Young Alaskans in the Far North Part 18

"_Friday, August 15th._--Went up the famous Klondike River, which comes in here. Half of it is clean and the other half dirty. Saw no more pick-and-shovel work. Everything is run by the big dredges owned by companies, which do the work of hundreds of men. They thaw out the ground now with steam-pipes which they drive down in, and then turn in steam. Then they rip out the ground down twenty feet with the big scoops of the dredges. They just have water enough to float the dredges. Everything is worked and washed right on the dredge. It beats placer mining a whole lot. But a few men can work one of these dredges, and then a few men get all the money they turn out.

"Walked on up to Bonanza and some of the famous creeks above the dredges. They are using hydraulic mining up there, another wholesale way. Saw no individual mining.

"We boys ate supper with a lot of French people who are working 'lays' on some claims which are owned by other people on the hillsides up toward Bonanza. The bed-rock, where the rich gold is, is about the middle of the hill, and runs straight through, and they are following through right along the bed-rock three hundred feet below the surface.

They have 'drifted' in here, and they are using hydraulic mining, too. They seemed a jolly lot. They have a woman cooking for their crew, and asked us to eat with them--the best they had. We could not talk much in their language, and they did not understand very much of ours.

"We walked down from the mountains, four and a half miles, in an hour and five minutes, and were not tired.

"_Sat.u.r.day, August 16th._--The Commissioner of Yukon Territory--who is about the same as a governor would be in a Territory of the United States--asked us to luncheon to-day, because he knew of Uncle d.i.c.k. So we all went and had a very pleasant time. This is the Government House, and it has the British flag over it, of course. Everybody was very nice to us, and other ladies and gentlemen asked us a lot of questions, and we did of them, too. We felt very much at home here, and friendly. The Governor, or Commissioner, used to be American himself. He came up here in the early gold days.

"One gentleman at the luncheon told a good many stories of the old times. He told how cold it got sometimes. He said once they made some candles out of condensed milk. They sold them to a saloon-keeper, for a joke, because every one wants candles in the winter-time, but the saloon-keeper could not light these candles at all! He said there used to be a young man in Dawson they called 'The Evaporated Kid' because he was so thin. He said, too, there was a runaway express agent who had absconded from somewhere in America, and when he got to Dawson he hadn't anything except one painting, a copy of a celebrated picture in Europe. He sold it for a half-interest in a claim, which proved to be worth $60,000.

He went back to the States and gave himself up, and got a month in jail after he had paid what he had stolen. Then he came back to Alaska and has made a good citizen! He has always kept the old man who sold the interest in this claim.

Of course they wouldn't tell us the name of this man.

"They say the best place for hunting big game is to go up the Pelly River and then up the MacMillan River. White Horse is a good place to start from. There are sheep up in there, of two kinds, and moose and grizzly bear and caribou.

September is the best time to go in there, but it would take about a month, and a fellow would have to be careful not to get caught in the snow. The Mount McKinley country is even better as a big-game place, so they tell me. I wish we boys could go in there some time.

"They used to get all kinds of money in here in the early days. This same gentleman told me he once had an interest in a claim where they took out $430,000 on a fraction of a claim which was only eighty feet by four hundred. He says the dredge people have found that they can work much poorer dirt than eight dollars a yard, which would pay a shovel-man. One man can only rock about two and a half yards a day. He can sluice about twice that. A dredge, working four men, works from 2,400 to 3,000 tons a day. So you see why dredges are in here now. He said nearly all the men who got rich easy lost their money. There was a lucky Swede who married an extravagant woman, and she spent all his money--several hundred thousand dollars--right away; but he only laughed and said, 'I'll strike it again pretty soon.'

But he never has. He says there were a good many hundreds of men who held on to their stakes and went out with 50,000 to 100,000 dollars each. It must have been exciting times in this little old town! Very quiet now.

"All the pictures of Dawson show the big white scar on a mountain-side where a landslip took off the whole side of the mountain many years ago. The Indians say it buried a village at its foot. This big hole in the mountain is right where you can see it down the street. You can't help seeing it if you go to Dawson.

"I was much interested about the first man who discovered this country. They don't all tell the same story about it.

The Yukon Territory and Alaska are so much alike, and the people settling them have been so much alike, that it seems they are about the same. We crossed the international boundary between them away back at Rampart House. From there to here, on both sides of that line, men have been coming into this country, no one knows how long.

