Alaska Part 57

Rivers and their valleys are more famed in the northern interior than towns. Teslin, Tahkeena, Teslintoo, Big and Little Salmon, Pelly, Stewart, White, Forty-Mile, Indian, Sixty-Mile, Macmillan, Klota.s.sin, Porcupine, Chandlar, Koyukuk, Unalaklik, Tanana, Mynook,--these be names to conjure with in the North; while those south of the Yukon and tributary to other waters have equal fame.

As for the Klondike, it is the only stream of its size, being but the merest creek and averaging a hundred feet in width, which has given its name to one whole country and to a portion of another country. During the past decade it has not been unusual to hear the name Klondike Country applied to all Alaska and that part of Canada adjacent to the Klondike district. The tiny, gold-bearing creeks, from ten to twenty feet wide, tributary to the Klondike, are known by name and fame in all parts of the world to-day. They are Bonanza, Hunker, Too-Much-Gold, Eldorado, Rock, North Fork, All-Gold, Gold-Bottom, and others of less importance. The Bonanza flows into the Klondike at Dawson, and it is but a half-hour's walk to the dredge at work in this stream.

In 1833 Baron Wrangell directed Michael Tebenkoff to establish Fort St.

Michael's on the small island in Norton Sound to which the name of the fort was given. Three years later it was attacked by natives, but was successfully defended by Kurupanoff, who was in charge.

In 1836 a Russian named Glasunoff entered the delta of the Yukon, ascending the river as far as the mouth of the Anvik River. In 1838 Malakoff extended the exploration as far as Nulato, where he established a Russian post and placed Notarmi in command.

When the garrison returned to St. Michael's on account of the failure of provisions, the following winter, natives destroyed the fort and all buildings which had been erected. It was rebuilt and again destroyed in 1839. In 1841 it once more arose under Derabin, who remained in command.

The following year Lieutenant Zagoskin reached Nulato, ascending to Nowikakat in 1843.

The Russians were therefore established on the lower Yukon several years before the English established themselves upon the upper river.

In 1840 Mr. Robert Campbell was sent by Sir George Simpson to explore the Upper Liard River. Mr. Campbell ascended the river to its head waters, crossed the mountains, and descended the Pelly River to the Lewes, where, eight years later, he established Fort Selkirk.

This famous trading post was short-lived. In 1851 it was attacked by a band of savage Chilkahts and was surrendered, without resistance, by Mr.

Campbell, who had but two men with him at the time. They were not molested by the Indians, who plundered and burned the warehouses and forts.

Only the chimneys of the fort were found by Lieutenant Schwatka in 1883.

As late as 1890 this point was considered the head of navigation on the Yukon.

In 1847 Fort Yukon was established by Mr. A. H. McMurray, of the Hudson Bay Company. Following McMurray and Campbell, came Joseph Harper, Jack McQuesten, and A. H. Mayo, who established a trading post on the Yukon at Fort Reliance, six miles below the mouth of the Klondike.

In 1860 Robert Kennicott reached Fort Yukon, and in the following spring descended to a point that was for several years known as "the Small Houses"--the most attractive name in the Yukon country. In 1865 an expedition was organized in San Francis...o...b.. the Western Union Telegraph Company for the purpose of building a telegraph line from San Francisco to Behring Strait--which was to be crossed by cable to meet the Russian government line at the mouth of the Amoor River. One party, headed by Robert Kennicott, was sent by ocean to the mouth of the Yukon; and another, in charge of Michael Byrnes, up the inside route to the Stikine River. Going from that river to the head waters of the Taku, they followed the chain of lakes and the Hootalinqua River to the Lewes, which they reached on the Tahco Arm of Lake Tagish. At that time it became known that the Atlantic cable had proven to be a success, and the daring and hazardous northern project was abandoned.

As late as the date of this expedition it was not determined positively whether the Kwihkpak was one of the mouths of the Yukon, or a separate river. Upon the recall of the telegraph expedition, the only portion of the great river that had not been explored was the short distance between Lake Tagish and Lake Lebarge.

There have been several claimants for the honor of having been the first white man to cross the divide between Lynn Ca.n.a.l and the head waters of the Yukon. The first was a mythological, nameless Scotchman employed by the Hudson Bay Company, who is supposed to have reached Fort Selkirk in 1864, and to have proceeded alone over the old "grease-trail" of the Chilkahts to Lynn Ca.n.a.l. He fell into the hands of the Indians and was held until ransomed by the captain of the _Labouchere_. Because he had long, flowing locks of red hair, he was supposed to be a kind of white shaman, and his life was spared by the savages. This story is doubted by many authorities.

The honor was claimed, also, by George Holt, who is known to have crossed one of the pa.s.ses in 1872, and twice in later years. James Wynn, of Juneau, went over in 1879 and returned in 1880.

