The tragedy of the Klondike; this book of travels gives the true facts of what took place in the gold-fields under British rule

Front matter

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Preface

FROM time immemorial the hrnnan race has been more or less "gold-mad." The lust of gold has been the motive-power which has ruled the world, opened up new countries, made cities to spring up on the plains, discovered new continents, made wars and bloodshed in every part of the world.

Solomon could not have built his temple without gold. It was the motive-power that led to the search for golden fleece. It was the lust for gold that brought Christopher Columbus across a trackless waste of water to discover a new world and a new people and finally to death in chains.

Australia, with its vast area and varied resources, would still be a sheep-farm except for the discovery of auriferous deposits, which was but a penal colony instead of the world-power it is to-day. India was and is the most brilliant of Great Britain's crown- jewels as a producer of gold and precious stones. And all this has been acquired by the few, and the multitude has fallen by the wayside. Men have risked and lost their lives in desert amid thirst and sand-storm; have climbed almost inaccessible heights and perished by the many risks which beset the explorer. And none of these things either daunt or deter men from the quest of the precious, glittering, golden lure, hidden in the bowels of the earth.

In the ages whose history is unwritten lie the tragedies of the gold-lust. The Aztecs, ^^dth their primitive methods of roasting the ore, accumulated vast stores of the yellow metal, which with fire and bloodshed the Spaniards took from them, and they went to their graves without revealing the source of their w ealth, which remains in great part the secret and the mystery of the land of the Aztec, our next-door neighbor.

When the Aleutian Islands were found to produce gold in quantities, their remote and almost inaccessible location in Behring's Strait did not deter the gold-hunter from his quest any more than did the search for the yellow metal yield to the risks of tropical fevers and deadly reptiles.

This being brieflj^ a true history of the world's mining fever, a disease for which there is not and never will be a remedy, we come naturally to the latest craze and one of the most remarkable. The discovery of placer-gold and the rush for the region in the far Northwest, the Klondike, a much larger population and a greater number of adventurous spirits combined to make the rush excel that which invaded California in the historic days of " '49."

It had been many years since a great gold discovery had been given to the world, when in 1897 the Klondike discovery was given in its primitive form to the world at large.

It was in the autumn of 1898 that the world, or that portion of it which is interested in mining, first heard of the great gold discovery or field in what has since come to be known as the Yukon Territory.

Two prospectors claim credit for the discovery at the same time, though as for time they had no timepieces or almanacs. It was early spring, however, and the two prospectors were camped about sixty miles apart. These men were prospectors from boyhood, trained only as a hunting-dog is broken.

They are a unique class of men. They go out every year with never-dying hope and supply of "grub." Either they work a portion of the year to earn money enough to "grub-stake" themselves out of their savings, or else they enthuse some one into a belief that they will find a mine; and the man who finds the grub-stake is entitled to a one-half interest in any mining property which the prospector may locate. A grub-stake is a term used to designate the provisions carried by the prospector or the sleuth in search of gold. These necessarily are very limited, as he has to carry them on his back; a robe of fox-skin, in which to sleep, as being the warmest fur procurable ; flour, bacon, salt, sugar and tea. The only cooking-utensils are a frying-pan, tin plate, tin cup, knife and fork, pick and shovel and gold-pan.

Birch-bark is in profusion everywhere, and peeling it from the nearest tree the prospector builds a fire and cooks his flour, salt and water in a cake as thin as a flap- jack, and the frying of his bacon greases the pan for this elaborate meal.

At the Christmas holidays of 1897 and 1898 the exodus of Eastern people to the Klondike reached its height.

The farmer left his plow in the furrow, the mechanic laid down his tools, the professional man, least fitted of all for the struggle, closed his office, and turned their faces to the frozen fields of that great northwest territory in Canada and Alaska. The newspapers devoted columns to the exploiting of the new gold-fields.

Few alone remember the prophetic words of William H. Seward when, having completed the negotiations for the purchase of Alaska from the Russian government, which was then considered a political movement for territorial aggrandization, he said, "The generation which shall come after us will recognize that we have left them an inheritance more rich and more desirable than Australia or India is to Great Britain."

"Pike's Peak or bust" was the crj^ when Colorado began to yield her golden store, but that was in the heart of the Continent and the way direct and the distance and dangers a purely comparative quantity.

But Alaska meant a land of eternal snow and ice, the crossing of the continent, a voyage north nearly to the pole, and all the appalling terrors of the unknown and probably the unknowable.

But the lust of gold is an unquenchable passion.

