The Forestry Forum

A first person account of the Klondike Gold Rush by Edwin (Tappan) Adney pub. in 1900. This will be the abridged version.

Chilkoot Trail, State of Alaska and Yukon territory

The valley begins to rise rapidly, and the trail is very bad. A mile above Sheep Camp, on the left hand, a huge glacier lies on the side of the mountain, jutting so far over and downward that every moment one expects a great chunk to drop off and tumble into the river. A mile farther on is 'Stone House', a large square rock, crudely resembling a house; it stands on the river's brink. The valley is filled with great water and ice worn boulders. The trail climbs from one to another of these. The valley seems to end; a precipitous wall of gray rock, reaching into the sky, seems to head off farther progress, seaming its jagged contour against the sky, a great barrier, uncompromising, forbidding, the Chilkoot pass. Packers start to climb a narrow foot-trail that goes up,up,up. The packers and packs have disappeared in the gray of rock and earth. Look more closely. The eye catches movement. The mountain is alive. There is a continuous moving train; they are perceptible only by their movement, just as ants are. The moving train is zigzagging across the towering face of the precipice, up, up, into the sky, even at the very top.

Many are taking in sleds and dogs. Dogs are expensive. None suitable can be had here at any price, while those for the use of the mounted police, brought from eastward, cost nearly as much expressage as a horse would cost to buy. The sleds to one who is accustomed to the Indian toboggan, whether the flat upturned board or the New Brunswick kind with cedar sides and beech shoes, seem heavy, but are built by those who understand the needs of the country. They are 7 feet long, about 16 inches wide, with a height of 6 inches. The bow is slightly upturned, and the top, of four longitudinal pine slats, rests upon four cross-framed of ash, with ash runners shod with two-inch steel shoes.

August 19, 1897
The customs officer aboard the steamship Islander was surrounded by an eager crowd asking Questions.
'What is the penalty for theft at Skagway?'
'The miners give them twenty-four hours to leave; and if he doesn't leave, he is shot.'

From Glacier Bay we ran into a bank of fog, the Islander came to and dropped anchor. At 10:30 a.m. a meeting of the passengers was called to act upon the suggestions of the customs officer and to devise plans for the landing of our stuff. The steamship only undertakes to deliver passengers and freight at Skagway Bay. The work of landing the freight must be done by the passengers; the steamship people refuse to assume any responsibility.

August 20, 1897
Few of us had the inclination to look at the truly grand scenery with which we were surrounded. Snow and glacier capped mountains, rising thousands of feet from green, sparkling water, burying their lofty heads in soft, cottony clouds, are for other eyes than those of miners excited by the preparations for the real commencement of their journey.

I go ashore with two others and such a scene as meets the eye! There are great crowds of men rowing in boats to the beach, then clambering out in rubber boots and packing stuff, and setting it down in little piles out of reach of the tide. Here are little groups of men resting with their outfits. Tents there are of every size and kind, and men cooking over large sheet-iron stoves set up outside. Behind these are more tents and men, and piles of merchandise and hay, bacon smoking, men loading bags and bales of hay upon horses and starting off, leading from one to three animals along a sort of lane - which seems much travelled - in the direction of a grove of small cottonwoods, beyond which lies the trail towards White Pass. There are said to be 2500 people along the road between the bay and the summit.

August 21, 1897
One packer remarked: "There are more inexperienced men to the square foot than in any place I have ever been to, and more double-action revolvers. They ought to have left them home. It would be charity for the mounted police to take them all away, for they will be shooting themselves."

From another: "It is the inexperience of those who are trying to go over the pass. They come from desks and counters; they have never packed, and are not even accustomed to hard labour".

One party, now within 4 miles of the top, took in 10 horses, they lost 4. The roads are shelving, and the horses slip and break their legs, and have to be shot. Today two horses mired, fell, and smothered before owners could get their heads clear.

August 22, 1897
It is raining again tonight. None of the weather signs we are accustomed to in the East holds good here. A man who lived six years back of the Chilkoot Mountains says that this part of Alaska, at this time of the year, it will be clear and cold for four days, and then it will rain four days. It has rained the four days all right, and we are looking for the four sunny ones. This wet weather is discouraging. Every one feels miserable.

August 23, 1897

Day breaks clear. The sky is cloudless and the air is warm. Everyone is happy.

We come to an empty pack-saddle, and know something has happened here, as down the mountain-side the bushes are bruised, as if some heavy body had rolled down. We need no one to tell us that over the cliff a horse has rolled hundreds of feet, and lies out of sight among the bushes. Again an almost unbearable stench announces an earlier victim.

Sparks from a fire blew by wind, which burned out the back of the tent before neighbors extinguished it. The fire, however, burned the cover and part of the leather off my camera, yet without hurting the camera. It destroyed the tripod cover without touching the tripod; it burned the gun case without hurting the rifle; it burned some twenty pages of my diary, but took the back cover, where there was no writing, instead of the front leaves. The actual loss was a few envelopes. Altogether a remarkable escape.

We lay our coats under our heads for pillows, and our guns under the coats, and turn in. Of course we cannot take off anything but our coats and boots. We wake up in the middle of the night with rain in our faces. I put my broad hat over my face, turn over, and go to sleep again.

August 24, 1897

Rain, rain, all the time-no sunshine up in these mountains; tent pitched in a mud hole, bed made on the stumps and bushes, blankets and everything else wet and muddy. They are trying to dry out a hair-seal cap and some socks before a miserable fire. Even the wood is wet, and will only smoke and smoulder.

August 25, 1897

I have made careful inquiry about the loss of horses on the trail. The number at the present time is probably 20 killed, with considerably more badly hurt. Each day now about four horses are killed. The number is bound to increase as the trail grows worst. When the sun and rains of summer shall have melted the snow of the Chilkoots, the White Pass trail will be paved with bones of horses, and the ravens and foxes will have feasted as never until the white man sought a new way across the great mountain. As many horses as have come in alive, just so many will bleach their bones by the pine trees and in the gulches - for none will go out.

Amazing stories. The majority never struck it rich, they either died trying in the harsh environment or gave up and left penniless. A few did succeed by supplying the miners with needed goods and services, apparently Trumps grandfather prospered running a house of ill repute. :D

August 26, 1897

The Dyea River, it's course is through a level valley of sand, gravel and boulders, with groves and patches of cottonwoods and spruce and birch, while along its banks are thickets of alder and willow. The river is filled at this season with salmon, spawning, and with large, fine trout.

Dyea is chiefly an Indian settlement....composed of small, dirty tents and little wooden cabins crowded close together. There are no totem poles nor the large houses of more southern Alaska....it largely is a small settlement where Indians congregate from various quarters, the Chilkata, the Stikeen, and the Chilkoots. The Chilkoot women are hardly any of them good looking, and have a habit of painting their faces a jet black. The face is rubbed with balsam, then with burned punk, and this is rubbed in with grease. They do this, I am told, for the same reason that their white sisters use paint and powder. They leave enough of their faces untouched about the chin, mouth, and eyes to give them a hideous, repulsive expression.

The Indian men's dress is varied and picturesque. Some wear the gayly colored Mackinaw jacket; others a blue denim garment, half shirt, half coat; still others a loose coat of blanket, the sleeves or a patch across the back being made of the striped ends; and, as the blankets used by these Indians are of most brilliantly assorted colors, the color effects are distinctly striking. For head gear they wear common little felt hats or bright wool toques or a colored kerchief. All posses rubber hipboots, but when packing they wear only moccasins outside of blanket socks, and sometimes an oversock to the knee.

August 29, 1897

Still drying out clothes and blankets.

Jim and Burghardt are chafing at the delays.  So they propose to do their own packing, if I replace the old 'skate' with a sound horse - a proposition to which I readily assent by giving him 'Nelly', leaving me now with five sound horses and 1400 pounds of stuff, not including the boat lumber.

It is impossible to give one an idea of the slowness with which things are moving. It takes a day to go four or five miles and back; it takes a dollar to do what ten cents would do back home.

August 30, 1897

Twenty tents, including a blacksmith shop, a saloon, and a restaurant. A tent, a board counter a foot wide and six feet long, a tall man in a Mackinaw coat, and a bottle of whiskey is called a saloon here. At the hotel a full meal of beans and bacon, bread and butter, dried peaches and coffee is served for 6 bits, or 75 cents. The Indians bring in salmon and trout, and sell them for 2 bits, or 25 cents, each. The salmon weigh from 10-12 pounds; the trout, 2 or 3 pounds.

The slowness of the pack trains is disheartening; horses laid off from loss of shoes; many are sore, and poor ones are playing out. The men do not know how to pack. The packers on their return tonight claim they were threatened with revolvers up the line by men the time of whose contracts had expired.

September 5, 1897

Wet blankets, saddles not cinched tight, saddles that do not fit, loads unequally balanced, are doing the sad work. We cannot see until the saddles are off what hundreds of horses are suffering.

I really enjoy reading the diary entries of
those who ventured out to places unknown
or new opportunities

Thanks for posting SwampDonkey,

D

Sheep Camp is 13 miles from Dyea. It is a convenient stage before the climb over the pass, which is 4 miles distant. It is also the last place on the Chilkoot trail where wood can be had for warmth and cooking. Two pack trains of ten horses each run the round trip from Dyea in charge of two men riding spare horses. There are several hundred horses in all. The rate of packing to this point is 14 cents a pound. This rate makes oats $16 a sack, and hay not less than $325 a ton.

The population of Sheep Camp may be classified as follows: those who have packed their own stuff thus far and are wavering, discouraged by bad weather; those moving their goods right through with horses or on their backs; professional gamblers, and a great swarm of men packing over the summit.

It has been a continual downpour for the past week. My goods are all here, stacked under canvas and rubber covers; but it seems a hopeless task to keep goods dry. Horses have almost no value, just the price of packing for a day; but it cost $10 for a set of shoes. Everything is the color of mud - men, horses, and goods.

Sheep Camp has a hotel. The proprietor, a Mr. Palmer, is a modest man is evident in that he has not placed his own name in letters equally large in front of the simple but gigantic word "HOTEL".  :D :D :D

When supper is over [at the hotel], the floor is thrown open for guests. All who have blankets unroll them and spread them on the floor, take off their socks and shoes and hand them on the rafters, place a coat under their heads, and turn in. By nine o'clock it is practically impossible to walk over the floor, for the bodies. In the morning the lavatory arrangements are of an equal simple sort. One simply walks outside to a brook that flows under one corner of the building.

September 12, 1897

Sheep camp is filling up with broken-down brutes [horse].  Their owners have used them and abused them to this point, and are too tender-hearted to put them out of their misery.
A wretched, thin, white cayuse came to my tent. It was raining a cold rain. He put his head and as much more as he could inside the tent, trying to get next to the stove.  He stayed there all night and was around all next day, and he had nothing to eat. I am certain he never felt the 44 caliber bullet back of his ear that evening. Thereupon a general killing off began, until carcasses were lying on all sides.

September 14, 1897

We start with our packs up the side of Chilkoot mountain. It seems to tower directly over one's head, whereas the actual average slope is about 45 degrees, consisting of a series of benches alternating with slide rock. The trail winds from bench to bench, and there are a number of trails all reaching the crest at about the same place. In several places the trail is very steep; one must climb on hands and knees from boulder to boulder - much, I fancy, as one would go up the pyramids. There is one very dangerous place; it is necessary to attach a rope to the pack-saddle, 2 or 3 men go ahead, and when the horse starts up they pull hard on the rope; otherwise he goes over backward, as one or two horses have done. Once on to, the trail crosses over one or two dirty glaciers, and then downward three or four hundred feet of easy pitch to the head of a steep glacier, in view of Crater Lake, a body of pure green water, lying in a great, rough crater-like basin of rock. Some were sledding goods on tarpaulins down the glacier. Piled on the boulders are caches of goods. Boatmen there are ferrying goods to the foot of the lake at 1 cent a pound. Forty dollars a day was paid for the use of one row boat, but the men were making more than that.

Next day it begins to storm down the valley - such a storm as I never saw before.

The storm continues for several days, with wind, snow and rain, the sun shining clear each morning through the rain.

Having waited several days in vain for the boat to come over the summit, we start back to Sheep Camp, and on the way we hear that Sheep Camp has been washed entirely away, and many persons lost. At "Stone House" the square stone is gone. Several parties camped there saw a stream of water and boulders coming off the mountain-top. The boulders leaping far out in air as they tumbled down, an immense torrent, and it poured into the Dyea River, undermining the big rock, flooding tents, carrying away several outfits, and speeding towards Sheep Camp. The catastrophe occurred on the 18th, at seven o'clock in the morning, before many were up. Only one life is known to have been lost. This disaster has decided many who were hanging in the balance. It has given them a good excuse to go back. Only the strong-hearted continue on their way. Amid destruction I hardly expected to find my boat lumber, but it has been removed to a place of safety by the packer.

It is snowing as we again climb the summit, making the ascent both difficult and dangerous. The storm still rages at Long Lake. Tents are being blow down.

We start for Lindeman. The drop of 800 feet in elevation from Long Lake to Lindeman puts one into a new and smiling country. There are a 120 tents at the lake, half that number of boats in process of building, half a dozen saw pits at work, and a general air of hustle-bustle. We ferry to the end of Long Lake. A portage of a few hundred yards to Deep Lake, and another ferryman takes us to the foot, where we set up camp.

Lindeman is a beautiful lake, four and a half miles long, and narrow with towering mountain on the opposite side. At its head, on the left hand, a river enters, and there is timber for boats up the river. We pitch tent in a lovely spot, on which we decide to build our boat.

Everyone is in a rush to get away. Six to ten boats are leaving daily.

A party usually sends 2 men ahead to build the boats. They must go either five miles up the river just spoken of and raft the logs down, and construct saw-pits, or else to a patch of timber two miles back, and carry the lumber all that distance on their shoulders. A saw-pit is a sort of elevated platform, 10 or 12 feet high. On this the log to be sawn is laid, and a man stands above with the whip-saw, while another works the lower end, and in this way they saw the logs into boards. The boards are rarely more than 9-10 inches in width. The boards are an inch thick, and planed on the edges. After the boat is built the seams are calked with oakum and pitched. The green lumber shrinks before it gets into the water, so that the boats as a rule leak like sieves, but the goods rest upon slabs laid upon the bottom cross-ribs.

The last of September it snowed six inches, and it continued to snow a little each day after that. We had to work under an awning.

I was laid up for a week - the constant wet and cold had been too much. Work stopped on our boat. On the 4th of October the snow went off. On October 5th our boat is finished. She stands 23 feet over all; 6 feet beam; 16 feet by 30 inches bottom; draught, 18 inches with 1500 lbs of cargo. We start out the 6th of October and in a short while are at the foot of the lake, where several other boats are about to be lined through a nasty thoroughfare into Lake Bennett.