"Jack McQueston, so Mr. Ogilvie says in his book about the Yukon country, established Fort Reliance, six miles below where Dawson is, in 1871. Then Arthur Harper came in and joined him in trading. One time some Indians got hold of their rat poison, and two old women and one girl died. That made the Indians sore, so the traders had to pay for the women. They said the two old women were no good, but they would pay ten skins for the young woman, about six dollars.

The Indians said that was all right! It's a funny country.

"After that a man by the name of Mayo came in with Harper and McQueston, and in 1886, so this book says, they went down to Forty-Mile River, where they found gold already discovered. It was McQueston that founded Circle City, but it is not really on the line--nearly a degree in lat.i.tude south of it.

"Harper and McQueston seemed to move all around everywhere.

They said they found color on the Peace River and on the Liard, but did not find anything on the Mackenzie. But on the Peel River they found good prospects, and some on the Porcupine also. They were all over that country, where we've been.

"This Harper party came over the Rat Portage, too, the way we did, and they describe it about the way we would. But that was long before the Klondike rush, for they got to Fort Yukon on July 15, 1873. The Klondike was not known then, nor until more than twenty years later.

"I guess that the man who really ought to have the credit for finding the gold in the Klondike country was Bob Henderson. He was not trading so much as prospecting.

Besides, he got his start about the way most prospectors do--an Indian showed him some pieces of gold, and showed him the place where he found them. Anyhow, that is how Harper found some gold in the Tanana country. But Harper, though he was around in this country twenty-four years, never found any big strike. He died in Arizona in 1897. Jack McQueston stayed in later, and everybody remembered him as a generous trader.

"They say that the first gold to come out of the Yukon came from the Tanana River in 1880. A Mr. Holt of the Alaska Commercial Company took the first party over the Dyea Pa.s.s and down the Yukon, in 1875. They say a very little gold came out in 1882 and 1883, but n.o.body had ever heard of the Klondike then.

"McQueston liked the Stewart River better than any place for a long while. They got gold in a great many streams running into the Yukon, and found it on nine creeks as early as 1894. They sent out about $400,000 that year. There were a good many miners all along the river even in 1894--seventy-five miners in one party of stampeders. But still no one had heard of the Klondike, although they had prospected between the Yukon and the Arctic Ocean and far down to the mouth of the Yukon, and about everywhere else!

"Harper and McQueston had been on the Klondike, but did not find anything at first. Bob Henderson had as much nerve as anybody. They went up on Indian River, which runs parallel to the Klondike, about fifteen miles away. Henderson worked on Quartz Creek, they say, and he had to thaw out his ground with log fires the way they used to do, so he did not make much. Then he worked on Australia Creek. Of course these men all moved around a good deal. He only got about 600 or 700 dollars on the creek where he was working, so he moved over to a stream which he thought ran into the Klondike, and he called this Gold Bottom. He got the color here.

"Bob Henderson met George W. Carmac, and he offered to share his new strikes up on Gold Bottom, but he drew the line at the Indians Carmac was living with! So Carmac did not go out at first. But Carmac and two Indians, Charley and George, did go up the Klondike, and up Bonanza after a little, about a mile above the mouth. They were looking after logs for lumber. But they found color up in there. The Indians didn't care much about it. But after Bob told them about strikes higher up in the country, these Indians and Carmac went farther up Bonanza. They all claim to have found the first gold there. Henderson would not let them stake on Gold Bottom because he didn't like the Indians, so they turned back, because they had found ten cents to the pan on Bonanza. They found more gold on Bonanza, and so Carmac staked there on August 17, 1896, the Discovery claim and Number One Below Discovery, each 500 feet long, up and down the creek. They tell me that these claims ran the full width of the valley bottom--that is, from base to base of the hill on either side.

"Then some Indians staked above and below, Tagish Charley on Number Two below, and Skook.u.m Jim on Number One above. They had about a cartridgeful of gold when they got down to the mouth of the Klondike, and they still thought there was more money in lumber than in mining.

"Everybody got wind of it now, and there were a lot of people in this country already, before the Klondike news got out. There were twenty-five men looking for Henderson's Creek, and about that many looking for the Carmac claims.

"So Henderson didn't get any of the rich strike on Bonanza, although he had told Carmac about it. He always said Carmac ought to have told him, so he could have got in there, too.

Henderson couldn't get out to Forty-Mile in time to record his claim on Gold Bottom, until Andrew Hunker got in on the creek below him, and he recorded his Discovery claim and had the creek named after him--Hunker Creek. But Henderson had cut a blaze on a tree and marked this creek as Gold Bottom Creek long before that.

