Revolution, and Other Essays Part 8

For a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on. The very severity of the struggle with Nature seemed to make the gold hunters kindly toward one another. The latch-string was always out, and the open hand was the order of the day. Distrust was unknown, and it was no hyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off his back for a comrade.

Most significant of all, perhaps, in this connection, was the custom of the old days, that when August the first came around, the prospectors who had failed to locate "pay dirt" were permitted to go upon the ground of their more fortunate comrades and take out enough for the next year's grub-stake.

In 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the Stewart River, and in 1886 Ca.s.siar Bar was struck just below the mouth of the Hootalinqua. It was at this time that the first moderate strike was made on Forty Mile Creek, so called because it was judged to be that distance below Fort Reliance of Jack McQuestion fame. A prospector named Williams started for the outside with dogs and Indians to carry the news, but suffered such hardship on the summit of Chilcoot that he was carried dying into the store of Captain John Healy at Dyea. But he had brought the news through--_coa.r.s.e gold_! Within three months more than two hundred miners had pa.s.sed in over Chilcoot, stampeding for Forty Mile. Find followed find--Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier, Birch, Franklin, and the Koyokuk. But they were all moderate discoveries, and the miners still dreamed and searched for the fabled stream, "Too Much Gold," where gold was so plentiful that gravel had to be shovelled into the sluice-boxes in order to wash it.

And all the time the Northland was preparing to play its own huge joke.

It was a great joke, albeit an exceeding bitter one, and it has led the old-timers to believe that the land is left in darkness the better part of the year because G.o.d goes away and leaves it to itself. After all the risk and toil and faithful endeavour, it was destined that few of the heroes should be in at the finish when Too Much Gold turned its yellow-treasure to the stars.

First, there was Robert Henderson--and this is true history. Henderson had faith in the Indian River district. For three years, by himself, depending mainly on his rifle, living on straight meat a large portion of the time, he prospected many of the Indian River tributaries, just missed finding the rich creeks, Sulphur and Dominion, and managed to make grub (poor grub) out of Quartz Creek and Australia Creek. Then he crossed the divide between Indian River and the Klondike, and on one of the "feeders"

of the latter found eight cents to the pan. This was considered excellent in those simple days. Naming the creek "Gold Bottom," he recrossed the divide and got three men, Munson, Dalton, and Swanson, to return with him. The four took out $750. And be it emphasized, and emphasized again, _that this was the first Klondike gold ever shovelled in and washed out_. And be it also emphasized, _that Robert Henderson was the discoverer of Klondike_, _all lies and hearsay tales to the contrary_.

Running out of grub, Henderson again recrossed the divide, and went down the Indian River and up the Yukon to Sixty Mile. Here Joe Ladue ran the trading post, and here Joe Ladue had originally grub-staked Henderson.

Henderson told his tale, and a dozen men (all it contained) deserted the Post for the scene of his find. Also, Henderson persuaded a party of prospectors bound for Stewart River, to forgo their trip and go down and locate with him. He loaded his boat with supplies, drifted down the Yukon to the mouth of the Klondike, and towed and poled up the Klondike to Gold Bottom. But at the mouth of the Klondike he met George Carmack, and thereby hangs the tale.

Carmack was a squawman. He was familiarly known as "Siwash" George--a derogatory term which had arisen out of his affinity for the Indians. At the time Henderson encountered him he was catching salmon with his Indian wife and relatives on the site of what was to become Dawson, the Golden City of the Snows. Henderson, bubbling over with good-will, open-handed, told Carmack of his discovery. But Carmack was satisfied where he was.

He was possessed by no overweening desire for the strenuous life. Salmon were good enough for him. But Henderson urged him to come on and locate, until, when he yielded, he wanted to take the whole tribe along.

Henderson refused to stand for this, said that he must give the preference over Siwashes to his old Sixty Mile friends, and, it is rumoured, said some things about Siwashes that were not nice.

The next morning Henderson went on alone up the Klondike to Gold Bottom.

Carmack, by this time aroused, took a short cut afoot for the same place.

Accompanied by his two Indian brothers-in-law, Skook.u.m Jim and Tagish Charley, he went up Rabbit Creek (now Bonanza), crossed into Gold Bottom, and staked near Henderson's discovery. On the way up he had panned a few shovels on Rabbit Creek, and he showed Henderson "colours" he had obtained. Henderson made him promise, if he found anything on the way back, that he would send up one of the Indians with the news. Henderson also agreed to pay for his service, for he seemed to feel that they were on the verge of something big, and he wanted to make sure.

