Alaska Part 58

When we gave Mr. Angus McDonald our keys, it was not quite decided as to our hotel; but when we learned that we were sufficiently respectable in appearance to be accepted by Miss Kinney, we telephoned for our trunks.

Then we forgot all about paying for them, and set out for a walk. When we returned, luncheon was being served; our trunks were in our rooms, but--Mr. Angus McDonald had gone off with our keys! We did not know then what we know now; that Mr. Angus McDonald and his retained keys are a Dawson joke. It seems that whenever one does not pay in advance for the delivery of his trunks, Mr. McDonald drives away with the keys in his pocket, whistling the merriest of Scotch tunes.

The joke has its embarra.s.sments, particularly when one has descended to the Grand Canyon of the Yukon in a sand-slide.

The traveller in Alaska who desires to retain his own self-respect and that of his fellow-man will never criticise a price nor ask to have it reduced. He is expected to contribute liberally to every church he enters, every Indian band he hears play, every charitable inst.i.tution that may present its merits for his consideration, every purse that may be made up on steamers, whatsoever its object may be. Fees are from fifty cents to five dollars. A waiter on a Yukon steamer threw a quarter back at a man who had innocently slipped it into his hand. Later, I saw him in the centre of a group of angry waiters and cabin-boys to whom he was relating his grievance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle

FAMILY OF KING'S ISLAND ESKIMOS LIVING UNDER SKIN BOAT, NOME]

Since one is constantly changing steamers, and has a waiter, a cabin-boy, a night-boy, and frequently a stewardess to fee on each steamer, this must be counted as one of the regular expenses of the trip.

Other expenses we found to be greatly exaggerated on the "outside."

Aside from our amusing experience with soap-bubble soda at White Horse and a bill for eight dollars and fifty cents for the poor pressing of three plain dress skirts and one jacket at Nome, we found nothing to criticise in northern prices.

The best rooms at the "Kenwood" were only two dollars a day, and each meal was one dollar--whether one ate little or whether one ate much. It was always the latter with us; for I have never been so hungry except at Bennett. I am convinced that the climate of the Yukon will cure every disease and every ill. We walked miles each day, drank much cold, pure water, and ate much wholesome, well-cooked, delicious food--including blueberries three times a day; and our sleep was sound, sweet, and refreshing.

Dawson has about ten thousand inhabitants now; it once had twice as many, and it will have again. Mining in the Klondike is in the transition stage. It is pa.s.sing from the individual owners to large companies and corporations which have ample capital to install expensive machinery and develop rich properties. It is the history of every mining district, and its coming to the Klondike was inevitable. Its first effect, however, is always "to ruin the camp."

"Dawson's a camp no longer," said one who "went in" in 1897, sadly.

"It's all spoiled. The individual miner has let go and the monopolists are coming in to take his place. The good days are things of the past.

Pretty soon they'll be giving you change when you throw down two-bits for a lead pencil!" he concluded, with a lofty scorn--as much as to say: "It will then be time to die."

Dawson is connected with the "outside" by telegraph. It has two daily newspapers,--which are metropolitan in style,--an electric-light plant, and a telephone system. Its streets are graded and sidewalked, and it is piped for water; but its lack of systematized sewerage--or what might be more appropriately called its systematized lack of sewerage--is an abomination. It is, however, not alone in its unsanitation in this respect, for Nome follows its example.

Both homes and public buildings are of exceeding plainness of style, owing to the excessive cost of building in a region bounded by the Arctic Circle. The interiors of both, however, are attractive and luxurious in finish and furnishings; and owing to the sway of the mounted police, the town has an air of cleanliness and orderliness that is admirable.

A creditable building holds the post-office and customs office, and there is a public school building which cost fifty thousand dollars. The handsome administration building, standing in a green, park-like place, cost as much. There is a large court-house, the barracks of the mounted police, and other public buildings. Only the ruins remain of the executive mansion on the bank of the river, which was destroyed by fire two years ago and has not been rebuilt. It was the pride of Dawson. It was a large residence of pleasing architecture, lighted by electricity and finished throughout in British Columbia fir in natural tones. It contained the governor's private office, palatial reception rooms and parlors, a library, a n.o.ble hall and stairway, a state dining room, a billiard room and smoking room, and s.p.a.cious chambers.

The governor's office in the administration building is large and handsomely furnished. The commissioner of Yukon Territory is called by courtesy governor, and the present commissioner, Governor Henderson, is a gentleman of distinguished presence and courtly manners. He had just returned from an automobile tour of inspection among "the creeks."

Governors, elegant executive mansions and offices, and automobile tours--where eleven years ago was nothing but the creeks and the virgin gold which brought all that is there to-day! We did not rebel at anything but the automobile; somehow, it jarred like an insult. An automobile up among the storied creeks!

There is a railroad, also, on which daily trains are run for a distance of twenty miles through the mining district. Six and eight horse stages will make the trip in one day for a party of six for fifty dollars.