J.B. Burnham in Forest and Stream describes Tappan Adney

"One of the men was a slender six footer, with a face wind-tanned the color of sole-leather. He wore weather-stained clothes that, judging from the general suggestion, no doubt still carried a little of the smoky smell and balsam aroma from camps in the green woods of New Brunswick. His feet were moccasined, and his black hair straggled from under a red toboggan cap. Not only was his rig suggestive of the aborigine, but his every action proved him to be so thoroughly at home in his untamed environment that it is little wonder that at first glance I took him to be an Indian, and that it required several minutes after his jolly smile and voluble greeting to dispel the illusion."

Man, Swamp can type, not me.  Anyhow when i was a boy my mother enrolled me in some book of the month club. The Alaskan Gold Rush was my favorite and I read it over and over. Next the movie came out and the guy who married Hank Williams widow, Johny Horton sang ' Big Sam left Seattle in the year of '92.................

About 12 miles down, the lake narrows to about half a mile, and here the waves are terrific, and the cross-waves break over the tarpaulin covering the goods amidships. In the midst of it all the mast goes overboard with a snap. Brown gathers in the sail, and, still scudding, we drop behind a point fortunately close at hand. Here we are able to get a new and larger mast.

At evening we run into a little cove opposite the west arm on Bennett Lake, with a smooth, sandy beach, where there are other boats. Around the campfire that night eager questions are plied to know just what is going on in Dawson.  

"Would there be starvation?"
"I have been eleven years in Alaska, and there hasn't been a year yet when everybody wasn't going to starve, but no one has starved yet."
"How cold is it?"
"Cold, but not so cold but a man can stand it. I spent one winter in a tent."

By noon we reach the foot of Bennett Lake, between banks a few yards apart,the green waters of the lake start again through Caribou Crossing. About a mile, and the stream enters a very shallow, muddy lake, 2 or 3 miles long, called Lake Nares, and then through another slack thoroughfare into Tagish Lake.

After drifting about 2 miles, we see ahead, against a bank of evergreens on the right, the red flag of Britain and some tents, and come to a landing in shallow water at the Canadian customs office. We make camp, and before dark the others drop in and camp.

We wait until noon next day for the flotilla of canoes, which do not appear, and then put off again. We think a good deal over Inspector Strickland's words - that for the past 3 years the Klondike has been frozen tight on the 13th of October. It is now the 12th.

At Marsh Lake, the sky is clear, and when darkness sets in the air grows bitterly cold, and we bundle up to keep warm. About nine o'clock we put ashore, a place where there is dry land, build a big camp fire, and cook supper. The shore ice, as it rises and falls on the gently undulating surface of water, creaks and cries for all the world like a hundred frogs in spring time, and it is indeed a dismal sound that bodes us no good.

Waiting only to finish eating, we put out again into the lake. We head for a point about 2 miles off. We are about half way there when the bow of the boat crashes into thin ice. We turn out and clear the ice, when again we crash into ice. We cut through this, turning further out, until we are crosswise of the lake. Again we strike into ice. I am at the oars now. We pass through 2 or 3 distinct belts of ice that extent far out into the lake. We are now almost in a panic, for it seems as if the outlet must be frozen up tight. When we get clear water we head north again, keeping out from the shore, and towards morning we land and spread our blankets on the ground among some spruces with several inches of snow on the ground. After a short nap it is daylight,  and we start again. There are no other boats in sight. We are soon floating down a slack stream several hundred feet wide. The current is easy.

We go on thus for about 20 miles, the river growing more swift. We lie this night on the ground under a big spruce, and awake next morning wet with soft snow, which fell during the night. After an hour's run in swift current we pass a boat smashed on a rock. Soon we hear a shout, "Look out for the Canyon!" and on the right hand see boats lined up in a large eddy, below which is a wall of dark rock and an insignificant black opening. We pull into the eddy alongside. We go up the trail to a spot where we can stand on the brink and look directly down into the seething waters of the gorge.

We tuck the tarpaulin down close and make everything snug. We push off and head for the gateway. As soon as we are at the very brink we know it is too late to turn back, so when we slide down the first pitch I head her into the seething crest. At the first leap into the soapsuds the spray flies several feet outward from the flaring sides. A dozen or two huge lunges into the crests of the waves, and we know that we shall ride it out. Brown, who manages the oars splendidly, keeps dipping them, and in a few moments we emerge from between the narrow walls into an open basin.

There are a number of boats here too, but having nothing to stop for, we keep on into Squaw Rapids, which some regard as worse than the Canyon; when suddenly remembering that the White Horse Rapids is only one and a half miles below, we drop ashore, just above a turn of the river to the left, and make a landing at a low bank.

We resolve to take out part of our cargo, leaving an even thousand pounds in the boat, which gives us six inches or more of freeboard, we turn her nose into the current.

Following the roughest water, to avoid rocks, we are soon in the dancing waves and pitching worse by far than in the Canyon. As we jump from wave to wave, it seems positively as if boat and all would keep right on through to the bottom of the river. The water even now is pouring in, and it is plain that the boat will never live through. One thought alone comforts us: the fearful impetus with which we are moving must surely take us bodily through and out, and then - we can make the shore somehow. I count the seconds that will take us through.

Now we are in.  From sides and ends a sheet of water pours over, drenching Brown and filling the boat; the same instant, it seems, a big side-wave takes the little craft, spins her like a top, quick as a wink, throws her into a boiling eddy on the left - and we are through and safe, with a little more work to get ashore.

We jump out leg-deep into the water near shore, and, when we have bailed out some water, drop the boat down to a little sandy cove, where we unload, pitch tent, and, while tripping back for our 500 pounds of goods, watch the other boats come through. They are all big ones, and all come through without a mishap. Our goods are not damaged. Those who unload have the worst of it, as the heavy boats go through best.

The White Horse is a bit of water I have considerable respect for. Many say they took more water aboard in the Canyon than in the White Horse, while Squaw Rapids was worse than the Canyon. There have been no drownings in the White Horse this year, so far is known. But probably fewer than 40 drownings are to be credited to this bit of water since the river was first opened to white men.

The trail around the rapids is inscribed with the heroic deeds written on trees, on scraps of paper, on broken oar-blades. Some are amusing, while all are interesting.

We have lost track of days. Our appetites are growing bigger. We don't do much cooking, being satisfied with hardtack and rolled-oat mush, made in fifteen minutes, served with condensed milk and sugar, and flat jacks cooked in the frying pan. Every man on the trail has learned the toss of the wrist and flip of the frying pan in preparing this article of the prospector's diet.

In the morning we are off at daybreak ahead of all rivals. Towards noon, as we approach Big Salmon River, which enters on the right, we see something ahead that looks like foam. Running into it, we see that it is masses of fine crystals, loosely held together like lumps of snow.

The other night when we had to lie among some very uneven hummocks and stumps, instead of growling Brown merely said, "We accommodated ourselves to the lumps first-class".

We pass the mouth of Little Salmon on the right, and see ahead smoke from a camp and a group of men on the bank.  The men begin waving their arms and shouting to attract our attention, and we run in to shore. It is a large encampment of Indians. They built some sort of landing place out of logs. As we make fast the float is crowded with the most dirty, smoky, ragged, ill-looking creatures, and more come running down the banks, all excited, and carrying things evidently for sale. To escape the fury of the onslaught, I jump back into the stern of the boat, thinking how fortunate it is that the boat is well covered with canvas. We have a box about a foot long that we keep our kitchen stuff, candles, soap, etc. in. One seizes a candle, another a bar of tar soap, and they begin offering to buy, calling out, "How muchee?" They have money - silver dollars and half dollars.

I can't even see what they want with soap, but sell them the cake for half a dollar. Brown in his element; he has the trader's instinct. He has opened up 5 or 6 pounds of tobacco, and is up front, with a crowd of Indians around him, getting rid of it at 50 cents a plug. An old Indian offers a pair of mittens. I ask, "How much" "Two dolla " - something. I hand him 2 silver dollars, and he hands me the mittens. He stands waiting , then I understand he means $2.50. I shake my head. He repeats, "Four bits". So I hand the mittens back and demand my money. He refuses and makes signs for me to give back the mittens. I make signs that I have just given them to him. I lift the cover clear on the boat, so it can be seen by all that the mittens are not there. Then I step off the platform and actually have to pry the dollars out of his fist.

After several vain efforts to pull Brown away from his customers, I start to push the boat off, when the last of the Indians clambers out. Just as we push off, the old villain who tried to flimflam me out of $2 came running to the boat, threw aboard the mittens, which I knew very well he had, and holds out his hand for the $2, which I give him.

Next morning a cold north wind and a heavy mist over the water; camp thirty eight miles below Little Salmon. Cold night, and heavy mist again in the morning makes it difficult to see where to steer among the islands and bars, which are numerous in this part of the river.

Fort Selkirk lies on the left bank of the Lewes, a mile below it's junction with the Pelly. These streams are about equal in size, and together form the Yukon proper. The first post of that name was built at the junction of the two rivers in 1848 by Robert Campbell, an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was occupied until 1853, when, on account of the danger from ice during the spring overflow, it was removed to the present site. Later that year a band of Chilkats seeing the encroachment of the company upon their exclusive trade with the interior Indians, raided the post during Campbell's absent and burned the buildings to the ground.

Fort Yukon had been established in 1847, at the junction of the Porcupine and Yukon by the same company. Fork Selkirk had been too difficult to maintain that it was never rebuilt. Present buildings nearby consist of a store and dwelling house built of logs, and several small log cabins, belonging to Arthur Harper, an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company. These buildings, and some others, occupied by Indians and a mission, and a long pile of cord wood, are all that meet the eye as we scramble on hands and feet up the very steep and slippery path to the top of the bank.

A little smoke rising out of a pipe in the roof of the nearer building is the only sign of life, except the dogs. A paper tacked to the side of the door reads that no steamer has been up for 2 years and there are no provisions for sale, except some condensed milk at a dollar a can. Inside are animal hides, snow shoes, moccasins , mittens, cotton cloth, blankets and tobacco. A show case of knives, needles and thread.  A globular iron stove in the near corner throws out a heat that accentuates a pervading smell of smoked leather and furs. At a small desk behind the counter stands a little, grave, sober man, with dark, thin beard, the sole person in charge of this, the only white man in the whole place. Mr. J.J. Pitts by name. We write our names in the register and are offered a cabin owned by Mr. Harper, an invitation that does not need pressing. While we fetch our things, Mr. Pitts has kindled a fire in the cabin. He then brings in a small kerosene lamp, and leaves us to cook supper.

Most interesting read. Thanks

Next morning, October 23d, it is five degrees below zero at seven o'clock, and a thick fog envelops the river. About noon the fog is dissipated by the heat of the sun, revealing on the far side heavy ice pouring out the Pelly and filling half the river. By keeping the the left we are able to avoid the ice.

The water freezes to the oars, until they become unmanageable and again and again we have to stop and pound ice off with an axe. Mittens are frozen stiff, mustaches a mass of icicles, and no matter how hard we work we can't keep warm. The current is swift. We have gone, we judge, 20 miles when the setting of the sun and the lowering of the fog warns us to make camp. Drawing the boat close up to shore, and securing to a tree, we set up our tepee on a high, flat bank, and a snapping blaze of dry spruce soon makes us forget our discomfort. We eat our flapjack and beans, drink our tea, and lie back on the blankets before turning in. The stillness is broken only by the sound of the ice, and the northern lights, flashing with a pale-green light, make a weird impression. We have abandoned all hope of reaching Dawson. There are hundreds on the river this night feeling as we do. Before an outdoor fire one side of a person freezes while the other burns.

Stewart River is the destination of many parties, who intend to haul their outfits up on the ice and prospect its tributaries in search of other Bonanza Creeks.  Others have stopped from fear of the ice; and still others by reason of the disquieting news, brought by parties making their way out, that starvation faces the camp at Dawson and thieving is going on, two men already having been shot for breaking into caches.

October 26

Growing warmer: twenty degrees above zero at 7:00 am; forty degrees above at noon. Start at 2 pm with a light wind and snow in our faces.

We have gone about five miles, and in the growing darkness it becomes difficult to see. A mass of ice looms up straight ahead, and we keep to the left, when we suddenly discover we are going wrong, and turn the bow for the right-hand channel, Brown throwing his whole strength into the oars. We are just clearing the jam when we wedge between two floes. The ice projects over, and destruction is inevitable. Broadside we strike, and then the cause of the mishap is the means of our  salvation. The floe on the lower side crushes, but the resistance is enough to sheer us off, and we skim by. At the  opposite bank, some long spruce-trees, undermined, have fallen into the water. The current sets directly towards them. Here again, fortune is with us, for had we passed clear of the island we should inevitably have been carried in the ice-pack full into the sweepers and we should have been raked from stem to stern, if not capsized. As it is, we narrowly miss them. We hear a cry from the "Christy", which went fair into the sweepers, the boat stern on at the time. All hands jumped for a space among the packages of goods, and the sweeper, striking the steering oar, slid up and swept the boat clear. No one was hurt but the leader, who was caught by a sweeper and rolled over twice, and is lying now badly hurt. Several boats had been caught under the treacherous tree-ends.

October 27

A white sign with large letters, on the shore, warn to "Keep to the left side of the island," which is all one can do now, as the right-hand channel is packed solid. Then we pass a large log building, formerly Ladue's trading post, opposite the narrow valley of Sixty-Mile River. In reply to our hail a man calls out, "Fifty-five miles to Dawson! Keep to the right, and look sharp, or you'll be carried past!".

We camp on the left-hand bank, and next morning go on. We are repaid once for the extreme loneliness by sight of a wolf, a quarter mile away, trotting towards us on the shore ice, which is several hundred feet.

Next morning, judging that we have only 10 miles to go, and having found some dry spruce and straight white birch, we resolve to stop for a day and build a sled.

The following morning we reload, and, settling ourselves for what we suppose to be about half a day's work, push off once more in the face of a cutting north wind, striking immediately for the right-hand shore, which was, indeed, fortunate for us, for just at the turn, a mile from our camping place, we see on the bank a great number of boats, tents, and people.

"How far is it to Dawson?" we call out.
"This is Dawson! If you don't look out you will be carried past!"

We dig our paddles into the ice, and in a short space of time our boat is safe behind a larger one. It is the 31st of October, one hundred and eight days since the Excelsior's arrival at San Francisco, and ninety-two days since we joined the Klondike Stampede.

We began to inspect our new surroundings. Winter had clearly settled down, and snow covered everything.

The bank, which was quite level and stood about 20 feet above the river, was several acres in extent and occupied by thirty or forty log cabins and tents, together with many curious little boxes, made of poles, or two halves of boats placed one above the other, and set on posts higher than one's head and reached by ladders. These latter, which are almost as numerous as the cabins, are caches, in which goods are stored out of reach of dogs and water. Behind the flat the bank rises steeply to a high terrace, and on the left this suddenly ends and the Klondike River breaks through from the eastward, and, dividing into two shallow channels, enters the Yukon around a low island covered with cottonwoods. The aforementioned assemblage of dwellings was not, as we had been let at first to suppose, Dawson proper, but a flourishing suburb, bearing the official name of "Klondike City."  This "city" was, until the miners bringing rafts of logs down the Klondike destroyed their fish weirs, the seat of the local Indians, or Trochutin, as they call themselves. It is otherwise known as "Lousetown".