Carmack returned down Rabbit Creek. While he was taking a sleep on the bank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known as Eldorado, Skook.u.m Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got from ten cents to a dollar to the pan. Carmack and his brother-in-law staked and hit "the high places" for Forty Mile, where they filed on the claims before Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek Bonanza. And Henderson was forgotten. No word of it reached him. Carmack broke his promise.

Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to end and there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over the divide and down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still at work. When they told him they were from Bonanza, he was nonplussed. He had never heard of such a place. But when they described it, he recognized it as Rabbit Creek. Then they told him of its marvellous richness, and, as Tappan Adney relates, when Henderson realized what he had lost through Carmack's treachery, "he threw down his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart that it was some time before he could speak."

Then there were the rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile and Circle City. At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were over to the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new ones. As they said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are always caught out with forks when it rains soup. In the stampede that followed the news of Carmack's strike very few old miners took part. They were not there to take part. But the men who did go on the stampede were mainly the worthless ones, the new-comers, and the camp hangers on. And while Bob Henderson plugged away to the east, and the heroes plugged away to the west, the greenhorns and rounders went up and staked Bonanza.

But the Northland was not yet done with its joke. When fall came on and the heroes returned to Forty Mile and to Circle City, they listened calmly to the up-river tales of Siwash discoveries and loafers'

prospects, and shook their heads. They judged by the calibre of the men interested, and branded it a bunco game. But glowing reports continued to trickle down the Yukon, and a few of the old-timers went up to see.

They looked over the ground--the unlikeliest place for gold in all their experience--and they went down the river again, "leaving it to the Swedes."

Again the Northland turned the tables. The Alaskan gold hunter is proverbial, not so much for his unveracity, as for his inability to tell the precise truth. In a country of exaggerations, he likewise is p.r.o.ne to hyperbolic description of things actual. But when it came to Klondike, he could not stretch the truth as fast as the truth itself stretched. Carmack first got a dollar pan. He lied when he said it was two dollars and a half. And when those who doubted him did get two-and-a-half pans, they said they were getting an ounce, and lo! ere the lie had fairly started on its way, they were getting, not one ounce, but five ounces. This they claimed was six ounces; but when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out twelve ounces. And so it went. They continued valiantly to lie, but the truth continued to outrun them.

But the Northland's hyperborean laugh was not yet ended. When Bonanza was staked from mouth to source, those who had failed to "get in,"

disgruntled and sore, went up the "pups" and feeders. Eldorado was one of these feeders, and many men, after locating on it, turned their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought. One man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of flour. Other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying them out for a song. And then Eldorado "showed up." It was far, far richer than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to every foot of it.

A Swede named Charley Anderson had been at work on Miller Creek the year of the strike, and arrived in Dawson with a few hundred dollars. Two miners, who had staked No. 29 Eldorado, decided that he was the proper man upon whom to "unload." He was too canny to approach sober, so at considerable expense they got him drunk. Even then it was hard work, but they kept him befuddled for several days, and finally, inveigled him into buying No. 29 for $750. When Anderson sobered up, he wept at his folly, and pleaded to have his money back. But the men who had duped him were hard-hearted. They laughed at him, and kicked themselves for not having tapped him for a couple of hundred more. Nothing remained for Anderson but to work the worthless ground. This he did, and out of it he took over three-quarters of a million of dollars.

It was not till Frank Dinsmore, who already had big holdings on Birch Creek, took a hand, that the old-timers developed faith in the new diggings. Dinsmore received a letter from a man on the spot, calling it "the biggest thing in the world," and harnessed his dogs and went up to investigate. And when he sent a letter back, saying that he had never seen "anything like it," Circle City for the first time believed, and at once was precipitated one of the wildest stampedes the country had ever seen or ever will see. Every dog was taken, many went without dogs, and even the women and children and weaklings. .h.i.t the three hundred miles of ice through the long Arctic night for the biggest thing in the world. It is related that but twenty people, mostly cripples and unable to travel, were left in Circle City when the smoke of the last sled disappeared up the Yukon.

