims, two or three deep. A city of canvas, with the old cabins and buildings as its heart, extended until the neighboring heights were dotted with tents. Knowledge of boat-building had turned out to be a misfortune, if anything, for the scows moved just as fast with the current and proved quite as easy to manage, I was told, as smaller craft pointed at both ends. The bow of each vessel bore the number which had been put on by the Mounted Police when they examined outfits for a second time for custom purposes at Le Barge or Tagish. Beside it was the name of the pilgrim’s home town, of his sweetheart, his wife, or his daughter, put on with coal if he had no paint. From the mast fluttered a red bandanna, a towel, or possibly some absurdly elaborate flag which had been made in the idle hour between the completion of the boat and his embarkation. If there were three in a boat, which is the best working number for a Klondyke party, one was in the bow on the watchout for sandbars, the second was at the oars, and the third in the stern with a sweep. Navigation had its perils, too. The river as well as the Pass had claimed its victims. You heard on every hand tales of wrecks in White Horse Rapids and in Thirty Mile River, whose hidden rocks had proven even more dangerous than the White Horse Rapids. Many a scow with merchandise which had cost its owner his last cent was split in two, and those on board were thankful to find themselves on shore alive.

In their camps, the pilgrims found the mosquitoes of summer worse than the cold of winter. Fevers and headaches upon their arrival in Dawson were the consequences of exposure under the sun. It was even the fate of a few to be taken at once to the big log hospital on the hill-side which already had more patients than it could accommodate; and of a part of these to be buried in the little cemetery beyond the hospital, which gives to relatives of the deceased the sombre satisfaction of knowing that its inmates, lying at a depth where the earth never thaws, are preserved for all time--unless the town-site itself one day is marked by hydraulics.

Between the pilgrims when I met them in Seattle and when I met them again in Dawson there was all the difference of volunteers in new uniforms going forth to war and the dust-stained men who return. Their tents, so white and new in Dyea, had patches where holes had been burned by sparks or by carelessly hung candles. Their canvas bags of provender were the color of the Yukon. Their cheap sheet-iron stoves were so badly warped that the oven had ceased to bake well. Their beards were unkempt, their faces tanned. The knees of their trousers proved again how helpless a man is when alone with a needle. Many were still wearing caps. A few had made substitutes for summer hats out of wire, straw, fir twigs, and a bandanna. If the Seattle and the Vancouver merchants could have seen the outfits which they had sold after three or four months’ usage, they themselves might have wondered at the skill of the manufacturers in making little seem a great deal by the use of varnish.

Very wisely the Canadian Government had provided that every pilgrim entering Canadian territory must have eleven hundred pounds, or a year’s supply of food. Flour was the cheapest thing to bring an outfit that lacked two or three hundred pounds up to the requirements. Almost without exception the pilgrims had failed to realize the importance of luxuries in contributing a healthful and sustaining diet in the North. Flour sold on July 1st, after the commercial companies began to receive supplies, for $6 a sack, but white sugar sold for fifty cents a pound. Everybody had enough of staples, but many had eaten all their sugar--the larger part of their dried fruits, soup preparations, and canned delicacies and smoked or chewed all of their tobacco. It was easy to promise themselves on the trail that if they indulged themselves in “something good” after a hard day’s work they could buy more of the same article in Dawson. For they were certain that a great many of their comrades intended to sell their outfits and leave the country at once--so many of their comrades did. But they, too, had eaten all their butter and evaporated eggs and kept any tobacco they had lest they should run out of it on the way home.

Pilgrims who had goods to sell hastened to find a niche for a booth on the busy main street, where you could buy peanuts and pink lemonade, or the substantials of eating; patent leather shoes, yellow-backed novels, and cheap jewelry, or the substantials of wearing apparel. The six restaurants formed a trust and kept the price of a meal up to $2.50. In furnishing them with meat, the men who had used oxen for drawing their outfits up to the Scales and again to draw them over the lakes, now had reason to laugh back at the friends who had scoffed at them for thinking that any animal except a dog or a mule was useful in Alaska. An ox sold for $700 or $800 and was butchered at once before it had a chance to eat any more hay--which was worth $100 a ton--while the rich men stood by to see that they got the tenderloin. Besides beefsteak, we had moose-steak. One moose, who had possibly come back to his old pastures out of curiosity, was shot with a revolver only a mile out of town. His slayer, who met him ambling along the white man’s trail as if he were on a stampede to some new creek, sold his carcass for $500.