About this time the Indians seemed to realize that packing over the trail might become more profitable than acting as middlemen between the coast Indians and those of the interior. In 1881 and 1882 small parties of miners, and even one or two travelling alone, crossed unmolested. In 1883 Lieutenant Schwatka had his outfit packed over the Dyea--Taiya, or Dayay, it was then called--Trail; and then, dismissing his packers, built rafts and made his perilous way down the unknown river--portaging, "shooting" the Grand Canyon, White Horse, and Rink Rapids, sticking on sand-bars, almost dying of mosquitoes, and, saddest of all for us who come after him, naming every object that met his eyes with the deplorable taste of Vancouver.

Of a river, called Kut-lah-cook-ah by the Chilkahts, he complacently remarks:--

"I shortened its name and called it after Professor Nourse, of the United States Naval Observatory."

Nourse, Saussure, Perrier, Payer, Bennett, Wheaton, Prejevalsky, Richards, Watson, Nares, Bove, Marsh, McClintock, Miles, Richthofen, Hanc.o.c.k, d'Abbadie, Daly, Nordenskiold, Yon Wilczek; these be the choice namings that he bestowed upon the beautiful objects along the Yukon. It is, perhaps, a cause for thankfulness that he did not rename the Yukon _Schwatka_ or _Ridderbjelka_! However, many of his namings have died a natural death.

The name Yukon is said to have first been applied to the river in 1846 by Mr. J. Bell, of the Hudson Bay Company, who went over from the MacKenzie and descended the Porcupine to the great river which the Indians called Yukon. He retained the name, although for some time it was spelled Youkon. For this, may he ever be of blessed memory. I should like to contribute to a monument to perpetuate his name and fame.

To-day Fort Selkirk is of some importance as a trading post and because of the successful farming of the vicinity, and all pa.s.sing steamers call there. Joseph Harper was located there at the time of George Carmack's brilliant discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, in August, 1896. Harper and Joseph Ladue, who was settled as a trader at Sixty-Mile, immediately transferred their stocks to the junction of the Yukon, Klondike, and Bonanza, and established the town which they named Dawson, in honor of Dr. George M. Dawson.

In 1887 Mr. William Ogilvie headed a Canadian exploring party into the Yukon. His boats were towed up to Taiya Inlet by the United States naval vessel _Pinta_; and while waiting there for supplies, he, having asked for, and received, authority from Commander Newell, made surveys at the heads of the inlets. It was only through the intercession of the commander, furthermore, that Mr. Ogilvie was permitted by the Chilkahts to proceed over the pa.s.s. "I am strongly of the opinion," Mr. Ogilvie says in his report, "that these Indians would have been much more difficult to deal with if they had not known that Commander Newell remained in the inlet to see that I got through in safety."

Miners had been going over the trail for several years, but the Chilkahts were enraged at the British because employees of the Hudson Bay Company had killed some of their tribe.

In the meantime Dr. George M. Dawson, heading another Dominion party, was working along the Stikine River.

Dr. Dawson and Mr. Ogilvie--afterward governor of Yukon territory--made extensive surveys and explorations throughout the Yukon district; their reports upon the country are voluminous, thorough, and of much interest.

They were both men of superior attainments, and their influence upon the country and upon the people who rushed into the new mining district was great. To-day the name of ex-Governor Ogilvie is heard more frequently in the Klondike than that of any other person, even though his residence is elsewhere. He served as governor during the reckless and picturesque days when to be a governor meant to be a man in the highest sense of the word.

CHAPTER XLIII

Dawson! It was a name to stir men's blood ten years ago,--a wild, picturesque, lawless mining-camp, whose like had never been known and never will be known again.

All kinds and conditions of men and women were represented. Miners, prospectors, millionnaires, adventurers, wanderers, desperadoes; brave-hearted, earnest women, dissolute dance-hall girls, and, more dangerous still, the quiet, seductive adventuress--they were all there, side by side, tent by tent, cabin by cabin.

Almost daily new discoveries were made and stampedes occurred. Every little creek flowing into the Klondike was found rich in gold. The very names that these creeks received--All-Gold, Too-Much-Gold, Gold-Bottom--turned men's blood to fire. The whole country seemed to have gone mad of excitement and the l.u.s.t for gold. The white mountain pa.s.ses grew black with struggling human beings--fighting, falling, rising, fighting on. It was like the blind stampeding of crazed animals upon a plain; nothing could check them save exhaustion or death. When the fever burned out in one and left him low, another sprang to take his place. Dawson, like Skaguay, grew from dozens to hundreds in a day; from hundreds to thousands; tents gave place to cabins; cabins, to substantial frame buildings.

Ah, to have been there in the old days! Who would not have suffered the early hardships, paid the price, and paid it cheerfully, for the sake of seeing the life and being a part of it before it was too late?