Dawson proper lies on the opposite side of the mouth of the Klondike, upon a flat about 2000 yards in width, extending a mile and a half along the Yukon, and terminating in a narrow point at the base of a mountain conspicuous by reason of a light-gray patch of "slide" upon its side bearing resemblance to a dressed moose hide in shape and color, which has given to it the name of "Moose-hide" Mountain. The greater part of this flat is nothing more than a swamp, consisting in summer of oozy muck, water, and cattails, with a few stunted spruce, but in winter hard and dry.

The town of Dawson, now just one year old, contains about 300 cabins and other buildings, half a dozen of which stand on the bank of the Klondike. Beyond these, and facing the Yukon, and separated from the rest of the flat by a slough, is the military reservation, with barracks of the mounted police. The barracks are a group of 8 or 10 log buildings for officers' and men's quarters, offices, store rooms, post office, court room, forming 3 sides of a square, the fourth side, facing the Yukon, being at present enclosed by nothing more than a brush fence 4 feet high, with a gate, beside which is a tall pole floating the flag of Great Britain.

Beyond the reservation is a town site staked by Arthur Harper in the spring of 1897, and the next adjoining is the original town site of Joe Ladue, staked in September, 1896, the two being known as the "Harper & Ladue Town site" - a rectangle of over 160 acres, extending from river to hill. The first houses were built here, and it is still the centre of the town. Streets were surveyed parallel to the river, Main Street is the only one used. Along this street, beginning from the barracks,  consists of a few small earth-covered log dwellings; then several 2-story log buildings designated "hotels", with conspicuous signs in front bearing such names as "Klondike", "Dawson City," "Brewery," with more dwellings between them and caches behind; then more log houses - the "M&M" saloon and dance hall, the "Green Tree" hotel, the "Pioneer" or "Moose-horn" and the "Dominion" saloon, the "Palace" saloon and restaurant and the "Opera House", built tolerably close together, the space between being filled with tents and smaller cabins used as restaurants, mining brokers' offices, etc. On the river's edge, facing this irregular row, are tents, rough buildings hastily constructed out of slabs, scows with tents built over them and warmed by Yukon stoves, and used as offices and restaurants or residences, - a raged, motely assemblage. In the middle of the road, built there before the town was surveyed, stands a cabin with one window, the Ladue cabin, now used as a bakery.

Beyond the saloons is a block of the Alaskan Commercial Company, consisting of a 2-story corner store and several warehouses, a 2-story log dwelling for employees. The next block is that of the North American Transportation and Trading Company, with a similar store house, 3 warehouses and a dwelling house. Beyond this is a sawmill, then more cabins, and at the farther end, half a mile from the stores, the Catholic church and St Mary's Hospital.

Donkey you are ruining my day.
I keep coming up from my shop to see your latest post.
What a great read.
Pete

Prices at which goods were selling were gathered by inquiry and from bits of paper posted on the sides of saloons or the bulletin board at the Alaska Commercial Company's corner. Entire outfits were for sale at $1 per pound, and not waiting long for takers; but flour, the article of which there was the greatest shortage, sold on the street for from $75 to $120 per sack of 50 pounds. Joe Brandt is to start for Dyea in December with a well equipped dog team, and will take letters at $1 each, and a limited number of passengers at from $600 to $1000, which includes the privilege of walking behind the sleigh and helping to make camp; a woman, who must ride, pays $1500. Dogs were almost any price a man asked, $300 being paid for good native dogs. A common Yukon sleigh, worth $7 outside, was $40; a "basket" sleigh, $75. Fur robes, without which it was said no man could reach Dyea, were from $200 to $400 each. The stores were full of men warming themselves by the stoves and appearing to have nothing to do. The stock of goods was of course larger than at Selkirk, but there were whole rows of empty shelves where groceries should have been. The North American Transportation Company warehouses looked full, and men in parkas with dog teams were sledding stuff away from piles marked with their names.

It was certain that between 500 and 600 persons had been forced down river, where the nearest supply of grub was said to be; several score had started up river in canoes or along the shore ice, and no one knew how many were only waiting for the river to close to start up river. To go either way at this time, the old timers regarded as certain death, by the ice in one direction, from cold or starvation in the other, unless help reached them on the trail.

The immediate cause of this serious condition was the failure of 3 steamers, loaded with supplies from St Michael, to pass the flats of the Yukon, 200 miles and more below Dawson. But that was not all. The strike on Bonanza Creek, which depopulated Circle City and Forty-Mile, occurred so late in the fall that steamers could not land supplies at the new camp, and during the winter which followed the miners lived from hand to mouth on what was hauled by dogs over ice,  a distance respectively of 220 and 55 miles. The spring found 1500 people waiting the arrival of the boats with an eagerness with which the Yukon was by no mean unacquainted. Then, too, the news of the strike had gone outside in January before the Excelsior ($750,000 in gold) and Portland ($800,000 in gold) arrived with the first gold of the wash-up and tangible evidence of the magnitude of the strike, and before the world at large knew of even the existence of Klondike, a stream of people were pouring over the passes, and, when the river opened in May, they bore down on Dawson. The Alaska Commercial Company's steamers, the Bella made 4 trips to Dawson, the Alice 3 trips, and the Margaret one. Of those of the North American Transportation and Trading Company, the Portus B. Weare delivered 4 loads, the John J. Healy 2, while the Hamilton  was expected on her maiden trip. By the middle of September about 800 tons of freight had been landed at Dawson, half food, and half general merchandise.  An amount which might have sufficed for the needs of the camp until the next spring had there been no additions to the population. 200 hundred passengers reached Dawson on the first steamers, and a few went out. By the 1st of August no fewer than 1000 had come in over the passes.  Some had complete outfits, but greater number, including women and children, had insufficient to last until spring.

The anxiety of the agents and those who had placed orders increased as they saw the incoming horde of new comers and the water in the Yukon rapidly falling. Navigation of the steamers would close by the 1st of October.

When the middle of September came and the river was still falling, Captain Hansen went down on the Margaret to Fort Yukon.  On the 26th he returned by poling boat, bringing word that the Alice, Healy, and Hamilton were unable to pass the treacherous shoals in that part of the river, and no more boats would be able to get up. Excited men gathered in groups on the streets and in the saloons, and with gloomy faces discussed the situation. Some proposed seizing the warehouses and dividing the food evenly among all the camp. The police, 20 men, were placed at the companies' disposal.  In this crisis, on the 28th of September, the Weare arrived with 125 tons of freight, mostly provisions; also reporting 20 tons taken off in a hold up by the miners at Circle City. The excitement subsided a little.  On the 30th of September the Bella arrived with light cargo, having left her barge at Fort Yukon, and been further relieved of about 37 tons at Circle City. On the same day the mounted police posted notice, about the shortage of supplies and urged people to move down river to Fort Yukon to avoid starvation and that it was beyond possibility that any more food wood arrive by steamer. Captain Healy vigorously apposed the down river movement. He stated that there was plenty of food for all in the camp until the boats got up in the spring.
On the 20th of October 50 men left for Fort Yukon in small boats and scows. The Weare took as many as she could find accommodation for, charging $50 for passage. On the 21 of October the Bella was to depart with free passage, 160 persons took advantage of this offer, signed an agreement of passage, and received food for five days. Contrary to the statements of the authorities that there was sufficient food at Fort Yukon, there was not; and if all whom the authorities would have persuaded to go to Fort Yukon had reached there, the condition there would have been much more serious than at Dawson.

The "hold up" of the steamers at Circle City took place as follows: The miners took inventory of the goods in the two stores and a census of those without outfits, made a list of supplies needed, and appointed a committee to demand that goods as per list be left off the next steamer that arrived. When the Weare arrived the committee, armed with Winchester rifles, demanded a certain quantity of goods, and they were taken out of the hold and placed in warehouses, the miners appointing a checker on the steamer, another at the warehouse, and guards along the way, and further placed guards on the steamer to prevent disorder. The same thing was repeated when the Bella arrived.

In Dawson we gave ourselves over to the serious business of finding shelter for the winter. Cabins in Dawson were worth from $500 to $1000, and wood for fuel was $30 to $40 a cord. Even had the cost been less, we should not have thought of buying a house, when timber with which we could build one of our own was to be found so near to town. My companion, whose resolution thus far had been to die sooner than return home, certainly could not remain long in the face of starvation. The next morning Pelletier and I set off to look for a cabin site up a beaten path that we were told led to the mines, it being agreed in the meantime that Brown should remain a while longer, in the hope of something turning up to relieve his distressful condition.

Two miles from the mouth of the Klondike River, the valley is cut by a V-shaped trench from the southward - the valley of Bonanza Creek. The trail, worn smooth as glass by many sleds, follows the frozen surface of the river, past a little nest of cabins on the right known as the Portland Addition, past a small steam sawmill just ready for winter work, for two miles, when it leaves the river and crosses the level flat, through an extensive thicket of beautiful white birches, striking at a distance of half a mile the bed of the creek, a shallow, narrow depression winding from side to side of a wooded valley 5-8 hundred feet across, and then continues on towards the heart of the mines, a distance of about twelve miles. Where trail and creek meet, in a sheltered spot where spruces and birches grew thicker than usual, we chose the site of our cabin.

A blaze on a tree, bearing the number 97A, written in pencil, and the formal statement that one Max Newberry claimed 500 feet for mining purposes, was indication that, as claims are measured on this creek, we were about ninety-seven claims, of about 500 feet each, below the original discovery.

During the next 4 days we sledded our stuff to Bonanza Creek, but slept each night in the tent by the river.

On the night of the 6th of October a diversion was created at 2 a.m., when a meat raft went by, the men calling loudly and offering a thousand dollars for a line, but they went on in the darkness, to certain destruction, it seemed, in the gorge below town.

On the 7th on October, in front of Dawson, where the river is narrowest, the ice began to jam. The floes piled up, and the water backed behind as far as Klondike City; then it broke loose and continued to run again for several hours, when it jammed again and did not move. The Yukon was closed, but remained open below the jam all winter. Blocks of ice lay at all angles, with boats crushed, sideways and endways, useless except for lumber.

The last men in had the time of their lives. All went well until they approached Klondike City. The river had just jammed for the second time. Two men went ashore on a shelf of shore ice on the right hand, at the foot of a precipitous bank. One reached the cabins, but the rising water drove the other to the bank, where he managed to cling, with one foot in a small spruce, until 20 men with ropes hauled him up. The boat with the others went on, very slowly now. It was in the small hours of the night when they reached Dawson, and stopped. They called out their names, but no help could reach them until daylight, when the police put planks over the ice and brought them ashore. This was but one of many miraculous escapes.

The Yukon miner's cabin is from about 10 x 12 feet square, to 14 x 18 ft., averaging perhaps 12 x 14 feet. The logs are 8-9 inches thick, and the sides are 9-10 logs high, which, with 6 inches elevation for the floor, allows ample head  room. The roof is rather flat, a raise of more than 2 feet at the ridge being uncommon, and it extends 4 to 6 feet in front and is frequently enclosed for a store room. The roof is made of small poles, covered first with moss, and then, to a thickness of 6 inches or more, with dirt, which in time is covered with weeds and grass, causing some one to observe that one of the duties of a householder in the Yukon was mowing the hay on his house top! There is one door in front, and at least one window on the sunny side, fitted whenever possible with a sash of from four to six panes, the better cabins having double sashes, to prevent frosting. As a sash, whenever it is to be had at all, is worth $20, many cabins have only a white flour sack nailed over the opening. A much better window, and a really decorative one, is made of a dozen or more white ginger ale bottles, set vertically in an opening the thickness of a log. The floor is either of lumber or poles hewn flat on top. The cabin is warmed with an ordinary sheet iron Yukon stove, set on four posts, the stove pipe passing through a square oil can in the roof, the space around the pipe being usually filled in with clay. The logs are chinked with moss, which is usually laid on as the walls go up. To ovoid ill effects from overheating and likewise poor ventilation, a small box is placed in the roof, with a door which can be opened and closed. A Yukon stove, made by a tinsmith in Dawson, with a drum for baking and three joints of pipe, costs $65.

The bunks are simply rough platforms wide enough for 2 persons, usually built of poles and boards, and covered with spruce boughs, upon which are spread the blankets and robes, a flour sack containing socks or moccasins often serving for a pillow.

The miner's light is pre-eminently the candle, which is used in a special candlestick of steel, and a hook for hanging to a nail in the wall. Candles or lamps are scarce in the Yukon - a milk or meat can is used, with a loose wick at one side, burning bacon grease. Originally, it was a piece of fat bacon stuck into a split end of a stick.

We built our cabin 14 x 16 feet. We did not have to go over 100 feet for a single stick of timber, but the suffering of handling logs in a temperature already much below freezing and steadily falling. During construction we lived in the tent. The thermometer fell to 39 below zero, but it was astonishing how warm a stove made a tent. As soon as the fire went down it was as cold as out of doors. We had 13 pairs of blankets, and in the midst of these we slept; with all our clothes on and lying close together, we were never really warm. White frost about our heads looked like that of a bear's den in winter. The breakfast fire would quickly melt the frost; but we never dried out. This disagreeable feature is also observed in new cabins that have a thin roof and snow melts through. This makes 'glaciers', as the miners call them, even when the air inside, is from a Yukon stand point, comfortable. Nails and other iron works that extend outside a Yukon cabin are white with frost.

Gold mining is of two kinds. One is known as 'quartz' mining, crushing the original vein rock in which the gold has been deposited by nature, and separating the metal. Gold occurs not alone in quartz, but in mica-schist, feldspar, and other "metamorphic" rock. But as quartz is the commonest rock in which gold is found in considerable quantity, "quartz" mining is the term in universal use here.

The other kind of mining is known as 'placer', or stream-bed, mining. In placer operating with water and air has already done the work of the crusher, and to a certain extent that of the separator also. As placer gold is commonly with the reach of every man with strong hands, the discovery of rich placer deposits has always aroused more excitement than discovery of vastly richer gold-bearing veins. Placer mining is done by panning.

Often the bed of the stream in which the gold first fell has continued to wear deeper, and wherever that has happened the bulk of the gold has found a new level; but a considerable portion may remain hundreds of feet above the newer stream-bed, in situations that in no way suggest a river channel until the surface of the ground is removed and water-worn gravel found beneath. Such deposits are termed "bench" or "hill-side" diggings, and are to be looked for by experienced miners along rich gold-bearing streams.