Chapter I

I HAD been in the practice of medicine in Chicago, 111., U. S. A., for a number of years, and for the three years preceding the "find" on the Klondike, had been closely confined by hospital-work in an official position. I had decided to take a rest. But where? I had traveled extensively and had no special desire to revisit any of the places I had been, and for some days was in a quandary just what to do. One morning my secretary came in before I had arisen, and playfully pointed out a long article in the morning paper on the Klondike, and said :

"Why don't you go there? It will be quite new, and you can practice anywhere and perhaps get a mine and make a fortune."

My resolution was taken on the instant, and I said: "Yes, I will go to the Klondike. I will attend the sick, and I will make a fortune." And that is why I went to the gold-fields and how this story came to be written.

In January, 1898, having some business in Portland, Ore., I took the train over the Northern Pacific bound for that city. My baggage was not bulky, a sealskin coat and hat being the most important items in my outfit.

The other requisites, I was advised, I could provide myself with to better advantage on the coast. Having finished my professional work in Portland, I took a train for San Francisco. The reason for this apparent getting away from my route was very simple, for at that point I could get better accommodations on better steamers than from a more northern port. Arrived in San Francisco and found the conditions were little if any better. Thousands of men were there waiting for steamship accommodations to the northward. For the third time in its history San Francisco had gone "gold-mad." The days of " '49," when the city was one of canvas, and the people came over the plains across the Isthmus of Panama and through the Straits of Magellan to the new Eldorado, were being re-enacted in a city of palaces instead of one of canvas tents.

The days of Big Bonanza were not more full of excitement than those which followed the reports of the richness and extent of the great strike upon the Klondike. People, principally men, came into the city on every railway train and in wagon trains, and the old-time miners who came on foot were not lacking; and, as in all times of mining excitement, the crowd was a motley one. They made up parties among themselves to stick together and bunk together while going into the Yukon Territory and Alaska, and made common cause in their adventure. I was fortunate in not having to wait long in the city by the Golden Gate. *

A friend had given me a strong letter of introduction to a relative who was going in to construct a telephone-line in company with three other gentlemen. This was a most fortmiate incident. They invited me to join their party, which I did.

They were cultivated gentlemen, and saved me from much that was disagreeable which I would have encountered had I been thrown with the rougher element.

They took my passage to Dyea, the point of debarkation, the cost being much less than was to have been expected in view of the prices charged in past periods of mining excitement. I paid fifteen dollars from San Francisco to Victoria, and sixty-five dollars from Victoria to Dyea. This included one hundred pounds of baggage find a bunk, or berth — as you may call it. The latter were put up in every available inch of space, and when we packed ourselves into them Ave were as snug as though encased in the Catacombs of Paris.

The food was passable at first. The meat was killed on board, and we had plenty of canned provisions, but the number of passengers far excelled the capacity of the kitchen and store-rooms, so that as the days went by we were on shorter and shorter rations and the food was of less desirable quality.

We left San Francisco on the steamship Umatilla February 5, and went into the port of Victoria, B. C, two days later.

At Victoria the first serious work of the journey was undertaken. After leaving here we were beyond the pale of civilization. From here we passed into the great Northwest, and the road led to the new mining-camp amid the frozen zone where Nature had hidden her treasure.

It is a curious but a historical fact that either in the frozen North or pestiferous tropical swamps Nature hides her stores of gold to lure men to seek at the risk of their lives.

At Victoria, B. C, we were compelled to outfit for the journey and the trip across Chilcoot Pass. As many adventurous spirits richer in hope and pluck than money had hit the trail without a sufficient supply of provisions and had sufFerec] hardships and death before reaching the other side, the authorities interfered and prescribed the rations.

The requisite amount of food prescribed by the authorities to obviate this condition of affairs was not less than six hundred pounds to each person.

This consisted usually of flour, bacon, beans, canned tomatoes, sugar, tea, rice and salt — not a very epicurean menu, but nourishing and kept within the weight.

After a day's shopping the results were amusing, had it not been indicative of perhaps fatal troubles for the people who were going where they knew not and after spoils they would never acquire. The scenes on the pier were certainly novel, not to say picturesque. Especially was this true of the Swedes and Norwegians, far, far from their native friends. The favorite costume of these brave empire-builders seemed to be a suit of bright yellow felted cloth, about half an inch in thickness, riveted together; a fur cap of cone-shape, which could be pulled down over the face, the "windows" of the soul peering out through panes of isinglass. Tons of provisions and clothing, other tons of miner's tools, the flickering light of great torches making grotesque shadows on the wharf, this motley crowd of people of varied nations moving restlessly about, and if you have an imagination you can conjure up a picture the like of which will never be seen again.