Thirty dollars is first asked. When that price is found to be satisfactory, it is immediately discovered that the small stage is engaged or out of repair; a larger one must be used, for which the price is forty dollars. When this price is agreed upon, some infirmity is discovered in the second stage; a third must be subst.i.tuted, for whose all-day use the price is fifty dollars. If one cares to see the "cricks," with no a.s.surance that he will stumble upon a clean-up, at this price, he meekly takes his seat and is jolted up into the hills, paying a few dollars extra for his meals.

He may, however, take an hour's walk up Bonanza Creek and see the great dredges at work and the steam-pipes thawing the frozen gravel; and if he should voyage on down to Nome, he may take an hour's run by railway out on the tundra and see thirty thousand dollars sluiced out any day.

Almost anything is preferable to the "graft" that is worked by the stage companies upon the helpless cheechacos at Dawson.

The British Yukon is an organized territory, having a commissioner, three judges, and an executive legislature, of whose ten members five are elected and five appointed. The governor is also appointed. He presides over the sessions of the legislature, giving the appointed members a majority of one.

The Yukon has a delegate in parliament, a gold commissioner, a land agent, and a superintendent of roads. Three-fourths of the population of the territory are Americans, yet the town has a distinctly English, or Canadian, atmosphere. In incorporated towns there is a tax levy on property for munic.i.p.al purposes.

Order is preserved by the well-known organization of Northwest Mounted Police, whose members might be recognized anywhere, even when not in uniform, by their stern eyes, set lips, and peculiar carriage.

The first station of mounted police in the Yukon was established at Forty-Mile, or Fort Cudahy, in 1895, when the discovery of gold was creating a mild excitement. Although so many boasts have been made by the British of their early settlement of the Yukon, not only was Mr.

Ogilvie compelled to cross in 1887 under protection of the American Commander Newell, but in 1895 the members of the first force of mounted police to come into the country were forced to ascend the Yukon, by special permission of the United States government, so difficult were all routes through Yukon Territory.

There are at the present time about sixty police stations in the territory, as well as garrisons at Dawson and White Horse. The smaller stations have only three men. They are scattered throughout the mining country, wherever a handful of men are gathered together. Between Dawson and White Horse, where travel is heavy, a weekly patrol is maintained, and a careful register is kept of all boats and pa.s.sengers going up or down the river. On the winter trail pa.s.sengers are registered at each road house, with date of arrival and departure, making it easy to locate any traveller in the territory at any time. In the larger towns the mounted police serve as police officers; they also a.s.sist the customs officers and fill the offices of police magistrate and coroner. A police launch to patrol the river in summer has been recommended.

Dawson is laid out in rectangular shape, with streets about seventy feet wide and appearing wider because the buildings are for the most part low. In 1897 town lots sold for five thousand dollars, when there was nothing but tents on the flat at the mouth of the Klondike. The half-dollar was the smallest piece of money in circulation, as the quarter is to-day. Saw-mills were in operation, and dressed lumber sold for two hundred and fifty dollars a thousand feet. Fifteen dollars a day, however, was the ordinary wage of men working in the mines; so that such prices as fifty cents for an orange, two dollars a dozen for eggs, and twenty-five cents a pound for potatoes did not seem exorbitant.

There are rival claimants for the honor of the first discovery of gold on the Klondike, but George Carmack is generally credited with being the fortunate man. In August, 1896, he and the Indians "Skook.u.m Jim" and "Tagish Charlie,"--Mr. Carmack's brothers-in-law--were fishing one day at the mouth of the Klondike River. (This river was formerly called Thron-Dieuck, or Troan-Dike.) Not being successful, they concluded to go a little way up the river to prospect. On the sixteenth day of the month they detected signs of gold on what has since been named Bonanza Creek; and from the first pan they washed out twelve dollars. They staked a "discovery" claim, and one above and below it, as is the right of discoverers.

At that time the gold flurry was in the vicinity of Forty-Mile. The first building ever done on the site of Dawson was that of a raft, upon which they proceeded to Forty-Mile to file their claims. On the same day began the great stampede to the little river which was soon to become world-famous.

The days of the bucket and windla.s.s have pa.s.sed for the Klondike.

Dredging and hydraulicking have taken their place, and the trains and steamers are loaded with powerful machinery to be operated by vast corporations. It is certain that there are extensive quartz deposits in the vicinity, and when they are located the good and stirring days of the nineties will be repeated. Ground that was panned and sluiced by the individual miner is now being again profitably worked by modern methods.

Scarcity of water has been the chief obstacle to a rapid development of the mines among the creeks; but experiments are constantly being made in the way of carrying water from other sources.

It was perplexing to hear people talking about "Number One Above on Bonanza," "Number Nine Below on Hunker," "Number Twenty-six Above on Eldorado," and others, until it was explained that claims are numbered above and below the one originally discovered on a creek. Eldorado is one of the smallest of creeks; yet, notwithstanding its limited water supply, it has been one of the richest producers. One reach, of about four miles in length, has yielded already more than thirty millions of dollars in coa.r.s.e gold.

The gold of the Klondike is beautiful. It is not a fine dust. It runs from grains like mustard seed up to large nuggets.