Carpenters got employment at $15 a day on some one of the new dance halls, saloons, and stores which were being built as fast as green lumber for their construction could be obtained. Pilgrims without any trade, if they were wise, immediately secured logs and built a cabin, which served them at once as a temporary home, a storehouse for their supplies, and assured them warmth and shelter when winter should come. But the grasshoppers were far more numerous than the ants. The debilitating climate of summer, joined with the indecision of whether to leave the country or to remain, of whether to go down the river to the American side or up the river to Stewart if they did remain, supplied the majority with a good excuse for idleness. Some did not even put up tents on the shore, but kept house in their boats which they had moored to the bank. They sat on logs discussing their experiences in shooting the rapids, and they kept watch of the new arrivals for the purpose of guying anyone who had started before themselves but had arrived later.

There was something pitiful as well as ridiculous in the disappointment of the pilgrim who had believed everything that he read in the press-agents’ pamphlets, to find that a rich claim was not to be had for working it. When he put his new gold-pan and a pack on his back and went up the trail to the creeks, where possibly he found a few colors in a rivulet, the old-timers laughed at him and asked him if he liked prospecting well enough to pan ground that was staked two years ago. If he carried a revolver they begged him, please not to shoot them. Wearily, and with all his visions dispelled, he returned to Dawson. His tent was no protection from the sun of midday. At night the light made it difficult for him to sleep. As he fried his fat bacon he could not help thinking that it was just strawberry time on the “outside.”

Few pilgrims had any money and those who had were inclined to spend it on the luxuries which their palates craved. They walked up and down the main street like the crowd at a country fair; looked on at the drinking and gambling of the successful miners and marvelled at the amount of dust that passed over the saloon-keeper’s scales; and slouched in and out of the stores of the two commercial companies to see the bulletin board, which had the list of names of men for whom letters had been received. If they might not visit the new variety theatre, with gambling hall and bar attached, where actresses from ’Frisco and Seattle sang the songs of a local poet containing spirited references to the rich claim-owners--who, in return for the compliment, opened champagne at $30 a bottle between the “turns,”--they could at least enjoy the sights of the river bank. In the absence of so great an event as the arrival of a scow with mules or the latest papers on board, some “pardners” were either quarrelling or dividing their outfits preparatory to selling them. With the first steamer from down the river came the news from Circle City, which meant a great deal to the old-timers. The Cheechawkos could not understand it, but, as became a crowd which gets only a glimpse into the inside world, they made the most of the peeps and simulated intense interest.

One day a midget of a steamer, the first to shoot White Horse Rapids--her parts had been packed over the Pass and put together on Bennett--ran in between two scows and tied up so quietly that not more than three or four hundred men saw it. Their pride was no greater than the disappointment of the multitude, who refused to forgive the captain until they learned that his whistle was out of gear.

Next to knowing them personally, the Cheechawkos enjoyed having the leading citizens and the foremost gamblers pointed out to them. They knew the story of how the Eldorado kings had made their fortunes, and how Jack Smith had once bet $7,000 on the turn of a card. Now and then they caught a glimpse of the tall, raw-boned Scotchman who was the richest man in the country. Two years before he had been a day laborer at Circle City. When the value of Eldorado claims was an uncertain quantity he bought one of the best for $800. He spent all the first year’s output in buying undeveloped properties, and then bought still others upon his promise to pay, which the miners accepted without any written word. The clean-up had vindicated his judgment. Now the fact that he had stopped on a trail to look at a claim was supposed to increase its speculative value.

And speculation still continued in both mining property and real estate. A French-Canadian who had paid $5 for a front lot just after the town-site was staked still held out persistently for $20,000, with slight prospect of getting it. The “bottom” was out of the “boom,” as every man who supported himself by gambling or speculation well knew. No new strikes were made except on a few benches. None could be made on the creeks at a season of the year when the seepage from the thawing earth would fill a prospect-hole as fast as it was dug. Autumn and winter have ever been the time for prospecting in the Klondyke, and summer the time for cabin building or for taking provisions to the heads of some of the tributaries in poling-boats preparatory to prospecting.