Gold in its metallic forms is variously known as "flour" gold, "leaf" or "float" gold, "wire" gold, "fine" gold, "course" gold, and "nuggets". Flour gold may be so fine as to be scarcely visible to the unaided eye; leaf gold is in thin flattened pieces up to an inch or more square, and wire gold is gold in short wire-like pieces. Course gold is a general term that includes everything above a fine or flour gold, or, say, from the size of coarse corn-meal to that of grains of wheat or larger. "Nugget" is likewise a flexible term. Nuggets run in weight from say, a pennyweight to as much as an ordinary man can lift with his hands.

Gold when found in nature in the metallic state is termed "native", and is never found perfectly pure, but alloyed with other metals, such as silver, antimony, tin, copper, etc., the proportion varying greatly in different localities, and determining the relative "fineness" of the gold.

During panning, when the gold is "fine" the miner puts a few drops of quicksilver into the pan. Gold and quicksilver have a strong affinity, and the instant they are brought together the two unite, forming an amalgam, which is easily secured. The pan containing the amalgam may be heated over a fire, which dissipates the quicksilver, leaving a mass of fine gold. If the gold is "course," the pan is simply dried and the gold weighed on the scales, which every miner carries, and put into a little buckskin bag. A single grain of gold is called a "color". What constitutes "pay" dirt varies, of course, with the amount of wages a man is willing or able to work for. A "prospect" is simply the gold a miner finds in one panful, and the term is usually employed to mean an amount sufficient to pay for the work.
The "pan" is the miner's basis of estimate. Two "shovelfuls"make one pan, 103 "pans" make one cubic yard of earth. In this way we will try to estimate the probable amont of gold which the gravel deposit contains.

Another term I've heard for quartz mining was "hard rock mining". I'm down to short duty from pounding "soft rock". That was a brutal life.

When the prospector has, by panning, located a  deposit of gold, he usually constructs a machine for more rapidly washing the gravel. The simplest is called the "rocker". It is a box on rockers, like a cradle, with a perforated metal top, or "hopper," and a sloping blanket, or "apron," inside. It is set near the water and the dirt shovelled into the perforated hopper. Water is dipped up in a long-handled dipper and poured in with the dirt, the rocker being energetically rocked at the same time by means of an upright handle. The larger stones are removed by hand, the gold falls through perforations and lodges upon the apron, which at intervals is cleaned by scraping into a pan, and then carefully panned out. The rocker is especially useful where there is scarcity of water, as it can be placed over a tank or reservoir, and the same water used again and again.

When there is what the miners call a sufficient "head" or fall and volume of water, the miner resorts to the "sluice box" as the next most expeditious method. It is a box about 12 feet long, with open ends; bottom being a board 14 inches wide at one end, 12 inches at the other, and the sides 8 inches high. It is made narrower at one end so that the lower end of one box will just fit into the upper end of another, where several are placed together to form a continuous waterway. On the floor of the box is placed a frame called a "riffle", made either of round or square poles 2 inches or less in diameter, placed lengthwise, or else short ones crosswise; the riffles are made so that they can be lifted out of the box.  The length of the string of boxes depends on the fineness of the gold, for, obviously, the smaller gold will be carried farther by the water than the coarse before it settles in the interstices of the riffles; and as there must be sufficient rapidity of current to carry the light stones, it is also evident that the water must start at a sufficient elevation for the water leaving the boxes to run on down stream. So a dam is built at the upper end of the ground to be worked, with two sluice gates, one opening into the sluice boxes, and another into a ditch or flume, by which the water of the creek not needed for the boxes is diverted around the claim.

At the lower end of a string of sluice boxes is one two feet wide at the upper end, narrowing to a foot at the lower, and of the same length as a box, or shorter. This is called the "dump box," and is also fitted with riffles.  Some miners add 2 or 3 more boxes with riffles, known as "tail-boxes". The dirt and stones that have been worked over once in the rocker, or sluice-boxes, are called "tailings".

[These details are necessary to understand what is going on, says Adney]  ;)

Quote from: Don P on March 01, 2022, 04:42:36 PM
Another term I've heard for quartz mining was "hard rock mining". I'm down to short duty from pounding "soft rock". That was a brutal life.

Yes, Adney uses "bed-rock" as an alternate, but said 'quartz' mining was a more common term in the United States at the time. He's American born, from Ohio. I knew an old timer who always said to look in the quartz for gold. I remember one time wading a remote dead water, fishing trout. The bottom was all sand, no mud. In the sun the clay minerals in the sand glittered in the sun like gold. The sand was a blond color. All glacial stuff, even the soil under the rooting depth there is sand. And rocks to put @thecfarm (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=436) to shame. :D

I betcha there are more and bigger rocks under what little bit of soil I have here.  :D
Remember, I blasting crew had to be called in to get our bedroom in!!! 
Took them two times to get it. 

The pass over the mountains into the Yukon was guarded by the Chilkat and Chilkoot Indians, who opposed the entrance of all white men into the country for any purpose.  Th year of the Silver Bow strike a party of white men crossed over - the first whom the Indians allowed to go through. This party brought back good reports of the bars on the Lewes River, and from this time on other parties crossed the pass, built their boats on the other side, and descended the river farther and farther, working the bars - generally returning to the coast the same season. No mining was attempted in the winter, nor was it possible.

The bar was an alluvial deposit of sand and gravel, often ten or twenty feet or more above the low-water level of the river. These high banks carried gold in fine particles, but so widely distributed that the miners did not even try to work them; but in the process of their washing down at freshet time the gravel was deposited inside the bends of the river, and gold concentrated into layers, or strata, usually richest near the heads of the bars. The rocker was employed altogether to separate the gold, which was denominated fine. The gold bearing sands were near the surface, and some of these bars proved very rich. Cassiar Bar in 1886 yielded to 5 men on the head claims $6000 for 30 day's work.

In 1885 rich bars were also discovered on the Stewart River and a post was established at the mouth of the river. Course gold was then discovered on Forty-Mile and reported back at Stewart, which then caused a shortage of provisions back at Stewart because a stampede headed to the new diggings, for the miner does not bother with fine gold when he can get coarse.

News of the find left Stewart River in January, carried by Williams, with an Indian boy and 3 dogs. On the summit of Chilkoot they were overtaken by a storm, and were buried for 3 days in the snow. When the storm abated Williams could not walk, and was carried on the back of the Indian boy 4 miles to Sheep Camp, whence he was sledded into Dyea by some Indians, and died in the store of Capt. Healey. The miners congregated from all parts to know what had brought the man out, for the winter journey was considered almost certain death. The Indian boy, picking up a handful of beans, said, "Gold all same like this." The excitement was intense, and that spring over 200 miners poured in over the pass to Forty-Mile.

Every man was a prospector and a hard worker, skilled at boating, accustomed to hardship, rough, yet generous to his fellows. One custom in particular that shows this feeling was that when the 1st of August came, any who had failed to locate a paying claim were given permission to go upon the claims of such as had struck it and to take out enough for the next season's outfit. This peaceable condition in general characterized the Yukon.

The frozen condition of the ground was the greatest obstacle to mining. The sun's rays were sufficient to thaw a foot or so each day, and each day the miners would remove the thawed dirt. Later the possibility of thawing ground with fire was put to use at Franklin Glulch in 1887 by Fred Hutchinson.  These first efforts were necessarily crude, but they demonstrated that ground might be worked which the sun's rays could not reach. It was a great leap forward, as 12 months' work was now possible instead of only 2 as before. After having reached bedrock, the next step was to tunnel or drift along it. From that time on winter work became more general, and the deeper diggings were reserved for that season. The term "winter diggings" has come to mean ground too deep to work by open summer work. The art of drifting was developed further at Klondike, after being started 2 years before, to develop the Yukon "placer expert." At least 2 men are required to work a creek claim in winter. Thirty cord of wood are required for the winter's burnings of two men. Drifting begins in late September. The colder the weather, the better for winter work.

The present stream winds from side to side of the valley, and the old stream underneath, in which the gold is found, apparently did the same, but the windings of the one afford no clue to the windings of the other. A hole must be put down simply at random. When the shaft has reached bedrock, the direction in which the the old creek lies is usually told by the slant of the bedrock, so the miner drifts in that direction 15 or 20 feet, which is as fas as it profitable to drag the dirt. Great difficulty is experienced in securing draft for the fire in the first drift. If the pay streak is not reached in the first drift, a second hole is put down thirty or more feet from the first and the drifting continued until the pay streak is found. Then the pay gravel is drifted out, a hole twenty by thirty feet being often excavated, the roof being in such cases supported by timbers. In order to know when he is on the pay streak the miner each day takes one or more pans of dirt from the hole and pan it out in a wooden tank of water in the cabin, carefully weighing the gold thus found. If he has 5 cents to the pan it may pay to work, but only in summer. Ten cents to the pan is considered pay for winter work; 25 cents is very rich. When the hole has reached a depth at which the dirt cannot be shovelled out,  the dirt is hoisted in a wooden bucket which holds about eight pans of dirt.  One hundred buckets a day is a good day's work. The fire is put in at night and in the morning the smoke has sufficiently cleared to allow a man to go into the hole. The smoke is very trying to the eyes, and not infrequently gases in the hole have overcome and killed the miner. To sink a hole requires 20-30 days. A whole season's work may be put in without locating the pay, even when the claim is rich.

Costs outlined in a petition by a Yukon miner's committee was sent to the Governor General of Canada, in December 1897.

-$1.50 - 2.00 /hr for 10 hrs a day
-undressed lumber 40 cents a board foot
-a set of riffles for sluice boxes is $5 a set
-sluice boxes $25 a box,  12 feet long
-setting of line of sluice boxes averages $2000
-cost of a dam for the operation is $1000
-waste ditch costs $1200
-handling the dirt $5 a yard
-pumping the pits cost $75 per 24 hrs in summer
-wheelbarrows $25
-shovels $3.50
-blacksmith forge $200
-grindstones $35 apiece
-hammers 60 cents a pound
-saws $5.50 apiece
-nails 40 cents a pound
-rope 50 cents a pound
-gold scales $50
-firewood for mining $25/cord delivered to the shaft.
-sinking untimbered shaft, $10 a foot (4 x 6 feet area), $12 a yard for dirt cleanup.
-cost of a 12 x 14 cabin for 3 men is $600.

When not only the expense of reaching the country, but when the cost of living while there, and when the cost of working the mines is considered, the Klondike is not a poor man's country.

It was the morning of Thanksgiving Day, the 25th of November. The night before we had cooked enough doughnuts to last 2 men a week, along with a junk of bacon and tea and sugar, for one pack, and tied up a pair of 12 pound blankets into another pack, ready for a start at daybreak on our first trip to the mines.

The first early travellers were coming down the Bonanza trail. I shall not forget this first sight. A heavy bank of smoke from the night's fire hung over the valley, and the air was jade with the smell of burned wood. More cabins and smoking dumps; then strings of cabins, first on one side then on the other, the trail growing like a street of a village in which there were only men. Other men on the hillsides were dragging down small poles for the fires, streaking the white snow with black.

We hurried on the polished sled trail, hardly comprehending the strange, weird site. Three hours from camp we stood at the forks of Bonanza and Eldorado. The site was one never to be forgotten. The sun, like a deep-red ball in a red glow, hung in the notch of Eldorado; the smoke settling down like a fog; men on the high dumps like spectres in the half-smoke, half-mist; faint outlines of scores of cabins; the creaking of windlasses - altogether a scene more suggestive of the infernal regions than any spot on earth. It was hard to believe that this was the spot towards which all the world was looking. Little more than a year ago this wilderness, now peopled by some thousands of white men, resounded only to the wolf's howl and the raven's hollow klonk. Well might one gaze in wonder, whether an old California miner or one who had never before seen men dig gold, for the world had seen nothing like this.

At the side of Bonanza Creek, where one could look into Eldorado, was a settlement of twenty or more cabins, some occupied by miners, others used for hotels and various purposes, but no stores or places of amusement, everything being hauled or carried up from town, and the miners going to Dawson for recreation.

As a little daylight remained, we made direct for a cabin on Claim No. 5, one of the first cabins built on the creek, and first occupied by Clarence Berry. Berry was, in San Francisco with $130,000 which he took out with him and showed, in the window of his hotel, to wonder-struck thousands. But Frank, his brother, was there, superintending the claim, doing his own house work entirely alone. We were asked to stay for supper. Our host set before us, on a bare spruce table, a most grateful meal of stewed corn and tomatoes and beef steak, and milk for our coffee, in the original tins. This "millionaire's" cabin was about 12 x 16 feet, with a small window at each side, and the rear partitioned off for sleeping apartment by a screen of calico. The ceiling was covered with calico; this and a bit of curtain at the windows marked it as a woman's cabin, something nicer than a rough miner would provide for himself; in fact, there is a bit of romance here, of the winter's trip, a new bride, and nuggets by the pocketful.

Berry went over to a partner's cabin and brought a nugget that had lately been found. It was a beautiful lump of gold, flattish and much worn, of a bright "brassy" color, indicating a large alloy of silver. Putting it on the gold scales, it weighed a scant 15 and a half ounces, and had been taken from a "bench" just outside of the creek claim.

Twenty-five men were at work on claims Nos. 4,5 and 6, and a fraction 5A. One of our questions was, "Is the ground rich?"  
"There is one dump I know on Eldorado where a man can take a rocker and rock out $10,000 in a day, or he can pan $1000 in 4 pans. Those who have high-grade dirt will not sell for less than $50,000 to $150,000. Twenty-five dollar nuggets are common. We have a thousand dollar's worth, averaging $10, that came out of our first cut."

Next morning we continued on up the creek for a distance of 4 miles to the junction of Chief Gulch. All the way up almost every claim was being worked. There was not question that the claims were wonderfully rich. One of the miners expressed the feeling of probably a good many of the new "millionaires." "If we get any worse we'll all be crazy. I haven't anybody to laugh with. I suppose my people at home feel pretty good - never had anything till now." Everywhere we stopped we were received with a miner's cordiality, and given the best the camp offered.

In the evening, after work is done, they visit around or remain indoors reading papers and books. One finds all sorts of books, from a cheap novel to Gibbon's Roman Empire and Shakespeare, in the cabins of Bonanza and Eldorado.

The greater number of the old miners are Americans, or have imbibed American ideas. I heard an old-timer confess that "the longer a man stays in this country the less he knows. If he stays here long enough he gets so he don't know nawthin."

Theft was as great a crime as murder, and when either happened, which was rare, a miner's meeting was called, the accused was given a chance to be heard, and then by a vote the decision was rendered swiftly and surely. If guilty, he had to leave the country at once. How he left was a matter of no concern. He had to leave! The Yukon has been too law-abiding for many stories of violence. The rigors of the country and the broadening effect of the life have made men behave themselves. The police have not, as is claimed,  brought about this condition. It existed before there were any police here. The cold weather, the poor grub and little of it, incidents of a hard trip with dogs, the time there was no butter in Circle City - these constitute about the whole stock of conversation.