Since that time gold has been discovered in all manner of places, under the gra.s.s roots of the hill-side benches, in the bottom of Monte Cristo Island, and in the sands of the sea at Nome. And now the gold hunter who knows his business shuns the "favourable looking" spots, confident in his hard-won knowledge that he will find the most gold in the least likely place. This is sometimes adduced to support the theory that the gold hunters, rather than the explorers, are the men who will ultimately win to the Pole. Who knows? It is in their blood, and they are capable of it.

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.

_February_ 1902.

FOMA GORDYEEFF

"What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_?

And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence!

Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence!"

"Foma Gordyeeff" is a big book--not only is the breadth of Russia in it, but the expanse of life. Yet, though in each land, in this world of marts and exchanges, this age of trade and traffic, pa.s.sionate figures rise up and demand of life what its fever is, in "Foma Gordyeeff" it is a Russian who so rises up and demands. For Gorky, the Bitter One, is essentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of life and in his treatment. All the Russian self-a.n.a.lysis and insistent introspection are his. And, like all his brother Russians, ardent, pa.s.sionate protest impregnates his work. There is a purpose to it. He writes because he has something to say which the world should hear. From that clenched fist of his, light and airy romances, pretty and sweet and beguiling, do not flow, but realities--yes, big and brutal and repulsive, but real.

He raises the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a masterly arraignment of commercialism, protests against social conditions, against the grinding of the faces of the poor and weak, and the self-pollution of the rich and strong, in their mad l.u.s.t for place and power. It is to be doubted strongly if the average bourgeois, smug and fat and prosperous, can understand this man Foma Gordyeeff. The rebellion in his blood is something to which their own does not thrill. To them it will be inexplicable that this man, with his health and his millions, could not go on living as his cla.s.s lived, keeping regular hours at desk and stock exchange, driving close contracts, underbidding his compet.i.tors, and exulting in the business disasters of his fellows. It would appear so easy, and, after such a life, well appointed and eminently respectable, he could die. "Ah," Foma will interrupt rudely--he is given to rude interruptions--"if to die and disappear is the end of these money-grubbing years, why money-grub?" And the bourgeois whom he rudely interrupted will not understand. Nor did Mayakin understand as he laboured holily with his wayward G.o.dson.

"Why do you brag?" Foma, bursts out upon him. "What have you to brag about? Your son--where is he? Your daughter--what is she? Ekh, you manager of life! Come, now, you're clever, you know everything--tell me, why do you live? Why do you acc.u.mulate money? Aren't you going to die?

Well, what then?" And Mayakin finds himself speechless and without answer, but unshaken and unconvinced.

Receiving by heredity the fierce, bull-like nature of his father plus the pa.s.sive indomitableness and groping spirit of his mother, Foma, proud and rebellious, is repelled by the selfish, money-seeking environment into which he is born. Ignat, his father, and Mayakin, the G.o.dfather, and all the horde of successful merchants singing the paean of the strong and the praises of merciless, remorseless _laissez faire_, cannot entice him.

Why? he demands. This is a nightmare, this life! It is without significance! What does it all mean? What is there underneath? What is the meaning of that which is underneath?

"You do well to pity people," Ignat tells Foma, the boy, "only you must use judgment with your pity. First consider the man, find out what he is like, what use can be made of him; and if you see that he is a strong and capable man, help him if you like. But if a man is weak, not inclined to work--spit upon him and go your way. And you must know that when a man complains about everything, and cries out and groans--he is not worth more than two kopeks, he is not worthy of pity, and will be of no use to you if you do help him."

Such the frank and militant commercialism, bellowed out between gla.s.ses of strong liquor. Now comes Mayakin, speaking softly and without satire:

"Eh, my boy, what is a beggar? A beggar is a man who is forced, by fate, to remind us of Christ; he is Christ's brother; he is the bell of the Lord, and rings in life for the purpose of awakening our conscience, of stirring up the satiety of man's flesh. He stands under the window and sings, 'For Christ's sa-ake!' and by that chant he reminds us of Christ, of His holy command to help our neighbour. But men have so ordered their lives that it is utterly impossible for them to act in accordance with Christ's teaching, and Jesus Christ has become entirely superfluous to us. Not once, but, in all probability, a thousand times, we have given Him over to be crucified, but still we cannot banish Him from our lives so long as His poor brethren sing His name in the streets and remind us of Him. And so now we have hit upon the idea of shutting up the beggars in such special buildings, so that they may not roam about the streets and stir up our consciences."