Roughly but surely the lesson was forced home to the pilgrim that a fortune cannot be made in the Klondyke in a hurry. If he would have a claim he must find it. Even after he has found it, he must spend two or three years, unless he sells it, taking out its treasure. If it were not for the humiliation of facing their friends from whom they had parted with merry good-bys, nine out of every ten of the pilgrims would have returned home at once. Thirty per cent. of them did, as it was. Two-thirds would have gone if many had not loitered on in their tents until it was too late to go except over the ice. The tenth man developed those characteristics of patience and nonchalance in dealing with obstacles which the veteran prospector possesses by experience and by nature. For such as lacked this spirit and remained in the country there was the prospect of loitering in their cabins until their supplies were eaten, in the hope of getting a good claim on a stampede, or of going to work for wages.

In all, the pilgrims must have spent $30,000,000, or $40,000,000, on outfits and transportation. (The output of gold in the Klondyke for the year was $11,000,000.) But they have paved the way with their failures for the development of a vast expanse of country whose abounding wealth is unquestioned. The hardships of a journey to Dawson are of the past. An aërial tramway, without groans or perspiration, does the work of the packers at one-fifth of the expense on Chilcoot, and a railroad carries passengers as well as freight over the whole Pass. Steamers ply on both the upper and lower branches of the river connecting at White Horse Rapids with others plying on the lakes. Hereafter, the mines of the Klondyke will be an established institution, like the mines of California, and the prospectors who go there, better fitted for their tasks.

XI

GOVERNMENT

THE CANADIAN POLICY IN THE YUKON PROVINCE--TAXES AND FEES--THE GOLD COMMISSIONER’S OFFICE--CONFLICTS BETWEEN TERRITORIAL AND DOMINION GOVERNMENTS--TIMBER GRANTS--THE VALUE OF THE MOUNTED POLICE--THE NEWLY RICH AT DAWSON--THE ORDER OF THE YUKON PIONEERS--MRS. CONSTANTINE.

In its policy the Dominion Government, which took matters out of the hands of the Territorial Government after the Klondyke “boom” began, has apparently been largely influenced by the predominance of aliens in the Klondyke. At least three-fourths of the 2,000 men in and around Dawson in the winter of 1897-98 and of the 35,000 pilgrims of the spring of 1898, were citizens of the United States. Naturally, the members of the Canadian Parliament regarded with dismay the prospect that the new-found wealth of a portion of their domain hitherto considered valueless was going to American mints, and that their constituents would be paying the expenses of administration, which, owing to the isolation of the region to be governed, must be comparatively expensive, for the benefit of another country.

Accordingly, the placer regions of the Yukon Valley lying in British territory were created a special province called the Yukon District, under the jurisdiction of the Dominion Parliament. A Commissioner, with the powers of a dictator, was appointed for the District, the Judge of the district alone being responsible to Ottawa and not subject to the Commissioner’s orders. The other civil officials were a Gold Commissioner, who had charge of the recording of claims, a Crown Attorney, and two Mining Inspectors for collecting the royalties. The opportunities of the officials for their own aggrandizement were exceptional by reason of the system of taxation devised. On the output of all claims a royalty of ten per cent. was collected. Every pilgrim had to take out a mining license at a cost of $10. For having a claim recorded a fee of $15 was charged. Every alternate claim on all new discoveries was reserved to the Crown, thus depriving the community of half the reward of enterprise. These restrictions drove a great many experienced American prospectors to the other side of the boundary line and at the same time served the inexperienced as an excuse for returning home.

Major J. M. Walsh, who was chosen Commissioner, did not go to Dawson in the autumn of 1897. His corps of civil officials preceded him while he remained behind in camp on the Lewes Lakes, with a considerable force of police, in order to escort to Dawson the United States Relief Expedition.

Among the foremost charges of maladministration made against the civil officials was the one in connection with the water front, data of which were given to me by several leading men. The Canadian law provides that the main street of a new town shall be at all points a certain distance from the bank of the river. In order not to have a crooked main street, the men who staked the town-site of Dawson agreed to follow this measurement, from the greatest indentation of the bank, in a straight line. Those who bought lots on the main street supposed that they were securing river frontage, which is invaluable. The spring of 1898 however, saw a long row of buildings whose back-doors were toward the river and which faced the original row. The officials had let the water-front to an individual for a nominal sum in the name of the Government. The sub-lessees said, with a shrug of their shoulders, that they did not care to say to whom they paid their heavy rents, and that they were satisfied as long as they were left undisturbed.