Now it is forever too late. The glory of what it once was is all that remains. To-day Dawson is so quiet, so dull, so respectable, that one unconsciously yawns in its face.

But men's eyes still kindle when their memories of old days are stirred.

"They were great times," they say, looking at one another.

"They could only come once. They were times of blood and gold; of dance and song; of glitter and show--and starvation and death. We worked all day and danced or gambled all night. Our only pa.s.sions were for women and gold. If we couldn't get the women we wanted, the men that did get 'em fought their way to 'em, inch by inch; if we couldn't dig the gold out of the earth, we got it in some other way.

"All the best buildings were occupied by saloons. Every saloon had a dance-hall in the back of it; not that the girls had to keep to their quarters, either--they had the run of the whole shebang. Every saloon had its gambling rooms, too--unless the tables and games were right out in the open. I tell you, it was tough. You can't begin to understand the situation unless you'd been here. There wasn't a hotel nor a corner where a man could go in and get warm except in a saloon--and with the thermometer fooling in the neighborhood of fifty below, he didn't stand around outside with his hands in his pockets, not to any great extent.

Most likely his pockets was naturally froze shut, anyhow, and the only way he could get 'em thawed out was to go into a saloon. _That_ thawed 'em quick enough. It not only thawed 'em out; it most gen'rally thawed 'em wide open.

"I tell you, the worst element in a mining-camp is women. They follow a man and console him when he's down on his luck; they follow him through thick and thin; and they get such a hold on him that, when he wants to get back to decent ways and decent women, he just naturally can't do it.

Young fellows don't realize it. They don't see it being done; they see it after it is done and can't be undone.

"As soon as the mounted police took holt of Dawson, with Inspector Constantine at the head, there was a sure change. Still, even the mounted-police doctrine does have some drawbacks. I noticed they couldn't make the post-office clerks turn out letters unless you slipped two-three dollars into their outstretched hands. I noticed that."

To-day Dawson is a pretty, clean-streeted town built of log and frame buildings. In the hottest summer the earth never thaws deeper than eighteen inches, and no foundation can be obtained for brick buildings.

For the same reason plastering is not advisable, the uneven freezing and thawing proving ruinous to both brick and plaster.

The first objects to greet the visitor's eyes are the large buildings of the great commercial and transportation companies of the North, along the bank of the river. Pa.s.sing through these one finds one's self upon a busy, but unconventional, thoroughfare. Dawson is built solidly to the hill, extending about a mile along the water-front; and the most attractive part of the town is the village of picturesque log cabins climbing over the lower slopes of the hill. They are not large, but they are all built with the roof extending over a wide front porch. The entire roof of each cabin is covered several inches deep with earth, and at the time of our visit--the first week of August--these roofs were grown with brilliant green gra.s.ses and flowers to a height of from twelve to eighteen inches. They were literally covered with the bloom of a dozen or more varieties of wild flowers. Every window had its flaming window-box; every garden, its gay beds; and there were even boxes set on square fence posts and running the entire length of fences themselves, from which vines drooped and trailed and flowers blew.

Standing at the river and looking toward the hill, the whole town seemed a ma.s.s of bloom sloping up to the green, which, in turn, sloped on up to the blue.

We had heard so much about the exorbitant prices of the Klondike, that we were simply speechless when a very jolly, sandy-haired Scotch gentleman offered to take our two steamer trunks, three heavy suit cases, and two shawl-straps to the hotel which we had blindly chosen, for the sum of two dollars. We had expected to pay five; and when he first asked two and a half, we stood as still as though turned to stone--and all for joy. He, however, evidently mistaking our silence, doubtless felt the p.r.i.c.k of the stern conscience of his ancestors, for he hastily added:--

"Well, seeing you're ladies, we'll call it an even two."

We agreed to the price coldly, pretending to consider it an outrage.

"My name is Angus McDonald," said he, with reproach. "When a McDonald says that his price is the lowest in the town, his word may be taken. If you come to Dawson twenty years from now, Angus will be standing here waiting to handle your baggage at the lowest price."

We gave him our keys and he attended to all the customs details for us.

We had left Seattle on the evening of the 24th of July; had stopped for several hours at Ketchikan, Wrangell, Metlakahtla, Juneau, Treadwell, and Taku Glacier; a day and a night at Skaguay; two nights and a day at White Horse; had made short pauses at Selkirk and Lower Lebarge--to say nothing of hours spent in "wooding-up," which is a picturesque and sure feature of Yukon voyages; and at noon on the fifth day of August we were settled at the "Kenwood"--the dearest hotel at which it has ever been my good fortune to tarry even for a day. I do not mean the most stylish, nor the most elegant, nor even the most comfortable; nor do I mean the dearest in price; but the dearest to my heart. It is kept in a neat, cheerful, and homelike style by Miss Kinney--who had almost as many malamute puppies, by the way, as she had guests.