"So they gave a discovery claim to Carmac on Bonanza Creek, and another on Gold Bottom or Hunker Creek to this man Hunker. So Henderson, who had been in here two years, and who had told everybody about what he had found and wanted everybody to share in it, got only a very bad claim, after all. Hard luck.

"I wish I could talk with those old-timers and the Indians who were first in this gold country; but Mr. Ogilvie did talk with them all, and I think what he sets down is perfectly true.

"What I was rather surprised to learn was that all this country was known as a gold country so long before the Klondike was heard of. Most people think that the Klondike strike brought the first stampedes into the Yukon Valley, but that is not the case at all. So I thought I would set this down, to have it straight when we all got older. As time goes by these things seem to get crooked, and sometimes men get credit who do not deserve it.

"Well, I have heard a good many stories about wild times in Dawson, but I have not any place to set that down here, nor to tell stories about getting rich quick. We only wanted to keep track of the early times in the wild country. So I guess this will do.

"Well, here we go, off for home!--On board the steamer _Norcom_, bound up the Yukon. Left at 9 P.M., after saying good-by to all our friends in Dawson. We liked Dawson, but found it pretty quiet.

"_Sunday, August 17th._--We are doing about five miles an hour. Current very swift. At noon saw the Stewart valley.

Smith's store on the bank. Saw some boats stampeding for the White River strikes. Pa.s.sed the mouth of the White River.

Saw a new boat full of men turning up that river on the stampede. It must be like old times. Well, all right--we're going _out_.

"_Monday, August 18th._--Slow plugging up the current. Made Selkirk, an old trading-post and mining hangout, at 2 P.M.

The scenery here is much finer than on the Mackenzie. I don't know if tourists will ever come on any of these rivers. It goes a little slow.

"A good many wood-yards along the banks of the river. Quite a business selling wood to the steamboats, which burn a lot.

They showed us the line where the winter dog-stages carry the mail to Dawson. Someone showed us the O'Brien cabin, where four murders were committed. One white man and three Indians were hanged for it.

"_Tuesday, August 19th._--We all got up pretty early, although John was sleepy and Jesse a little cross. I told them we ought to see the boat line up through the Five-Finger Rapids. But, pshaw! there wasn't much about it.

We could run these rapids, I am sure, in our canoe, with no danger at all. Of course, going up the current is stiff, so at the bottom of the chute the steamboat takes on a wire cable, and it winds around a drum with a donkey-engine, and that pulls the boat up the rapids. They are not much like some of the rapids we have seen.

"Well, it's twenty years since the Klondike rush, and we've been over a good deal of the country that the old-timers saw. Here we come to White Horse, and there we shall take the railroad over the Skagway Pa.s.s, where so many men had such awful times trying to get from the salt water into the Yukon Valley.

"I don't think I'll write any more notes, because when you get to a railroad everybody knows about it all anyhow. John and Jesse and I feel pretty blue, after all. Our trip is the same as done when we get to White Horse, and we are sorry.

When we once know we can get home all safe, we sort of feel homesick for the rivers and mountains, too. You know how that is.

"I don't know that we would want to do it all over again, but we've had a fine time. I think John and Jesse are both a little taller. Uncle d.i.c.k says I am, too.

"But it will be fine to get home again. Uncle d.i.c.k says he is going to write and telegraph from White Horse once more.

So good-by to the Yukon. And good-by to the Rat and the Mackenzie, too! Fine doings!"

XVII

WHAT UNCLE d.i.c.k THOUGHT

Our party of explorers, who by this time felt entirely civilized, went about the streets of White Horse with a certain air of superiority over the individuals who had never been farther north than this railroad town. They were the heroes of the hour, with their tales of the Rat Portage, over which no party had come in in recent years, and each of them had to tell to many listeners the story of this or that incident of the long trail. Old graybearded men listened with respect to what these young boys had to say, and a newspaper man was very glad to make a copy of some of Rob's careful diary, which he now began to value more and more.

All too soon they were to leave this place and to pa.s.s up over practically the original Klondike trail which came from the salt water over the White Pa.s.s and down the headwaters of the Yukon to this point. They did not visit the once famous White Horse Rapids, where so many of the boats of the Klondikers came to grief, but declared it would only bore them, since they had seen waters so much more imposing! The local inhabitants laughed at this, but admitted that many of the teeth of this once dangerous water had been extracted since the early days.