Captain Constantine, who had been transferred from the charge of the police at Forty Mile to the same position at Dawson, was an old fashioned executive. His departure in the summer of 1898 was agreeable to him as well as to the other officials, because he was alone among uncongenial company. He understood the miners; and they knew that, though gruff, he was honest and incorruptible. Even the lawless ones admitted this much; for in no community is simple integrity enforced by a strong will better appreciated than in a mining-camp. Had he been retained as administrator of the whole district, with the power to choose his own assistants, Dawson would have been a phenomenally well-governed settlement from the start, and the development of the great wealth of the region would have been less retarded. Instead of men who had spent their lives among pioneers, the Dominion Government sent, as the reward for party service, men whose experience was limited to local politics at home. With hundreds of experts to choose from in British Columbia, an ex-captain of a whaler and an ex-livery-stable-keeper were made inspectors to collect the royalty of 10 per cent. on an output of eleven millions of gold.

Considering the expense of recording a claim, the owners of claims and the prospectors had at least the right to expect from the Gold Commissioner’s Office reasonable attention to duty. To have posted in a public place a detailed map of the district, with all claims and the names of their owners recorded, would have required little labor and no expense; but it would have ruined the business of the clerks in furnishing information. Considering the number of policemen with idle hands, mail received in the summer might have been sorted with dispatch and distributed at different windows under different heads. But a delay of two or three days, and the prospect of waiting in line for several hours before one could even ask if there was a letter for him, were strong incentives, to miners who wished to hurry back to their claims, to put a few dollars into an itching palm, and in return to receive immediate attention at the side-door of the Post-Office.

Unfortunately the arrival of Major Walsh in Dawson in the spring was not productive of the reforms which an oppressed population had hoped for. The acts of the officials, except that of a representative of the Northwest Territory in placing a tax of $2,000 each on saloons and gambling-halls, seemed to meet with the favor of the Commissioner. He maintained that the Territorial Government was infringing on the special powers granted to him by the Dominion Government; and he issued an order that anyone who chose might sell liquor without any form of license.

The buildings on the water-front stood in the way of even a primitive system of sewerage. Simple sanitary rules were not promulgated, much less enforced. Absolutely no precautions were taken against the epidemic of fever, which was responsible for so many deaths. Private beneficence built the two hospitals, and it now maintains them and carries on all charitable undertakings. Whatever has been done in the way of improvements has been paid for by public subscriptions. The full measure of the Government’s public spirit was the construction of the barracks and stockade for the Police on the Government Reserve. Had some of the money collected from the claim-owners and the prospectors been expended on constructing trails and on a system of sanitation, there would have been less ground for complaint. Doing nothing itself, the Government often took the position of the dog in the manger. The exorbitant price demanded for a charter forced capitalists to give up the plan of building a railroad from Dawson to the mines, which would have been invaluable in cheapening the cost of mining. After paying for timber privileges in their licenses, the pilgrims found, to their dismay, that the Government, or the officials, had given enormous timber grants in the neighborhood of Dawson to individuals, thus putting an artificial value on logs for firewood and building purposes.

Very properly the loudest complaints arose from Englishmen, Australians, and South Africans. If the new laws were directed against Americans, they injured Canadians and other British subjects equally as much, if not more. From the first, London regarded the Klondyke as a great field for exploration, and most of the capital represented there last spring was British. The royalty of 10 per cent. and the failure to use the money so collected in constructing trails have been, however, more injurious to capitalistic enterprise, which is largely British, than to individual enterprise, which is largely American. A poor man who takes from $5,000 to $50,000 out of a bench-claim with his own hands will not be deterred from his labors by the royalty. But 10 per cent. on the gross output makes a majority of company propositions impracticable. Often it will wipe out a goodly profit, and put a balance on the wrong side of the ledger. As soon as it was known that the Dominion Government would not heed the appeals for the abolition of the royalty, the reaction from the “boom” was complete. The appointment of Mr. Ogilvie, the new Commissioner, who has a reputation for probity, was as welcome to the aliens as to the other residents. He at once set about the work of making reforms.

Too much cannot be said in praise of the personnel of the Northwest Mounted Police--mounted only in name, for they have not a single horse in the Klondyke--which is largely drawn from the ranks of the young Englishmen who enjoy “roughing it.” In preserving order they are good-natured but severe. Malefactors are punished with the commendable promptness of British justice; and no murderer in Dawson can snap his fingers in the face of the law as one did at Skaguay. At Skaguay there was no order; at Dawson too much civil government.