These tools, stores and provisions were bonded by the customs authorities through the United States Territory to Lake Bennett in British Columbia; so that we had the benefit of the lower prices without paying duty. Many, however, were not aware of this method of evading duty, outfitted in the United States, and had endless trials and tribulations with both the Canadian and American customs officers. And the blackmail which was levied on these innocents was a wonder, and both Canadian and American revenue officers were equally culpable and dishonest.

We had purchased our tickets at Victoria on the American steamer Seattle, but the British customs officer ordered us ashore, saying she was overloaded by one hundred tons, and had more than the licensed number of passengers.

To plead, to swear, to rave was of no avail, and ashore we had to go. The next ship booked to sail north was the Clara Nevada, and the first one to come south, with not only the news of the miners, but with a cargo of gold-dust and nuggets in proof of the stories told of the wealth in sight on the Yukon. On her were the old and experienced miners who brought their dust with them, the proceeds of the first wash-up of importance which took place in the Klondike. It was expected that the Clara Nevada would sail in three days after we landed, but she did not appear that day nor the following one. There were people waiting for friends they had not seen in several years — the mothers, wives and sweethearts of the returning miners. The streets and the wharf were filled with a constantly increasing crowd. One old character, a sailor nicknamed "Black Jack," shook his head ominously. He ran out to sea in his little sloop and scanned the horizon several times a day, but there was no sign of the Clara Nevada. The steamer due was watched for with impatience. The crowd of waiting people increased daily. The pier was always alive with men straining their eyes like a castaway on the desert.

The thought always in every man's mind was, "The man ahead of me may get the claim that should be mine."

So day after daj^ passed. Then a ship was sighted, and a mighty shout went up. The Clara Nevada was booked to sail for the gold-fields February 14. She had arrived at last. But the old sailor shook his head sadly and said, "That's not the Clara Nevada." As she approached the anchorage she was seen to be the Islander, and brought the sad news that she had seen the Clara Nevada's topmast sticking out above the water between Skagway and Juno. The ship had sunk with all on board and with her load of treasure; not one person survived to tell the story. The crew and sixty-eight passengers were lost. The purser was a young man fond of adventure, of good family, and his mother offered a reward of fifty thousand dollars for the recovery of his body. A short time after some Indians fishing not far from where the ship went down found the body, which had washed ashore with the ice and rested upon the ice gathered along the shore. The body was dressed as usual in these latitudes — in a full set of furs, showing clearly that he had gone to his death in the performance of his duty and died at his post.

Conjecture v.as rife as to how and why the ship was lost. The only evidence was found by his body, for the mustache and hair were singed to an extent that showed clearly that the ship had been destroyed by fire, and under such circumstances in that latitude escape is almost impossible.

Those who jump overboard, even with lifepreservers, perish with the cold in a short time, or are sucked under when the burning ship sinks and makes a whirlpool of her own, while those who remain on the ship are lost as soon as the flames reach the water's edge.

The steamship Islander coming back on her regular trip offered the opportunity which for ten days we had waited with much impatience to get away to the frozen North. The desire to get into the gold-fields is as strong a passion as the

16 Tlie Tragedy of the Klondike

human animal is capable of, and each day's delay was most irritating, and each day longer than its predecessor. Our outfits were ready for embarkation; we had, especially the women, less than a dozen in all, no source of amusement or recreation; men could gamble, and did, to pass away the time, but we women could only talk and dream of the golden harvest for which we had abandoned the comforts and luxuries of our Eastern homes. But no one was discouraged. It was a bond of interest which bound us together, whether a lady physician, like myself, or a girl going into a dance-hall.

We were all thousands of miles away from home. A new life confronted us, and the spirit of helpfulness pervaded the waiting assemblage.

Sleep was out of the question. The rattle of the hoisting-machinery, the cries of the stevedores and the hoarsely shouted orders of the officers all contributed to make a veritable pandemonium which was illuminated by the fitful glare of the torches which served to light the work, and to make the rest of the land and sea blacker and blacker and to fresco the wharf and ship with Rembrandtesque shadows.

Day was fast breaking in the east and the sun rising out of the bosom of the Pacific Ocean when the work of stowing the cargo was complete and the order given for the passengers to embark.