Nick Goff was one of the old-timers. Sixteen years ago he came into the Yukon, and has never once been "outside". For 40 years altogether he has lived in the mines, and it is alleged that in all his life he never saw a railroad train. Last year he was asked why he didn't take a trip out to San Francisco for his health and see the sights, among the other things the fine hotels, where everything that a man could desire was done for his comfort. Nick listened attentively, and when the speaker was done he sad: You say they didn't let a man cook his own meals and make his own bed" "Why, no." Then I ain't goin' to no place where I can't cook my own meals and make my own bed," and he didn't go.

I asked an old timer on a Bonanza claim how Klondike compared with other places he had been in? He had been in California in 1852, and had mined in different parts of the world for fifty years. "In the Caribou country I saw 113 ounces of gold taken up in one pan of dirt, and I saw 102 pounds cleaned up in an 8 hour shift by 5 men. But it was very limited, not over a mile of rich dirt." "Was it ricer in Caribou than California?" "I have seen spots in California - Scott's Bar, on Scott's River, Siskiyou County - as rich as any in Caribou. Australia does not compare, for the claims there are only 10 feet square. Thousands would be taken out of some holes, but it was in spots; some would get nothing."

We spent a week on Eldorado and Bonanza, returning to our own cabin with a new experience and a higher appreciation of the character of the class of men who explored and developed the Yukon.

Dame Fortune was never in more capricious mood than when the golden treasures of the Klondike were ripe for discovery. The first news of the discovery that reached the outside - even the official reports of Mr. Ogilvie - generally gave credit of the discovery entirely to one Carmack, or "McCormick", as the miners call him. The story is fascination from beginning to end, and in making this contribution to the history of that time I have been animated not less by a desire to gather together the scattered ends of report and hearsay than that tardy credit may be given to another man whom fortune, never more unkind, has thus far deprived of material compensation for a generous act and years of patient work.

The Klondike River had been known for many years, being only six miles from Fort Reliance, McQuesten's first post. Both Harper and McQuesten hunted moose in the present Bonanza Creek on the site of Discovery. Sixteen years ago a party of prospectors, among whom was General Carr, now of the State of Washington, camped on the present Eldorado Creek. Other parties passed down the Klondike from the headwaters of Stewart River about the year 1886, but the river from its general appearance was not considered a gold-bearing stream, so year after year it was passed by for more favored diggings of Forty-Mile and Birch Creek.

In 1890, Joe Ladue, a French Canadian originally from Plattsburg, New York, an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, decided to establish an independent trading and outfitting post.  Recognizing that his only chance was to grow up with a new region, and having faith that other creeks would be discovered as rich as the Forty-Mile diggings, he built the post, including a sawmill in partnership with Mr. Harper, at the mouth of Sixty-Mile River, and began recommending all new-comers to prospect the bars or surface diggings of the latter stream, but more especially of Indian Creek or River, a stream entering the Yukon on the right or east side about 25 miles below his post, and 33 above the now abandoned Fort Reliance. For telling so-called "lies", especially about Indian Creek, Ladue was almost driven from Forty-Mile by irate miners.

In the summer of 1894, among the crowd drawn in by the glowing reports from the Forty-Mile district was one Robert Henderson, hailing from mines of Aspen, Colorado, of Scotch parentage, but a Canadian by birth, his father being lighthouse-keeper at Big Island, Pictou County, Nova Scotia. He was a rugged, earnest man, 37 years of age, 6 feet tall, with clear blue eyes. From boyhood he had been of an adventurous  disposition, with a passion for gold-hunting that showed itself even at his Big Island home in solitary excursions about his bleak fisherman's isle, in which "Robbie," as he was called, was always looking for gold.  Henderson had but 10 cents in is pocket when he reached Ladue's post. Hearing what Ladue was saying about good diggings on Indian River, he said to Ladue: "I'm a determined man. I won't starve. Let me prospect for you. If it's good for me, it's good for you." Ladue gave him a grub-stake, and Henderson went upon Indian River and found it exactly as Ladue had said. He could make "wages" working the surface bars. On that account, he did not desert it for the just then more popular fields of Forty-Mile and Birch creeks, but determined to try again. With the experience of a miner, he knew that farther on towards the heads of the tributaries of Indian River he would probably find coarse gold, though perhaps not on the surface, as it was on the river. The next summer he pushed on, and found "leaf" gold on "Australia Creek", one of the main forks of Indian River, 80 miles from the Yukon. Had he gone up another fork he would have discovered the rich diggings of Dominion and Sulphur creeks. He returned to Sixty-Mile, and when winter came he put his goods on a sled, returned to Indian River, and went up Quartz Creek, a tributary of Indian River on the north, 40 miles from the Yukon. It took 30 days to reach Quartz creek with no sled dogs. He worked all winter on Quartz Creek, and took out about $500. In the spring he went up Australia Creek with little prospects. He returned to Quartz Creek.  This time he cast eyes longingly towards the ridge or hill at the head of Quartz Creek separating the waters of Indian River from those of the then almost unknown Klondike River.  Crossing over the short, sharp divide he dropped down into a deep-cleft valley of a small stream running northward. He prospected, and found 8 cents to the pan. That meant "wages"; such a prospect was then considered good. Enthusiastic over the find, Henderson went back over the divide. There were about 20 men on Indian River, working mostly on the bars at the mouth of Quartz Creek, some of them doing fairly well. Henderson persuaded 3 of the men - Ed Munson, Frank Swanson, and Albert Dalton - to go back with him.

The 4 men took over whipsaws, sawed lumber, built sluice-boxes, and "opened up" a claim in regular fashion about a quarter mile below the forks - a spot plainly visible from the divide - and began shovelling in gold-bearing dirt.

He named the stream "Gold Bottom." It lay parallel with the present Bonanza Creek and entered the Klondike River about 9 miles from it's mouth. The amount that they shovelled in on Gold Bottom Creek was $750, and that was the first gold taken out of Klondike. Standing at the right spot on the divide a cup of water would run into Rabbit Creek, Gold Bottom Creek, and Indian River. For in this manner the heads of a number of streams lie together, as the spokes of a wheel around a hub.

Henderson met Carmack on the Klondike fishing and told him of his prospects on Gold Bottom, and said to him that he had better come up and stake. At first Carmack did not want to go, but Henderson urged.

About a half a mile below a large tributary of "Rabbit Creek" Carmack and his party stopped to rest, and he went to sleep. Skookum Jim, taking the pan, went to the "rim" of the valley at the foot of a birch tree and filled it with dirt. Washing it in the creek, he found a large showing of gold. Right "under the grass roots," Jim said, he found from ten cents to one dollar to pan. In a little while, it is said, they filled a shot gun cartridge with coarse gold. A strange circumstance was that this gold was not from bedrock, which was many feet below the surface, nor even the present creek bed, but, unsuspected by them, had slid down from the "bench", or hillside, a kind of diggings which were unknown at that time. Carmack staked off Discovery (a double claim) for himself, and five hundred feet below above and below for his two Indian companions, Skookum Jim taking No. 1 above Discovery, and Cultus Charlie No. 1 below. The date of this variously given as the 16th and 17th of August, the former date being generally regarded as the probable one.

After staking, they hastened to Forty-Mile, forgetting their promise to Henderson, who by every moral right was entitled to a claim near the rich ground they undoubtedly had discovered. They recorded their claims before Inspector Constantine, the recorder or acting gold commissioner, and named the creek "Bonanza."

Carmack's own story of "$2.50 to the pan" was not believed, though it was not doubted that he found gold. A stampede followed. Drunken men were thrown into boats. One mas was tied and made to go along. But there was no excitement beyond what attends a stampede for locations on any creek on which gold has been found. There are always persons about a mining camp ready to start a stampede simply as a chance, whether good prospects have been found or not. Whole creeks have been staked out in the belief that gold would subsequently be found. So the excitement of this earlier stage was a small significance. It was that of the professional "stampeder," so to speak - rounders about the saloons, some new arrivals, but few old miners, the latter being still in the diggings up the creek.

Among the first to hear of the strike were 4 men from up river - Dan McGilvray, Dave McKay,, Dave Edwards, and Harry Waugh - and they located Nos. 3, 14, 15 and 16 below Discovery. These men did the first sluicing that was done on the creek, and they made the first clean-up, with five boxes set. The figures are lack for their first shovelling, but on the second they cleaned up thirteen and a half ounces of gold ($329.50), being five hours' work of one man shovelling. The gold varied from the size of pinheads to nuggets, one of $12 being found. Now the Klondike magnifier began his work, with this curious result, that the "lies" of today were surpassed by the truth of tomorrow, until it came to be accepted that, "You can't tell no lies about Klondike." McGilvray and the rest had perhaps $1500 - surely a large sum for the time they had worked. Ladue Weighed the gold, and as he came out of the store he said to some assembled miners, "How's that for two and a half days' shovelling in - $4008?" The liability to exaggeration about a mining camp is so great that it is impossible for anyone to escape who writes or speaks in the midst of affairs concerning any specific find.  A man with a town-site must also be allowed a great deal of latitude in such matters. But soon the joke was on the other side. Men actually on the spot would not believe anything they heard. Two of the men working on Indian River came down and heard of the strike. Said one to his partner, "Shall we go up and stake?" Replied the other, "Why, I wouldn't go across the river on that old Siwash's word" (Carmack). They went down Forty-Mile. Another party, one of whom was Swan Peterson, who bought in on No. 33 Eldorado, came along at the same time, and argued for 3 hours at the mouth of the Klondike whether they should go up, and finally went on to Circle City.

There were few old-timers in the procession. They knew all about Klondike. It was nothing but a "moose pasture". It was not like other places where they had seen gold. They climbed the hills and walked along the divide until they could look down into the valley of Bonanza. Here many of them stopped and threw up their hands in disgust. Others went the round of the creek, cursing and swearing at those who told them to come here. One old-timer got up as far as No. 20 above, where the last stakes were. He surveyed the prospect, and as he turned away remarked, "I'll leave it to the Swedes." Louis Rhodes staked it right afterwards. After he had written his name he said to his companions, being ashamed of staking in such a place, that he would cut his name off for two bits. The next summer he took out $44,000 and odd dollars.

But all that and much more was hidden in the future. A Klondike claim was not considered worth anything. One-half interest in one of the richest Eldorado claims was sold for a sack of flour. A few thousand dollars could have bought up the creek from end to end.

There was a Swede, by the name of Charlie Anderson, who had just learned of the Klondike strike. By the time Anderson reached the new diggings there was nothing left. He returned to Dawson. There a gambler approached him and said, "Charlie, don't you want to buy a claim?" "I don't care if I do. How much do you want?" "I'll let you have No. 29 on Eldorado for $800." "I'll take it," replied Anderson, who had taken out a considerable sum that summer from a claim on Miller Creek, at the head of Sixty-Mile River, and he weighed out the dust. The enterprising salesman went about boasting how he had played Charlie for a "sucker",  only he wanted some one to kick him for not having asked him $1200.  The man who sold the claim is still a poor man. When Eldorado began to "prove up," even Anderson could not realize the enormous value of the claim, from which there will come out $400,000, if the remaining two-fifths are as rich as the three-fifths that have been worked thus far.

A letter came down river over the ice to Circle City. There were about 75 men in Oscar's saloon when the letter was read. It was somewhat to this effect, telling Ashby to buy all the property he could on Klondike, it did not make any difference what the prices were: "This is one of the richest strikes in the world. It is a world-beater. I can't tell how much gold we are getting to the pan. I never saw or heard of the like of such a thing in my life. I myself saw $150 panned out of one pan of dirt, and I think they are getting as high as $1000." The crowd in the saloon had a big laugh, and thought so little of it that they never spoke of it again. Soon after another letter came. This time it was Harry Spencer and Frank Densmore, from a party with whom they were well acquainted. Densmore at once fitted out a dog-team and went up. After he got up he wrote back to Spencer, relating all the particulars. He repeated the words of the others - namely, that he really could not tell what they were finding: it was immensely rich; he had never seen anything like it.  Now Spencer and Densmore had large interests in Circle City, so the men knew it could be no lie; they were compelled to believe it. The wildest stampede resulted.  Every dog that could be bought, begged, or stolen was pressed into service, and those who could not get dogs started hauling their own sleds, men and even women, until in 2 weeks there were not 20 people left in Circle, and of those some were cripples and could not travel. In a short while there were not even that number left, a report giving the actual number as 2 men and one woman.

By the time the Circle City crowd arrived Bonanza was staked to No. 60 below and into the 60's above, and also the side creeks, Eldorado and Adams. It soon came out that few of the original stakers were left, having sold out at ridiculous prices.

There were from three to four hundred miners at work about Circle City, and nearly all had money, the United States mint returns giving the amount of gold cleaned up that season in Birch Creek as $900,000.

The first mail that went out by dog-sled carried letters to friends and relatives, advising them that a big strike had been made. It reached them in January and February, and they started.

Bonanza was staked into the 80's above and Eldorado to No. 33 - or over three miles - when a party of miners, including George Wilson and James McNamee, went over the divide to Gold Bottom, where Henderson was still working.

Henderson asked them where they were from. They replied, "Bonanza Creek."

Henderson says that he did not want to display his ignorance. He had never heard of "Bonanza" Creek. At length he ventured to ask where "Bonanza" Creek was. They pointed over the hill.

"'Rabbit Creek!' What have you got there?"
"We have the biggest thing in the world."
"Who found it?"
"McCormick."

It is said Henderson threw down his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart that it was some time before he could speak.

Henderson was later injured on Indian River. He was under the doctor's care all winter at Circle City. Obliged to realize some money, he sold No. 3 above Discovery on Hunker Creek for $3000 - a mere fraction of its value. Henderson would have worked this claim had he been able to do so, and he would still have found himself in possession of a comfortable fortune, and thereby received some compensation for his many discouragements. Although he did not himself make the discovery on Bonanza, he was yet the direct cause and means of that discovery being made. When the news of the wonderful richness of Bonanza burst upon the world, Henderson was forgotten.

Mr. Ogilvie, at Forty Mile, kept his government posted concerning the developments of the fall. Mr. Ogilvie gave Henderson full credit in a letter, although Carmack had made the discovery on Bonanza Creek. In October 1898 Henderson returned to Seattle by steamer, having been robbed of $1100 onboard, with nothing left but a golden carpenter's rule and myrtle-leaves badge of the Yukon Order of Pioneers, of which he was a member. For some reason he insisted on pinning it himself upon my vest saying, "You keep this.  I will lose it to. I am not fit to live among civilized men." He returned to Aspen, where his wife and child were, to work again at the same mine where he worked 6 years ago, before he went into the Yukon. Canada owes not less to Henderson than California to Marshall, the discoverer of gold at Sutter's mill. The miner's who knew have always given Henderson credit.