But Foma will have none of it. He is neither to be enticed nor cajoled.

The cry of his nature is for light. He must have light. And in burning revolt he goes seeking the meaning of life. "His thoughts embraced all those petty people who toiled at hard labour. It was strange--why did they live? What satisfaction was it to them to live on the earth? All they did was to perform their dirty, arduous toil, eat poorly; they were miserably clad, addicted to drunkenness. One was sixty years old, but he still toiled side by side with young men. And they all presented themselves to Foma's imagination as a huge heap of worms, who were swarming over the earth merely to eat."

He becomes the living interrogation of life. He cannot begin living until he knows what living means, and he seeks its meaning vainly. "Why should I try to live life when I do not know what life is?" he objects when Mayakin strives with him to return and manage his business. Why should men fetch and carry for him? be slaves to him and his money?

"Work is not everything to a man," he says; "it is not true that justification lies in work . . . Some people never do any work at all, all their lives long--yet they live better than the toilers. Why is that? And what justification have I? And how will all the people who give their orders justify themselves? What have they lived for? But my idea is that everybody ought, without fail, to know solidly what he is living for. Is it possible that a man is born to toil, acc.u.mulate money, build a house, beget children, and--die? No; life means something in itself. . . . A man has been born, has lived, has died--why? All of us must consider why we are living, by G.o.d, we must! There is no sense in our life--there is no sense at all. Some are rich--they have money enough for a thousand men all to themselves--and they live without occupation; others bow their backs in toil all their life, and they haven't a penny."

But Foma can only be destructive. He is not constructive. The dim groping spirit of his mother and the curse of his environment press too heavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness. He does not drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth. In the vile companions who purvey to his baser appet.i.tes he finds no charm. It is all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads him and he follows the quest. He knows that everything is wrong, but he cannot right it, cannot tell why. He can only attack and demolish. "What justification have you all in the sight of G.o.d? Why do you live?" he demands of the conclave of merchants, of life's successes. "You have not constructed life--you have made a cesspool! You have disseminated filth and stifling exhalations by your deeds. Have you any conscience? Do you remember G.o.d? A five-kopek piece--that is your G.o.d! But you have expelled your conscience!"

Like the cry of Isaiah, "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your misfortunes that shall come upon you," is Foma's: "You blood-suckers!

You live on other people's strength; you work with other people's hands!

For all this you shall be made to pay! You shall perish--you shall be called to account for all! For all--to the last little tear-drop!"

Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Foma questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance courtesan's heart. Linboff, whose books contradict one another, cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers and harlots in dives and boozingkens. And so, wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, the magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of light through the murk and dark--the rational sanction for existence, in short--Foma Gordyeeff goes down to madness and death.

It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life--not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart--sick for life with all its "lyings and its l.u.s.ts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to p.r.i.c.k sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the battle for humanity.

But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object. Surely, when Sasha leaped overboard and swam to Foma, something happened. It was pregnant with possibilities. Yet it was not finished, was not decisive.

She left him to go with the son of a rich vodka-maker. And all that was best in Sofya Medynsky was quickened when she looked upon Foma with the look of the Mother-Woman. She might have been a power for good in his life, she might have shed light into it and lifted him up to safety and honour and understanding. Yet she went away next day, and he never saw her again. No story is told, nothing is finished.

Ah, but surely the story of Foma Gordyeeff is told; his life is finished, as lives are being finished each day around us. Besides, it is the way of life, and the art of Gorky is the art of realism. But it is a less tedious realism than that of Tolstoy or Turgenev. It lives and breathes from page to page with a swing and dash and go that they rarely attain.

Their mantle has fallen on his young shoulders, and he promises to wear it royally.

Even so, but so helpless, hopeless, terrible is this life of Foma Gordyeeff that we would be filled with profound sorrow for Gorky did we not know that he has come up out of the Valley of Shadow. That he hopes, we know, else would he not now be festering in a Russian prison because he is brave enough to live the hope he feels. He knows life, why and how it should be lived. And in conclusion, this one thing is manifest: Foma Gordyeeff is no mere statement of an intellectual problem. For as he lived and interrogated living, so in sweat and blood and travail has Gorky lived.

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.

_November_ 1901.