When one goes up among the creeks, sees and hears what has actually been done, one can but wonder that any young and strong man can stay away from this marvellous country. Gold is still there, undiscovered; it is seldom the old prospector, the experienced miner, the "sour-dough," that finds it; it is usually the ignorant, lucky "cheechaco." It is like the game of poker, to which sits down one who never saw the game played and holds a royal flush, or four aces, every other hand. How young men can clerk in stores, study pharmacy, or learn politics in provincial towns, while this glorious country waits to be found, is incomprehensible to one with the red blood of adventure in his veins and the quick pulse of chance. Better to dare, to risk all and lose all, if it must be, than never to live at all; than always to be a drone in a narrow, commonplace groove; than never to know the surge of this lonely river of mystery and never to feel the air of these vast s.p.a.ces upon one's brow.

No one can even tread the deck of a Yukon steamer and be quite so small and narrow again as he was before. The loneliness, the mystery, the majesty of it, reveals his own soul to his shrinking eyes, and he grows--in a day, in an hour, in the flash of a thought--out of his old self. If only to be borne through this great country on this wide water-way to the sea can work this change in a man's heart, what miracle might not be wrought by a few years of life in its solitude?

The principle of "panning" out gold is simple, and any woman could perform the work successfully without instruction, success depending upon the delicacy of manipulation. From fifty cents to two hundred dollars a pan are obtained by this old-fashioned but fascinating method.

Think of wandering through this splendid, gold-set country in the matchless summers when there is not an hour of darkness; with the health and the appet.i.te to enjoy plain food and the spirit to welcome adventure; to pause on the banks of unknown creeks and try one's luck, not knowing what a pan may bring forth; to lie down one night a penniless wanderer, so far as gold is concerned, and, perhaps, to sleep the next night on banks that wash out a hundred dollars to the pan--could one choose a more fascinating life than this?

Rockers are wooden boxes which are so constructed that they gently shake down the gold and dispose of the gravel through an opening in the bottom. Sluicing is more interesting than any other method of extracting gold, but this will be described as we saw the process separate the glittering gold from the dull gravel at Nome.

CHAPTER XLIV

The two great commercial companies of the North to-day are the Northern Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company. The Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company were the first to be established on the Yukon, with headquarters at St. Michael, near the mouth of the river. In 1898 the Alaska Exploration Company established its station across the bay from St. Michael on the mainland; and during that year a number of other companies were located there, only two of which, however, proved to be of any permanency--the Empire Transportation Company and the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company.

In 1901 the Alaska Commercial, Empire Transportation, and Alaska Exploration companies formed a combination which operated under the names of the Northern Commercial Company and the Northern Navigation Company, the former being a trading and the latter a steamship company.

Owing to certain conditions, the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company was unable to join the combination; and its properties, consisting princ.i.p.ally of three steamers, together with four barges, were sold to the newly formed company. During the first year of the consolidation the North American Transportation and Trading Company worked in harmony with the Northern Navigation Company, Captain I. N. Hibberd, of San Francisco, having charge of the entire lower river fleet, with the exception of one or two small tramp boats.

By that time very fine combination pa.s.senger and freight boats were in operation, having been built at Unalaska and towed to St. Michael. In its trips up and down the river, each steamer towed one or two barges, the combined cargo of the steamer and tow being about eight hundred tons. It was impossible for a boat to make more than two round trips during the summer season, the average time required being fourteen days on the "up" trip and eight on the "down" for the better boats, and twenty and ten days respectively for inferior ones, without barges, which always added at least ten days to a trip.

After a year the North American Transportation and Trading Company withdrew from the combination and has since operated its own steamers.

Of all these companies the Alaska Commercial is the oldest, having been founded in 1868; it was the pioneer of American trading companies in Alaska, and was for twenty years the lessee of the Pribyloff seal rookeries. It had a small pa.s.senger and freight boat on the Yukon in 1869. The other companies owed their existence to the Klondike gold discoveries.

The two companies now operating on the Yukon have immense stores and warehouses at Dawson and St. Michael, and smaller ones at almost every post on the Yukon; while the N. C. Company, as it is commonly known, has establishments up many of the tributary rivers.

As picturesque as the Hudson Bay Company, and far more just and humane in their treatment of the Indians, the American companies have reason to be proud of their record in the far North. In 1886, when a large number of miners started for the Stewart River mines, the agent of the A. C.

Company at St. Michael received advice from headquarters in San Francisco that an extra amount of provisions had been sent to him, to meet all possible demands that might be made upon him during the winter. He was further advised that the shipment was not made for the purpose of realizing profits beyond the regular schedule of prices already established, but for humane purposes entirely--to avoid any suffering that might occur, owing to the large increase in population.

He was, therefore, directed to store the extra supplies as a reserve to meet the probable need, to dispose of the same to actual customers only and in such quant.i.ties as would enable him to relieve the necessities of each and every person that might apply. Excessive prices were prohibited, and instructions to supply all persons who might be in absolute poverty, free of charge, were plain and unmistakable.