For the first winter, being populated entirely by men from the old camps, Dawson was, of course, largely a sociological counterpart of Forty Mile and Circle City, except that the excitement and the feverish optimism, which increased as the new discoveries continued to surpass expectations, had hitherto been unknown in the valley. The contamination of the old customs began with the arrival of the fifteen hundred madly hastening pilgrims who succeeded in reaching Dawson before navigation was closed in the autumn of 1897. It was complete with the arrival of the great pilgrimage with its element of toughs, gamblers, and other parasites. The time had passed when every man nodded to whomsoever he met. Dawson had become a settlement not of neighbors, but, like Mecca, of strangers. The old-timers were developing those human weaknesses which are brought out in sharp relief by the sometimes doubtful blessing of great and unexpected success. Practical communism was easier for a man when he and his comrade were equally poor than after chance had made him the owner of a plot of creek bed worth from $500,000 to $1,000,000, while his comrade, who had been too late in the stampede to stake a claim on Eldorado, was among his employees.

There sprang up as a consequence an aristocratic social circle called the Eldorado Kings, suffering, in a measure, from the affliction of the _nouveaux riches_ of old communities who live miserably under the suspicion that whoever approaches them has an axe to grind. Yet they did not forget their duties to their less fortunate fellows. They gave bountifully to the churches, to the hospitals, and for the care of those poor Cheechawkos who lay ill in their tents. Upon a special occasion, the Order of the Yukon Pioneers--perhaps the death of a comrade or perhaps a church sociable, where you bought ice-cream made from condensed milk for $2.50 a plate--appeared together wearing broad blue ribands. Foremost among them was Jack McQuestion. He was keeping a trading post when the first prospectors entered the Yukon Valley. The old miners came to him to settle disputes, and the poorest of them asked him for the loan of an ounce of dust.

On the day before the departure of our steamer for the outside, attired in their best clothes and wearing their ribands, the old-timers presented to Captain Constantine an address of appreciation and a peck of nuggets. Then Jack McQuestion went over to the barracks and asked that Mrs. Constantine should share with her husband the central position in a photographic group of all the pioneers. She consented.

The Captain’s wife had been her husband’s companion during his service on the Yukon. When she was quite ill one winter and had to remain in her cabin from one short day’s end to another--with long, dark, monotonous nights between them--the kindnesses shown to her were not limited to the devotion of her stalwart husband or the attention of ruddy-faced privates, whose Cockney accent told how far they were from the motherland of commonplaces and restraints. The miners who came to the door to inquire how she was getting on, devised means of entertaining her over their pipes and cabin fires, and then were sometimes too bashful to put them into execution. For one thing they learned by heart the contents of some old humorous journals in camp. Though she had been the first person to receive the journals when they had been brought down the river the preceding summer, she did not say so, and listened with gentle patience to their jokes being retold again and again.

“Mrs. Constantine,” said one old-timer, as he bade her good-by, “we ain’t much on manners, but we do know a lady when we see one.”

XII

DOWN THE YUKON AND HOME.

GOOD-BY TO DAWSON--THE EXTINCTION OF THE UNFIT--STEAMBOATING TO ST. MICHAELS--MOSQUITOES AND SANDBARS--PILGRIMS BY THE ALL-WATER ROUTE--BEHRING SEA--CIVILIZATION ONCE MORE.

Despite the diet, the isolation, and the inhospitable nature of the country, many of the old-timers who had now realized the material ambition which had brought them to Alaska and were going home, saw the great crowd which gathered on the river bank to bid our steamer a pleasant voyage, disappear in the distance with a feeling of regret amounting to more than a momentary pang. From two to ten years had passed since many of them had seen a paved street.

“You’ll wish you’re back,” and, “You won’t feel natcheral,” their departing friends called out to them.

Out of deference to civilization everyone had bought certain of its habiliments. New red ties stood out on the background of black sweaters, and crumpled overalls drooped over patent leather shoes. Some had taken whatever they could find to fit them, regardless of cost and incongruity. Others had halted half way in making out a wardrobe because they feared that they might not be getting the right styles or because they got indignant at the prices charged by the Dawson speculators compared with those on the outside.

The dying woman who was the mother of the first white baby born in Dawson, the sallow men who had limped down from the hospital just before the steamer sailed, and the Cheechawkos who had sold their outfits for just enough to pay for passage to Seattle, where they would have to telegraph home for railway fare--these had no regrets. We buried the woman half way down the river, two of the men before we reached St. Michaels, and a third at sea when only two days from Seattle.