The Islander was an English vessel, iron propeller, built in Glasgow about eight years before for service in the Alaskan waters. She was brought around the Horn to Victoria, B. C. The license permitted of her carrying only three hundred passengers, but when there is gold in sight and gold coming out of the North, officials are not always too particular as to the counting of noses. On the trip of which I am writing we carried six hundred and eighty-four passengers, and as nearly every person had a dog, and some a dozen, the latter became a very distinct factor in the problem of transportation. Their provision was to me a problem. I found, however, that the dogs would eat a special coarse variety of dried salmon known as "dog-salmon," and which is put up in bales like hay and thence fed to the dogs — not a diet which would tempt the appetite; and yet the native dog will do an average of forty-five miles a day and a special breed of them will put sixty-five miles behind them in twenty-four hours. So you can see that the dog, while always man's best friend, is particularly so in the frozen North.

In addition we had sixty oxen and a hundred head of horses for drawing heavy loads from Dyea to Sheep Camp. These animals were a most valuable adjunct, since the dogs are of little use when the grade is steep, as it is on this part of the trail. Once over the Chilcoot Pass the dogs begin to do their work, and along the lakes and rivers a team will draw loads averaging five hundred pounds, four dogs constituting a team.

We had also about one hundred tons of provisions, eight hundred tons of baggage and nine hundred tons of freight. This comprised all the necessities of the miners, dog-sleds, picks, shovels, axes, gold-pans and snow-shoes. A gold-pan is used by the prospector to wash the dirt out of the gold. It is a primitive contrivance, much the same shape as an ordinary wash-basin. It has been in use many years. The miners put a shovelful of dirt into the pan and immerse it in a pool or tub of water. They keep shaking it all the time; the water washes away first the dirt, and then the gravel, and finally there is left nothing but the gold-dust and nuggets, which having the highest specific gravity remain at the bottom of the pan.

Chapter II

EARLY on the morning of February 17 hundreds of people assembled on the pier, relatives and friends of those who were starting for the gold-fields. Some of them came hundreds of miles from the interior, and strong men wept bitterly as they bade farewell to their loved ones so soon to drop below the horizon and whose return was most uncertain from an expedition so befraught with dangers and difficulties. Many of those who bade a tearful farewell to their loved ones never heard of them thereafter. They dropped out of sight and were lost to the world. Their fate is and will always remain a mystery.

The Islander cast off her lines and put to sea at 7.30 and sailed out into the sun track under the command of Captain John Irving, who shortly turned her nose to the northwest. She had a full cargo destined for those who had already entered upon their life in the mines of the Yukon Territory of Canada and Alaska. We had traveled about four thousand miles, eaten and drunk when and where we could, and at last were embarked on the final stage of our journey. The dogs seemed to have a premonition of the fate that awaited them and sent up their protest to heaven against the cruelty of mankind. If they had really known they were to meet with the cruel treatment which I afterward saw some of them receive they would all have jumped overboard, as a few of them did soon after we got under way. The old-time superstition of a dog howling at the approach of death in a neighborhood seemed to take possession of the passengers and each looked at the other in the most abject terror, but it was a terror which begot silence and discouraged speech. We had a voyage of eleven days before us, perhaps one less or one more, as the weather permitted. Our cramped accommodations and our rather limited diet did not serve to dampen the enthusiasm of the gold-seekers.

It would fill a volume to describe the motley crowd of passengers. The most interesting were the old-time prospectors and miners long past middle age, their skins tanned by years of exposure to the color and consistency of leather and this drawn over a rawboned frame, lean and muscular and devoid of an ounce of superfluous flesh. As for the rest they were tenderfeet making their first venture into a wild country. College professors, bankrupt merchants, bank clerks, lawyers and business men of all kinds made up the remainder.

Naturally the old-timers were the center of attraction. They did not hesitate to draw the "long bow" in their reminiscences of the days of " '49," of which they possessed all the traditions; of the days of the big Bonanza Mine in Cahfornia, when Marcus, Flood and O'Brien were the mining kings ; of Senator Stewart's big silver strike; of the terrors of Death Valley, and of the luck of Senator "Bill" Clark. To the imagination of these neophytes embarkine: on their first adventures this was like pouring oil on the flames. They talked of gold all day and dreamed of it all night.

Among the few women on board was a petite young Englishwoman who had her innings each day by telling us what they did "at home." Her husband, to whom she alluded affectionately at all times as "Jim dear," was a fine specimen of the British type who belong to the remittance class.