After Bonanza began to show up richer than anything before known in the Yukon, many who did not believe the ground was particularly valuable until the true nature of the strike was made evident by the labor of others began to realize what good judgment they had shown in picking out such "choice locations."

One-half of No. 3 Eldorado was sold for a sack of flour. The owners did not think enough of it to work it and put it out on a "lay" and took a "lay" themselves on another claim. The "laymen" struck it the first hole, and out of thirty burnings took out $40,000.

At No. 2 above on Bonanza a narrow slice was over measured by 78 feet. The slice was taken out directly opposite the mouth of Skookum. Dick Lowe wanted $900 for it. No one was so foolish as to pay so much for a narrow strip of ground. He tried to let it out on a "lay", but no one wanted to work it for an interest. The first hole was put down by his present foreman, and he did not find a cent. Further account of what is probable the richest piece of ground in the whole Klondike, when he was sending the gold down on pack-horses.

A 10 foot fraction of No. 37, because it was over measured, was worth $20,000. Nothing on Eldorado was too small.

"Swiftwater Bill" took a 100-foot "lay" on No. 13 Eldorado. Seven holes were put down before the pay was struck. The buyer paid $45,000 for it, with 6 others put $10,00 down, put in a rocker, and paid for the claim in 6 weeks. "Swiftwater Bill's" chief claim to attention was the way he "blew in " money and the ease with which his "leg could be pulled" by the fair sex, spent $40,000, and had to borrow $5000 to go outside with. He wore his mukluks in the streets of San Francisco, threw money into the streets, and, in other ways ostentatiously displayed his new wealth, his vanity and craving for notoriety making him ridiculous even in Dawson.

How much gold came out of the ground that first summer can never be known. Two and a half million is probably not far from the mark. The richness of the fifteen miles reported by Mr. Ogilvie was much exaggerated.  The pan of dirt that he saw washed out gave him reason for believing, upon computation, that there might be, as he stated, actually $4,000,000 in each claim. But these were not averages. Far, Far from it.

One hundred and thirty thousand dollars came out of claim No. 6 and it's fraction. On No. 11 Eldorado five box-lengths cleaned up $61,000. One thousand dollars to the foot is the top figure, on an average, for best of Eldorado, but the cost is 1/3rd for taking it out. The first year showed nuggets of all sizes up to one of $585 (est. at 1 oz. = $17) from No. 36 Eldorado. The bulk of the gold, amounting to about $1,500,000, went out to St. Michael's, where waited the good steamer Portland , of the North American Transportation and Trading Company, and the Excelsior, of the Alaska Commercial Company. But not all the fortunate ones started for civilization with their new wealth, so not accounted for.

Six thousand souls wintered in Dawson, of whom 5/6ths did not know whether their stock of provisions would last till spring.

Parties went out, intending to bring in over the ice large quantities of food, believing it would sell at $2 a pound before spring, instead of the going rate of $1. But they did not realize that the market was limited, that a few persons might pay fabulous prices, but the great majority could not do so even if they starved.

With the fear of famine over us, and some allowing themselves but one meal a day, or indulging even in bacon only twice a week, there were few with the equanimity of our genial friend Captain Anderson, Arizona frontiersman, who wrote to the anxious ones at home that he didn't know whether there was going to be starvation or not, but, anyhow, he was eating the best first and saving the poorest till last.

We had been living on soup-vegetables and beans for several days, in consequence of forgetting to sweeten eighteen loaves of sour-dough bread with soda, which loaves not even passing dogs would eat. Our last tin of condensed milk was gone, and there was none to be had for the love of money. Our remaining butter - part of a firkin bought at Dyea - we now called either "butter" or "cheese"; it might pass for either.  It looked as if it would have to be flapjack and beans for dinner. Pelletier, with a wise look on his face, said, "Leave it to me!" That night he came back with some bundles, which he threw down on the table, and proudly unwrapped a can of condensed cream, two cans of French peas, and - a can of turkey!

In a new mining camp the saloon is the centre of social life. At Dawson, shut out from the world, under conditions that tried the very souls of men, it was less wonder that men were drawn together into the only public places where a friendly fire burned by day and night, and where, in the dim light of a kerosene lamp, they might see one another's faces. The Yukon saloon was a peculiar institution. Most of the proprietors were old-timers who had been miners, men of honor and character, respected in a community where a man was valued, not according to his pretensions or position in "society", but in proportion to his manliness and intrinsic worth.

Of the half-dozen or more places of amusement and recreation, the most pretentious was the "Opera House," a large log building, with a bar and various gambling layouts in the front, and a theatre in the rear, with a stage, boxes at each side, and benches on the floor for the audience.  It gave vaudeville performances, lasting several hours each evening, the performers being mostly a troupe who stampeded with the rest from Circle City. The price of admissions was half a dollar, admission being secured, according to the usual Yukon custom, by first purchasing for that sum a drink or a cigar at the bar. At the end of the performance the benches were taken up, and dancing began and continued all night. The receipts of the place were enormous, footing upwards of $22,000 a month.

At one dance hall, "Pete's Place", on cold nights it cost nothing to warm oneself at the stove, to listen to the music, to look on at the scene of gayety, and wet ones dry throat at the water-barrel. A water-barrel in a saloon, think of it! Yes, in the old-time Yukon saloon it stood in a corner, or at the end of the bar, and was kept filled with pure cold water at the cost of $10 a barrel, while a tin dipper hung on a nail for the use of all.

Pete himself, one of the few saloon-keepers who had not been miners in the "lower country", served the drinks behind the bar in shirt-sleeves, with his round head and bull-dog expressions, hair carefully oiled and parted, and dark, curled mustache, smiling, courteous, and ignorant - a typical "outside" bar-tender.

The orchestra consisted of a piano, violin, and flute, and occupied chairs on a raised platform in one corner of the dance-floor. The ladies were never backward in importuning partners for the dance; but any reluctance upon the part of would-be dancers was overcome by a young man in shirt-sleeves, who in a loud, penetrating voice would begin to exhort:
"Come on, boys - you can all waltz - let's have a nice, long, juicy waltz;" and then, when 3 or 4 couples had taken the floor, "Fire away!" he would call to the musicians, and then the fun began. When the dancers had circled around the room 5 or 6 times the music would stop with a jerk, and the couples, with a precision derived from long practice, would swing towards the bar, and push their way through the surging mass of "rubber-necks" (lookers on), and line up in front of the bar.
"What'll you have, gents - a little whiskey?"

Sacks were tossed out on the bar, Pete pushed in front of each "gent" a small "blower," and the "gent" poured in some gold-dust, which Pete took to a large gold-scale at the end of the bar, weighed out $1, and returned the balance to the sack. The lady received as her commission on the dance a round, white ivory chip, good for 25 cents. This continued on, often the same men danced and caroused night after night, until their "pokes," or gold-sacks, grew lean, and then they disappeared up the gulch again. Some women were employed at a salary of $125 a week and commissions.

When whiskey runs short the Yukoner falls back upon a villanous decoction made of sour dough, or brown sugar, and known as "hootch". The still is made of coal-oil cans, the worm of pieces of India-rubber boot-tops cemented together. This crude still is heated over an ordinary Yukon stove. The liquor obtained is clear white, and is flavoured with blueberries or dried peaches, to suit the taste. There were persons willing to take their oath that the regular whiskey sold over some of the bars was worse than "hootch."

There were men destined not to have fortunes. Very late at night, when Dawson had turned in for a snatch of sleep, one might see them lying on benches and tables, homeless, stranded men, half-sick, and dependent from day to day on the charity of strangers, and who, but for this welcome bench or table, had no place to lay their heads. Something of the generous spirit of the old Yukon life made these men welcome.

Gambling is a miner's proper amusement, provided he also pays his bills. Every saloon had it's gambling layouts. "Black Jack," poker, roulette, and craps were play assiduously, some having a preference for one, some another, but the favorite game was faro. A crowd might always be found around the faro-table, either keeping track of "cases," or simply looking on at the play. Twenty-five cents was the lowest chip, the white, the reds and blues being respectively $1 and $5. The "dealer," sitting behind the table and turning the cards with mechanical regularity, and the "lookout," who saw that "no bets were overlooked," were paid a salary of $15 to $20 a day, and each faro-table had to win from $50 to $80 every day to make a profit for the house, from which a moral may be deducted as to the wickedness of playing faro - on the wrong side of the table. At times the play was very large and correspondingly exciting. A young boy who had sold a rich claim "dropped" $18,000 in the course of 36 hours' play. Hundreds of dollars were made or lost on the turn of a card.

One day Joe Brand walked in and threw down his sack on the "high card," saying, "That's good for a hundred." He won, and was given an order on the weigher for $100. Holding up the slip, he asked, "Is this good for the drinks?" "It is," was the reply, and he ordered up glasses to the number of two hundred, had them filled with whiskey, and then invited every one up a drink. A number in the saloon hung back, whom he vainly sought to make drink. He passed off the refusal with a laugh, saying that it must be pretty mean whiskey when no one would drink it.

Jake who ran a lunch counter at "Pete's," was particularly fond of dancing and "craps," a game he doubtless learned when a messenger boy in Philadelphia. After a prosperous day's business Jake would "stake" a dollar, and if he won a sufficient sum he would spend the night dancing. He was too good a business man to spend the profits of business dancing, and so we always knew when we saw Jake on the floor that he had been lucky that day at craps.

When the miner came to town on business, or on pleasure bent, he was obliged to choose between staying up all night in the saloons or going to one of the half-dozen establishments by courtesy designated "hotels." Not even a person whose sensibilities had been blunted by a year in the Yukon could abide in one even for one night in comfort or safety. Sometimes a room was divided into small rooms or pens by partitions as high as one's head, with just space for a single cot; or else the interior was filled with tiers of double-decked bunks of rude scantling, accommodating 20 or 30 sleepers. The bedding in each bunk consisted of rough blankets and a very small pillow. There was a nail in the wall to hang one's coat upon, and the landlord left a bit of candle to light the guest to bed. The only ventilation to this upper room was through generous cracks in the floor and a window at each end, which in cold winter were kept scrupulously shut. When heated to a torrid pitch by a large stove on the lower floor, with every bunk full of unwashed men who have taken off their rubber boots or mukluks, the air of this veritable "bull-pen" before morning was such that no one could be induced to repeat the experience except when confronted with the positive alternative of lying out of doors without protection from the cold. Even worse than the thick, nauseating atmosphere were the vermin with which the blankets were alive, as there was no possible means in winter of getting rid of them short of destruction of the bedding. Clothes washing was expensive, unless one did it himself. Heavy blankets could not be washed at all. Persons regarded themselves as particularly cleanly if they changed underwear every two weeks.


:D :D No details spared by Adney, imagine living like that today. We wouldn't make it. :D :D

But, I do remember my grandparents saying that 1 bath a week was all you got. And there was no bath tub in the early days. You had a pitcher of water and basin, which was a huge bowl essentially. Even when I was a baby there wasn't any bath tub in these parts and I'm not that old. Had running water, but bathed at the sink. I see these westerns with these steel bath tubs in hotels, no such thing here in great grandpas day. And won't find any laying out on scrap piles on the farm neither. That was for luxury men.

The hard life led by the miner in winter often brings on a disease known as "scurvy." The symptoms consist of a hardening of the tendons, especially those under the knee, a darkening of the skin, and an apparent lifelessness of the tissue, so that when a finger is pressed against the skin a dent remains for some time afterwards. It is rarely fatal, though it may incapacitate the victim for work for a whole season. It yields readily to a treatment of spruce-leaf tea, taken internally. Various specific causes are given, but physicians say that the real cause is yet unknown.

From the establishment of the hospital in the fall of 1897 up to April 1st, 1898, the number of death was twenty-four, of which seven or eight were from typhoid fever. The hospital was a godsend, and many a man came out from under the tender care there with a better personal understanding of what it meant to devote one's life to doing good for his fellow men.

Now and then we witnessed the sad sight of a funeral - some poor fellow borne to his last resting place far from his own people, but never without friends. In order to make a grave, it was necessary to burn the frosty ground exactly as if for mining. A sight witnessed perhaps no place else in the world was a hearse drawn by dogs. The rude coffin of spruce was placed on a Yukon sled, to which was hitched a team of 4 gray Malamut dogs.

[Vit. C was first isolated in 1928]

The aurora borealis, or northern lights, of which we expected to see so much, failed to show the brilliant conventional arc of lights represented in pictures of the Arctic regions. A clear yellow glow on the horizon, like that from the rising of the sun, lay in the north, and from this at times streams of light shot upward, often to the zenith, and took the form of waving bands or curtains of light, pink and green, swiftly, silently moving and shifting. Sometimes the light seemed very near, and then it seemed that we could hear a rustling, but whether it was the rustling of the light or the rushing of the river beneath the ice we could never tell, it was so subtle and illusive; and again it seemed as if its rays caught the pale-green light of the moon, which shone as bright as day in the cloudless sky.

At Dawson the valley of the river lay north and south, and the sun was visible in the south for several hours at the edge of the distant hilltop; but in all the deep valleys which lay in the other direction the sun was not visible from November until February. Fortunately the extreme cold was accompanied with little or no wind, but the slightest movement of air cut like a knife. In the woods there was absolutely no air stirring.

    Interesting that you mention bathing in the Yukon. I spent a winter there in the Porcupine mts back in 71. Over 70 men in the camp, eight to a bunkhouse. One shower and one toilet with a shortage of water.I went 31 days only washing my hands. 
    I grew up only having a bath on Saturday so was sort of prepared for it. The city boys used to a shower every day didn't do so well. Went on to camps for ten more years all over the world but none near as bad as that.

Yeah, my dad turned one bedroom upstairs into the first bathroom we ever had, that was around 1973. That meant no more need for the outhouse to. That would have been a long cold walk out on the northwestern corner of the woodshed. Them days we had a big woodshed for the kitchen stove with 12 cords of split wood. No insulation in them old farm houses, not even news paper on the boards in this one, some houses did, but that was all. Plastered walls/ceilings used horse hair here. ;D

A hard way to make a living.

   I rented apartments and houses for our team in Kristiansand Norway and one of the first places I looked at had a shower in the kitchen. I mentioned it to Ruth, our Noggie daughter- our former exchange student, and she said "Oh, that is old technology. When people here first started putting indoor plumbing in the homes they started with the kitchen to the sinks and then when they got a little extra money laid by they'd add a shower. They'd put it in the kitchen because that was where the water and drain lines had already been run and was much faster and cheaper than putting them in a separate bathroom as is currently done."