With good accommodations, the journey of eighteen hundred miles from Dawson to St. Michaels would have been a pleasure trip. It was far from that with us, owing to the Spanish-American war and certain other reasons. The commercial company which charged us $300 for transportation had two steamers at Dawson. It held them there long enough to give us the questionable satisfaction of seeing the steamer of the rival company, which had been delayed in coming up the river from its winter quarters, arrive and cut prices before our steamer, having room for seventy-five passengers, and one hundred and seventy-five on board, started on ahead of her sister steamer. We were to act as a reconnoitering force or a buffer, or whatever you choose, for the sister steamer, which had a dozen lonely, armed passengers and $2,500,000 in dust on board, with a view to saving her treasure from a Spanish privateer if one were waiting for us at the mouth of the river, as rumor from the outside said. Therefore, one hundred passengers had to sleep on the floor of the dining-room or on the lower deck among the Indians and the piles of firewood.

Except when we ate, and when the steamer poked its bow into the sand in front of some piles of fire-wood on the bank, we could be fairly comfortable lounging on the decks. For the eleven days which the journey occupied, we had one tablecloth for three sittings at each meal. As the miners had a general disregard for the utility of dishes for holding things, the cloth did not preserve its original color, even in spots, for more than two days. Our food was bad rice, bad bacon and bread, and old canned roast beef, which, however, did not count, as we could not eat it. If the company had only allowed us to use our fingers instead of forks and knives which men who were “working their fare” out as waiters washed indifferently, I should have been much happier. By July, moreover, the little mosquitoes were out. They, and not the big ones which come early in the season, understand flying straight to the mark with rigid lance. They bit the Indians as well as the white men, but to no purpose so far as making them hurry in bringing on the wood. As soon as the steamer was in midstream, the buzzing mists, which could be resisted only by the finest netting drawn over the head, disappeared.

Our principal stops in the eighteen hundred miles were at Forty Mile and Circle City, where the deserted cabins were being once more occupied and there was a chance that the old claims, which were good for their day, would be worked again, and of a recrudescence of the boom; and at Minook, where important discoveries had been made in the past winter. But we stopped also at every little Indian village--to please the Indians, one presumed--where the inhabitants came out to meet us in their light canoes and wanted to sell furs and trinkets. At many of these villages there were mission houses. We had on board a Russian priest, who had come up on the steamer from Anvik and was now returning. He was bold enough to say that he thought he needed this little recreation after having been two years alone among the Indians.

We had left behind the great mountains below Dawson, we had seen the midnight sun across the vast stretches of flats below Circle City, and were just congratulating ourselves that our Indian pilot had led us through the last of the many shallow channels in the flats, when we ran on a sandbar. Our mate and his Indian crew labored for twenty-four hours before we were off. The next day a hog chain broke and our engines were helpless. For the rest of the distance to St. Michaels we were towed by the steamer which carried the treasure and had the misery of seeing the fellows who had started two days after us and paid less fare pass us on the steamer of the rival company.

At St. Michaels we met three or four thousand pilgrims who were going into the Klondyke by the all-water route. They had bought transportation for themselves and outfits of new companies which had attempted to tow flotillas of river steamers built in Seattle to St. Michaels. Almost invariably the river steamers had been lost at sea between Seattle and Unalaska, and those who depended upon them for transportation to Dawson were only better off than others who had attempted the journey on decrepit sailing vessels that had gone to the bottom. It was a little unkind of our passengers, while we waited for transfer to an ocean steamer, to enjoy setting before them in the bluntest phrase an exaggerated account of the desperate condition of all the newcomers in Dawson.

Behring Sea was placid as a lake when we crossed it. After two days for coaling at Unalaska and after five days on the Pacific, we entered Puget Sound on the morning of July 19th. Everyone on board was thinking of the steaks and the fruit that he would eat that evening for dinner. The old-timers, who had heretofore resented the steward’s requests that they should not expectorate on the decks, were a little ill at ease at the prospect of the social restraint of civilization. Civilization offers many advantages over Dawson or Circle City for spending a fortune, to be sure, but such of the old-timers as were destined to become poor again--and the majority were, I think--would no doubt return to the pick and the pan as a wanderer returns home.

THE END.

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