"She felt vexed, in fact, she was a trifle angry, you know." She sat up all night that she might be at the head of the procession and secure the very best berth to be had on the vessel, and spent the remainder of the day in boasting to her less fortunate fellow passengers. Her stateroom, which was the largest on the ship, "you know," had double berths, "you know," and the door opened into the social hall, "you know," and the window opened from the inside so "Jim dear" could sit so comfortably by himself in his own stateroom and amuse himself, "you know, watching the seals play hooky." And the stationary bowl was quite large enough, "you know," to afford a b-a-u-t-h, "you know." Their tickets being first-class entitled them to a seat at the captain's table, "you know." She was so glad she had staid up all night and secured such excellent accommodations. She felt so sorry, "you know," for others less fortunate. As for herself she could endure hardships rather gracefully, "you know." She had ridden horseback over the mountains of

South Africa and heard the panthers crj'- at midnight, and saw something once about half a mile away on the side of the mountain that looked like a bear, but Jim dear had never had to undergo hardships in all his dear life and it ^vas for him she was most concerned on the trip, "you know." You can easily imagine her dismay and surprise when she boarded the ship and found that during the night they had utilized every inch of space on the inside of that vessel. It was occupied by tiers and tiers of the most rudely constructed berths. Social halls, ladies' cabins, salons were all turned into a "bunk house." The large stateroom she had so carefully chosen for Jim dear's comfort now had four berths instead of two. The stationary bowl had been removed. The view from the large window was entirely obstructed by crates and crates of nasty dogs of the most ordinary breeding, "you know."

"Oh!" she cried, "this is terrible — abominable — really disgraceful, you know. I must see the captain at once. Jim dear and I have first-class tickets and I shall insist on having the very best accommodations procurable on this ship, you know."

It was growing cold. Those who had remained out on the deck caring for their dogs dropped in one after another till the air became so stifling one could scarcely breathe. Doors had to be left open the entire time regardless of the extreme cold. Yet everybody was good-natured and jolly.

The sea became choppy after a few hours and nearly every one was seasick. We had no trouble serving meals for two days. Then everybody wanted to eat. When their appetites returned then the trouble began. Everybody wanted to eat and to eat at the same time. The appetite which succeeds seasickness and the salt air combined made them all ravenous. No seats were assigned to the passengers ; it was purely a case of first come first served. It grew worse and worse from day to day — that mad rush for food. Finally they began to drop down over the railing into the main dining cabin below. Those who had formed in line and were waiting to get down the steps into the dining saloon found the tables already occupied by those who had, as it were, "just dropped in."

This naturally bred trouble, and one day the steward drew a revolver. In a second a hundred guns were out, and it looked like a real case of "rough house," or rather of "rough ship." But Captain Irving was promptly on the scene, and so diplomatic and tactful did he prove that things quieted down promptly, and his arrangement of the meal hours gave perfect satisfaction thereafter.

The next few days were devoid of incident except that it was stormy. We ran into a gale of wind about three hundred miles north of Victoria and took refuge in Safety Cove, near Point Alexander. The gale raged with such force that it became prudent to seek this refuge at once. The wind whistled through the standing rigging and howled about the hull, causing the ship to pitch violently until we had made a change of course and stood in for Safety Cove.

This is a small body of water which will not shelter more than two vessels at one time. The sheltering of the cove from the wind and waves raging outside gave us the first rest we had enjoyed for days. In shape it is a horse-shoe lagoon, and as we steamed into it the moment we had passed through the narrow inlet which gave ingress to the cove — a marvel to those on board — we ran into water as placid as a summer lake in the East.

The mountains surrounding the cove rose almost perpendicular from the water's edge to a great height. The dark green foliage of the spruce trees, some of them two hundred feet in height, covered the mountain sides and softened the outlines of the forest.

This great forest cast a myriad of shadows' reflections over the diminutive bay until it seemed with the still waters that we were floating upon a sea of foliage.

We had barely anchored in Safety Cove when our supply of water gave out. This was the most trying of our experiences on shipboard. Thirst exaggerates itself at sea as it does in the desert. The women wept, men cursed and prayed in many different languages. A few went gunning for the captain. Our good captain assured us that at daylight we would try to cross Queen Charlotte's Sound and take a full supply of water at the Indian village called Bella Bella, a distance of forty miles across the sound. All the wet goods on board were turned over that night by the captain to the passengers and crew. Surrounded by ice and snow we suffered the tortures of Tantalus. Soda water, beer and wine were exhausted, until at last in sheer desperation men drank catsup and Worcestershire sauce from the bottle.