  I did not look behind the pantry to see if they had a toilet sitting there. ::)

She's exactly right, that is the way it was around here. But, no, the 'toilet' then was the out house. :D The bath water or wash water for the clothes was drawn up from a cistern here. But in my time it was well water, because dad got that plumbed in from the well head that had always been hand pumped out in the yard. Every old farm house in these parts had a cistern. But north of here, at mom's father's place, there weren't any cisterns at all. I remember that water line from the well. It never got covered for weeks. At around 5 years old, I got my first bee sting from that trench. The bees had a hole in the dirt, but had another exit. I plugged one end, bad mistake. You don't ever forget a bumble bee sting. :D

The moment the spring sun gained a place in the sky the snow on the southern hillsides dwindled away like magic, turning the creek trails into streams of water which grew in volume with each succeeding day. The forests seemed  to burst into life and the air was laden with the song and twitter of birds. By the middle of April the snow was gone from the flat at Dawson, and the sun, although not so high in the heavens, was shining for as many hours as in the middle United States on the longest day of the year.

The last teams in from the outside brought confirming news of the magnitude of the Klondike stampede. The crowd pouring over the passes was such as the world had never seen before. At Skagway the woods were cleared off, buildings were going up "faster than they could get the lumber," and the town contained seven thousand people, and was growing fast. A toll road, known as "Brackett's Road," had been constructed over white Pass for wagons and horse-sleds, and freighting was reduced to 15 cents a pound from Skagway to Bennett. Where three thousand horses lay dead, a stream of men, dogs, and horses were moving easily. Dyea, which in December consisted of three white men's houses, was a mile and a half long and contained from five to six thousand souls. A stream of human beings dragged their hand-sleds up the now smooth trail, and over the summit all day long marched a thin black line of men with packs, locking step, so close together that they could touch. First a whim, or endless cable, was put, for drawing loaded sleds to the top, and later an "aerial tramway," a steel cable elevated on posts, with swinging buckets, was operating between Sheep Camp and Crater Lake, goods being carried from Dyea to Lindeman for 8 cents a pound. The Canadian government had made good its claim to the passes as the international boundary by establishing customs offices at both summits and there taking duties on American goods. The mounted police, in fear of famine, had been allowing no person without credentials to cross the summit without a thousand pounds of provisions. Along the lakes the new-comers were putting boats together, ready to start for Dawson with the opening of the river in May.

For upward of 8 years the US government, through Dr. Sheldon Jackson, General Agent of Education for Alaska, had endeavored to effect the introduction into western Alaska of the domesticated deer, which they secured annually from the Siberian herdsmen, until, along with their natural increase, the herd numbered upward of fifteen hundred deer, stationed at Teller Reindeer Station, Port Clarence, and at Golovin Bay, Behring Sea. The main purpose of the movers in this enterprise was to furnish food and clothing to the starving Inuit, and, eventually, means of transportation in winter to and from our far northern stations, a service which deer should perform as well in Alaska as in Lapland.

Eight whaling-vessels were imprisoned in the ice at Point Barrow. Lieutenant Jarvis, from Port Townsend, was instructed to take all the available deer, and he ultimately reached Point Barrow, having successfully driven 382 deer a distance of over 800 miles. Consequently, there being no government deer available, Congress on the 18th of December, passed "An act authorizing the Secretary of War, in his discretion, to purchase subsistence stores, supplies, and materials for the relief of people who are in the Yukon River country, to provide means for their transportation and distribution," and made an appropriation therefor. Dr. Jackson was dispatched to Norway to purchase deer, and on the 28th of February reached New York with 539 deer, also sleds and harnesses complete, and 114 Lapps and Finns to drive the deer. The deer reached Seattle on March 7th, having lost but one of their number; but here, while waiting nine days for transportation, they were fed on grass, through the desire of the officer having them in charge to save the reindeer-moss that came with them, and several died. Finally, the herd reached Haine's Mission, Pyramid Harbor, from which point they should have been at once driven to the moss-fields, a few miles distant; but instructions regarding them sent to the officer in command of the US soldiers at Dyea, though mailed at Skagway, did not reach him, 4 miles distant, until a week later, so that when the order came to move it was too late; they were so weakened by unaccustomed food that they began to die rapidly, and by the time they reached abundant pasturage in the Chilkat pass, only 50 miles distant, but 183 deer remained alive, and the expedition was abandoned. The survivors were subsequently driven to Circle City.

Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska (http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED613635.pdf)

At Dawson building lots were held at extravagant prices. As high as $20,000 was paid for a desirable corner lot for a saloon, while a 2-story log building in the centre of town was worth with the lot anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000.  The government surveyed what public land had not been previously granted to town-site claimants into 40x60 foot lots for cabins, and assessed locators from $200 to $500 each, prices which they justified as being only half the "market value." Three sawmills, running night and day, were unable to supply the demand for lumber, which was worth at the mill $150 to $200 per thousand feet. Men stood with teams waiting, taking the boards as they fell from the saw.  Nails were so scarce that a keg of 100 lbs brought $500; a single pound cost $6, and $3.50 per pound was paid for burned nails from the ruins of the "Opera-house." So that a building of the size of some of those that went up cost $500 to probably $10,000 for the shell alone. A woodworking establishment supplied most of the fittings of saloons and stores.

i was up in that country 3 yrs ago. we got on the boat in Vancouver bc then up to Alaska. Juneau and Skagway are kinda cool but they are a tourist trap. from there it was the white pass and Yukon railroad at the top you get on a bus for the next 2 days. next stop Whitehorse. the girl driving the bus knew her history and told a lot of it. like how to tell the air temp with different types of whisky some would slush at -50 others at -60. there is a big river boat in Whitehorse. next stop Dawson city. there was a red ford raptor parked in front of the store banged up a bit . i told everyone it was parkers from goldrush

Quote from: snowstorm on March 12, 2022, 09:41:46 AM
like how to tell the air temp with different types of whisky some would slush at -50 others at -60.

Adney tells of this in this book, so I can bet that is where she got it from. The book is considered an historical document. :)

He mentioned about tossing the thermometer he had and using the whisky to gauge the temperature. :D

"Standard Spirit Thermometer" ;D
mercury freezes at -40
coal oil (kerosene) freezes -35 to -55, according to grade
"pain killer" freezes at -72
"St Jacob's Oil" freezes at -75
best Hudson's Bay rum freezes at -80

   I assume the domestic deer they mentioned are Reindeer.

Yep, from Europe and Asia, not the native caribou.

Thanks for posting this!

Recently read "Skagway in days primeval" by J Bernard Moore, a similar diary that has more details about the route the Stampeders took in, and the boats and steamships than it has details on mining. A great compliment to what you are sharing here and I look forward to the next installment.

@mudfarmer (https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=profile;u=27318) I'm just giving an abridged version, there is a lot more details in there. ;)  You may have missed the first few posts of the hard trail in there. She was pretty tough. I have not read on ahead yet, but there may be more on the steamships in the next 130 pages. ;D

It's a great look at a long past snapshot of time. Adney was actually writing for 'Harper's Weekly.' Glad to share it. :)

The prices for housing were steep!!!
Money to be made.

On May 1st muddy water in Bonanza Creek showed that sluicing had begun. On the 3d it came over the low bank, flooding the woods and raising three inches on the floor of the cabin. It is not exactly enjoyable having to wade about the house in rubber boots, fighting mosquitoes, trying to cook flapjacks or make a cup of tea over the stove, and climbing in and out of a high bunk with boots on.  At the end of just 2 days I struck for town. The Klondike was still frozen fast to the bottom, but the river was running bank-full, to all appearances open. Two bridges over the Klondike had just been finished: one on seven stout piers at the mill, and the other at the moth of the Klondike, a suspension foot-bridge in two spans, built of boards and scantling suspended from on inch-wire cable over large spruce spars. The ground-ice, loosening from the bottom, now began to heave, and was jamming dangerously on the shoals. The ice was already level with the floor of the bridge when some dynamite loosened the jam and the ice moved out. Just then a cry was raised, "The upper bridge is gone!" and, looking, we saw some sticks of sawed timber float by.

What had taken place shows the power of ice. Only two piers remained, and icebergs as large as small cabins were setting about in the river bed and among the stumps and cabins on the flat. Several men, who were wringing out clothes and drying portions of outfits in the sun, said they saw the ice jam above the piers and begin to pile up, with the water behind it. Suddenly it broke over the brink and started across the flat, making for the cabins. The same moment a gigantic floe in the middle of the jam - and that was all that saved 75 to 100 cabins and twice that many lives - started, picked the bridge up as it it had been a bunch of matches, and the rest followed crashing, bearing 5 spans befote it; and, thus relieved, the water fell as quickly as it rose, leaving the flat strewn with ice, logs, and lumber. The ice crowded again below into a slough at the mouth of Bonanza Creek, and the cabins of the settlement were flooded to the eaves for several days, their occupants, some of whom were sick, escaping to the roofs, where they remained until boats came to their rescue.

On the 6th of May the Yukon began to rise rapidly, lifting the ice, where it remained fast in front of the town. Hundreds of anxious men kept to the streets that night, believing that if it jammed as the Klondike had it would sweep the town away. The water stood within 2 feet of the top of the bank. When a big floe, 40 feet across, struck the front of the barrier, it half rose out of the water, then dived under, or turned on edge, crunched into the front with a dull roar, and remained there.  At 4 o'clock on the morning of the 8th the cry was raised, "The ice is going out!" and everybody rushed out in time to see the bridge of ice crack, groan, then slowly push together and stop; then slowly, slowly the whole mass began to move, and in a few minutes there was nothing but a swift river, with cakes of ice as big as cabins strewn along the banks. A few days later a "June rise", caused by the melting snows and glaciers in the mountains, we found Klondike City under water, the mouth of the Klondike like a mill pond, the suspension bridge gone, and numbers of people, many of whom we recognized as new-comers, going about in boats where we had lately walked in fancied security.

Probably 200 boats of various kinds. from Lake Superior birch-canoes to scows with horse on them, were tied up at Klondike City and the Dawson bank of the Klondike, and the hillside was white with tents of newcomers and others who had been driven out of the cabins on the low ground. The central part of Dawson was under from one to 5 feet of water. The barracks were cut off, and people were going for their mail in boats and canoes, while the gold commissioner and his staff were driven to a tent on higher ground. Enterprising boatmen were carrying passengers along the main street, charging 50 cents a head.

It was now at midnight as bright as day. The sun rose behind Moosehide Mountain, swung around halfway to the zenith, and disappeared behind the mountain again after 24 hours continuous shining. From the hilltops the sun was clearly visible during the 24 hours. In the tents it was uncomfortably hot, and the glare was trying to the eyes and nerves. Not only could one easily see to read inside a tent at midnight, but it was light enough outdoors for a "snapshot" with a good photographic lens. During mid-day the temperature rose to 70 degrees in the shade. The very sparrows and snowbirds in the brush on the hillside lay still by day and sang and hunted at night. No one ever felt like going to bed. It was a considerable bother, without watch or compass, to tell the time of day.

A few persons lived on the tops of their cabins, with a tent and stove, and a boat tied at the corner of the roof to get ashore with. From my own tent, on a steep bluff overlooking the whole scene, I would see a man at say, 11 pm, push off from shore, pole over to a cabin, clamber out onto the roof, take off his shoes, walk over to a pile of blankets, unroll them, then take off his coat, place it for pillow, and turn in for a night's sleep - all in broad daylight.

The river subsided rapidly, and the newcomers continued to pour in. Each one said that the crowd was behind them. Their tents whitened the hillsides, and whole acres were covered so thickly that from a little distance they appeared as masses of white. At Klondike City, along the Klondike for a mile, and down the bank of the Yukon to the far end of tent, among boulders and rocks, where ever there was a space of ground large and dry enough, there were tents. From the point of hill above my tent I counted 2800 tents, including those on scows, in each of which were 3 to 5 or more persons were then living.

The boats, from the graceful Peterborough canoe to freight-scows forty feet long, carrying 20 tons, were tied up side by side along one and three-quarter miles of waterfront, a solid phalanx from one to six feet deep!

It is a motley throng - every degree of person gathered from every corner of the earth, from every State of the Union, and from every city - weather beaten, sunburned, with snow glasses over their hats, just as they came from the passes.

It was a sight just to walk along the waterfront and see the people, how they lived. Some slept in tents on their scows, one stumbled over others on the ground under robes or blankets.

Outfits of all descriptions were placarded "for sale," and these were surrounded by representatives of eating places buying provisions, or old timers buying underwear and tobacco. Tinned goods, butter, milk, fresh potatoes were eagerly asked for. The first to get in with provisions made small fortunes, for by good luck they brought the very things that would sell best. The fist case of thirty dozen eggs brought $300, in two weeks fell to $3 a dozen; milk $1 a can; tinned mutton, $2.50 a pound; oranges, apples, and lemons, $1 each; potatoes 50 cents a pound; a watermelon, $25. Regular market stands were opened for the sale of vegetables of all kinds, and the water front looked like a row of booths at a fair.

Every conceivable thing was displayed for sale - clothing, furs, moccasins, hats and shoes, groceries, meat, jewelry. There were hardware and thoroughly equipped drug and dry goods stores. In a brief space of a few days there seemed to be nothing that could not be purchased in Dawson.

When meals dropped in price to $2.50, no longer obliged to live on "home made" flapjacks, beans, and bacon, until, as one man expressed it, he was "ashamed to look a hog in the face." What a feast, the fresh vegetables and the curried mutton! Two popular ladies were set up in the ice cream business. A large stock of condensed cream and $100 worth of ice were provided (ice was cut and handled at $1/hr). The ladies were asked how business was getting on. "Oh," they replied, "we're doing just splendid, we have sold $45 worth of ice cream, but we'll have to have a little more ice." ;)

Thousands of men came into Dawson expecting to find work at wages. In this they met with disappointment. There was plenty to do for the man of resource, who could make his own job. The camp was, as it will be for some time to come, largely a prospector's camp.

Many, after a few days or a few weeks, condemned the country off-hand, where we knew that six months or a year was required to fully comprehend the "genius" of Klondike.

As an instance of what many were expecting - I was working on a large map in the mining exchange and an old man of about 60 began to ask me if I knew of any "bars" in the neighborhood where he could work out enough gold to get out of the country. He wanted to go over to Indian River, of which he had apparently read something; but he did not know that he was not physically strong enough to carry more provisions than would take him there and back, much less stop and work. He had not a cent of money, and only twenty pounds of grub, but, as he said he had a shovel, I advised him, as he was one of the first of the new-comers, to proceed at once to Eldorado and get a job shovelling-in at $1.50 an hour. Then, when he had a little money, he might think of prospecting. That man, or any man fixed as he was, might stake the richest claim in Klondike and not be able to get the gold out, who certainly went away cursing the country, cursing those who persisted against evidence in calling it a "poor man's country"!

I was sitting in the tent of a Seattle mining broker; the day was hot and sweltering. There was a tall figure among the throng who wore a pair of deer-skin pants fringed on the outer seam, a loose blue-flannel shirt, belted in, and a wide brimmed gray hat, from beneath which locks as soft as a girl's straggled to his shoulders. His whole air suggested a romantic type of "cowboy". He strolled along the street as we had seen him for the past few days, approached the open door, and, leaning in the welcome shade against the door-post, began talking to Mr. Hannon. The conversation proceeded for a while, touching matters of general interest. At length, and there was a tone of sadness in his voice, he looked squarely in Mr. Hannon's eyes as he said, "You don't remember me?" "No, I can't say I do," replied Mr. Hannon. "Why, don't you know me? I'm the barber, across from your place in Seattle." And two friends, who had parted 8 months before in Seattle, wrung hands in silence while a tear trickled down the cheek of each.

Thanks again for doing this.
Very interesting read.

Where last year two ocean vessels met at St Michael the five steamers that supplied Dawson, more than twenty ocean steamers were headed for St Michael, and 47 river steamers, some of twice the tonnage of the largest previously on the river, and equalling in equipment and passenger accommodations the best Ohio and Mississippi river packets, were either on the stocks at Seattle or in sections on the deck of steamers for putting together at Dutch Harbor and St. Michael, or were already at St. Michael and within the Yukon, awaiting the breaking-up of the river. Never before was such activity seen on the West Coast. At one ship-yard in Seattle there were, at one time, 14 river steamers ordered by new companies. Every ocean going steam-vessel not already in the Skagway service, even from the "bone yards" of Seattle and San Francisco, was bought or chartered by companies of every degree of reliability.  Six large steamers came around the Horn, 5 being Red Star and American transatlantic liners. The two old companies advertised that they had more than doubled their previous equipment of river and ocean vessels.

The Canadian Minister of the Interior, the Hon. Clifford Sifton, granted to a firm of contractors, Messrs. Mackenzie & Mann, provisional right to construct a railroad from Stikeen River to Teslin Lake, in return for immense grants of gold-bearing land in the Klondike. Surveys were made and material delivered at the terminus of the proposed road, and tickets were sold in the principle cities of Europe and the United States for through passage to Dawson! In all, some thousands of unfortunate dupes ascended the Stikeen River, to find no railroad in existence, and 150 miles of horse trail on which there was insufficient forage for horses. On this, the most practicable of the "all Canadian" routes into the Yukon, a fleet of steamers were to ply on the Stikeen River, and a small steamer, the Anglian, was already built on Lake Teslin to ply between the lake and Dawson. Before the agreement with Mackenzie & Mann was ratified by parliament, however, a committee of miners, sent out from Dawson in the fall of 1897 to protest against the royalty tax, discovered and pointed out to Parliament the true inwardness of the proposed franchise, the profits on which had already been figured out as $34M , and as a result of the flood of light they let in upon Parliament concerning the Yukon, the bill was killed.**

**3,750,000 acres of mineral land in Klondike were to be granted  to the contractors, whereas the whole area about Dawson that had been prospected contained only 864,000 acres. They were to be allowed to run their lines along 960 miles of creeks, whereas Bonanza and Eldorado are only 31 miles long; the land was to be held in fee simple, instead of by annual lease; and royalties on gold were to be only 1%, instead of 10%, which were required of all others. In return for which they were to build a narrow gauge railroad, from a terminus only 26 miles nearer Dawson than Skagway - 150 miles of tracks, useless for 7 months of the year - with right to charge exorbitant tolls, and with monopoly of railway ingress to the Yukon for 5 years. It was a grab of nearly everything worth having in the Yukon district.

On the 15th of June the first mile of a narrow gauge railroad over the White Pass was laid in Skagway. The general name of "White Pass and Yukon Route" included 3 distinct charters. The Pacific and Arctic Railway and Navigation Company operate to the summit; the British Columbia Yukon Railway Company is to operate from there across British Columbia; while the British-Yukon Mining, Trading, and Transportation Company will build to Dawson. By November 15, 1899, the 20 miles to the summit was opened for traffic; the fare for a passenger was $5, or 25 cents a mile, making it probably the most expensive railroad travel in the world.

At Bennett a fleet of small steamers, the largest ninety feet in length, was built or put together for navigating the river and lakes to Dawson.

A few months had turned Skagway into a city with broad, graded streets and sidewalks, lighted by 1200 sixteen-candle-power incandescent lights and 50 street arc lights, and with one of the finest water supplies in the world, brought in pipes from a high mountain lake. It had a daily newspaper, and claimed to be the largest city in Alaska. It was governed by a civil council without tax-levying power, and preserved order with one United States marshal.

Probably  no fewer than 60,000 persons reached Seattle and neighboring cities prepared to bear down on Dawson. The war with Spain intervened, and in 3 weeks the Klondike boon was flat. It was estimated that not fewer than 100,000 persons had started from different parts of the world for Klondike. But 40,000 reached the headwaters of the Yukon.  After remaining a few days or weeks in Dawson, thousands left for camps in American territory or for home. A police census of the population encamped on the Dawson flat in midsummer made the number 18,000. Four to Five thousand people were in the mines, or in a radius of 50 miles, prospecting.

There were probably 2000 who started in for Dawson by way of Edmonton. The way was marked with many abandoned outfits, dead horses, and dead and dying men. No more than one could count on one hand made it to Dawson. It is no exaggeration to say that this pitiable endeavor to reach Klondike by an all Canadian route will cost the lives of 500 persons. With a full knowledge of the Canadian government of the situation, obtained through its own surveyors, it should have sounded a note of warning, instead of giving it public approval, as it did by official maps and reports.

The arrival of the first steamer in the spring at the starved out camp has been always hailed with the same delight as would a column coming to the relief of a beleaguered garrison. It was an event in which not only every miner was expected to turn out and take part by waving his hat and cheering, but as the deep whistle of the incoming boat was blown every Malamut dog lifted its voice in a doleful wail. 

When the first steamer drew into the wharf she proved to be the May West, a stranded boat that wintered near the Tanana River. She reported the Weare and the Bella high and dry on the banks at Circle City, where the ice had shoved them. Another stranded boat, the Seattle No. 1, came in soon after, followed by the Alaska Commercial Company's boat Victoria, and on the 30th the Merwin, with the ill-fated Eliza Anderson party, arrived at their destination after just one year of misfortune and hardships. Finally the Bella and Weare arrived, but not a word from St Michael until the arrival of the Healy on the 8th of July. The two old companies were clearly unmatched as to equipment, but there were at least 6 or 7 new ones firmly established on the river, with warehouses at Dawson and other points, and a large fleet of excellent steamboats. One of the strongest of the new companies, the Empire Line, was crippled by the withdrawal of their ocean vessels as government transports to the Philippines; while a number of river steamers, established by one authority at 20, belonging to this and other companies, were lost or delayed on the ocean voyage from Seattle and from Dutch Harbor, so that their passengers, who had paid for transportation to Dawson, were put to much delay and trouble at St. Michael.

Notwithstanding these delays, by September 1st 56 steamboats delivered cargoes of freight and passengers. The amount of provisions landed was 7540 tons, of which about half was brought up by the 2 old companies, the tonnage of the Alaska Commercial Company being the largest on the river. The North American Transportation and Trading Company, in addition to their own boats, chartered a number of steamers, or bought them outright, including their cargoes. By the date above mentioned nearly 20 steamers were on their way from St. Michael, most of which reached Dawson.

On the 14th of June a tiny whistle was heard in the river above town, and a diminutive steamer came puffing down to the wharf. She was 35 feet long and 8 feet wide, the Bellingham by name, and came under her own steam all the way from Bennett, successfully running both the Canyon and White Horse rapids. She attracted much attention as being the first steamer to arrive from up river. It was generally supposed that she was the first steamer that ever made the trip. But in the spring of 1895 a small propeller named the Witch Hazel, 27 feet long, was hoisted over Chilkoot by Frank Atkins and E. L. Bushnell, of Portland, Oregon, shot the rapids, and reached Fort Cudahy, where the hull now lies.

Within the next few days eight more steamers reached Dawson from the lakes. Two others, the Kalamazoo and the Joseph Clossett, were wrecked, one on Thirty-Mile River, the other in the Canyon. The Upper Yukon had never been previously ascended by a steamer above Fort Selkirk, and the experiment of transportation out that was was watched with interest.  By connecting with small steamers above the Canyon, an easier and quicker route was established. The Flora and the Nora, each 80 x 16 feet,  made connection at White Horse Rapids with their steamer Ora. The fare from Dawson to Bennett was $175, and from Bennett to Dawson $75, with board, but passengers were required to furnish their own bedding. The time was 5 to 6 days up the White Horse; to Bennett, seven.

The journey out to Seattle was made in 13 days, while, by a series of fortuitous connections, the trip from New York to Dawson was made by one Bartlett, a packer, in 13 and a half days, the schedule being as follows: New York to Seattle, 5 days; Seattle to Skagway, three and a half days; Skagway to Bennett, one day; Bennett to Dawson, 4 days. About 1500 persons went out this way. To meet the expected rush for passage on the first steamers out, the North American Transportation and Trading Company made a rate of $300 to Seattle, and passengers were required to send with them, by express, at least $1000 in gold-dust. Their steamer Hamilton left on the 23d of June with 178 passengers, and the Weare, on the 24th about 40 passengers and $1,500,000 in gold dust. The Bella left on the 28th with 150 passengers and $1,000,000 in gold.

About Christmas in 1897 reports of half-ounce nuggets being found on Dominion Creek resulted in a stampede, and everything on the main creek, which was larger than Bonanza, was staked, and staking continued on the numerous tributaries until, in July 1898, there were 275, 500-foot claims on the main creek, which, added to 30 or 40 tributaries, reached the extraordinary length of 140 to 150 miles of staked claims. Between Discoveries the ground proved very rich, and single claims were purchased by Eldorado owners for as high as $40,000.

In June, 1897, 4 men, 2 of whom were named Whitmore and Hunter, made an important discovery about 5 or 6 miles from the head of another large creek lying between Dominion and Quartz Creek and heading directly opposite one fork of Gold Bottom. The creek, which was called Sulphur Creek, was staked by successive waves of stampeders. During the winter about a dozen holes were pt down at intervals over nine miles of creek, but nearly every shaft disclosed rich pay and demonstrated the creek to be comparable in richness to Bonanza Creek. In July, 1898, over 30 miles of creek and tributaries were staked in 500-foot claims, and those in the best locations were selling for from $30,000 to $40,000.

Quartz Creek, although its situation and history should have drawn the attention of stampeders to it earlier, was overlooked until September and October, 1897, when a thousand men went over the head of Eldorado staking in succession everything in sight. In July, 1898, about 35 miles of creeks and tributaries were staked in 500-foot claims. "Eureka" Creek, with about 13 miles of claims and good prospects; "Nine-Mile," "Ophir," "Big," "Wolf," and "Gold Run" were located in the Indian River district, the last-named creek, with 12 or 15 miles of claims, "proving up" rich. On Bonanza everything in sight was staked, even to the tops of the gulches, until there were one 111 claims below and 119 above Discovery, and over 40 "pups," or tributaries (including Eldorado), with a total length of about 85 miles of claims.

Hunker Creek was located for 81 claims below and 50 above Discovery, with 18 or 20 "pups," including Gold Bottom, footing up about 60 miles of claims. Bear Creek, a very rich creek, but only 5 or 6 miles long, was all located. "All Gold," with about 85, 500-foot claims, and more on tributaries, was located, and developments gave claims a market value of $5000 for half-interests. "Too Much Gold," with 8 miles of 500-foot claims, and "Leotta," with 5 miles of 200-foot claims, were also located. These are all tributaries of Klondike. By the 1st of July, 1898, between 9,000 and 10,000 placer-mining claims had been recorded. During the winter large numbers of these claims were offered for sale outside, in the belief that the popular mind was so inflamed that anything to which the name "Klondike" was attached would sell. From the old-timers' point of view the camp was spoiled. One of them expressed the prevailing feeling when he said, "Prospecting's done away with. All prospecting tools a man needs now is an axe and a lead-pencil."

The "clean-up" had been under way several weeks before I could again visit the mines. Unfortunately much of the work of sluicing the winter's dumps was over, and considerable of the gold, with its happy owners, had come down the gulch. But there was a scarcity of water after the freshet, owing to small rainfall. This was holding back the work on Edorado, where the largest dumps were; and, besides, all the summer work of "ground-sluicing" was yet to be done.

The thermometer had been indicating 70 degrees in the shade at mid-day, and there were no clouds to intercept and modify the rays of the sun. Stampeders, in squads of 3 and 5, with coats off, and mining pans and shovels on their backs, picked their way from tussock to tussock, following the winding trail in and out among the trees in the valley of the lower Bonanza, or they lay on the ground, resting in the shade of the birches by rivulets of cold, clear water that trickled out of the side gulches. Summer had changed beyond recognition the winter's trail. Dams of crib-work filled with stones, flumes, and sluice-boxes lay across our path; heaps of "tailings" glistened in the sunlight beside yawning holes with windlasses tumbled in; cabins were deserted - the whole creek, wherever work had been done, was ripped and gutted. Nothing but flood and fire is so ruthless as a miner.

George Wilson, partner of Swiftwater Bill, said, "If you want to see a clean-up you'd better go over there." A tin tub, a whisk-broom, and 2 or 3 small copper scoops lay on the ground beside the boxes, the riffles of which were clogged with dirt. The first the men did was to lift out the riffles, and then they shovelled the dirt from the bottom of the boxes into the tub. In the appearance of this dirt there was nothing strikingly handsome; at a little distance it looked like dirt one could dig out of the ground anywhere. Mr. Leggett climbed up on the flume, raised a little gate at the head of the string of boxes, sufficient to allow half a sluice-head of water to run through. Then he took a position beside the boxes, which stood about 2 feet off the ground, with the whisk-broom in one hand. One of the men then shovelled the dirt out of the tub into the sluice-box, and Mr. Leggett began sweeping it upward against the current. The lighter stones and gravel were immediately carried off, with a lot of dirty water, into the dump-box. The sweeping was kept up until there remained in the bottom of the box a mass of black magnetic sand. The man with the broom continued sweeping; little by little the black sand worked downward, and at the upper edge blotches of yellow began to appear. In probably 5 minutes there lay on the bottom a mass of yellow, from which nearly all the black sand was gone. The yellow was not bright and glittering, but dull - almost the color of the new-sawn wood of the boxes. The water was turned off and the gold carefully scooped up into the pan, where it looked like fat wheat, with here and there a grain as large as a hazel-nut. There was only $800 in the pan, Mr. Leggett said - a small clean-up for Eldorado.

The total output of the Klondike amounted to between $10 and $11 million. The output was divided among the creeks about as follows:

Eldorado, $4M to $5M; Bonanza $3M to $4M; Hunker and Bear, $1M; Dominion, Sulphur, and other creeks, $1M. The amount received by refiners and the United States Mint, chiefly at Seattle and San Francisco, amounted, between July 1 and November 1, 1898, to $10,055,270.

Upon reaching Dawson the gold was taken either to the warehouses of the commercial companies or to the "vaults" of two newly arrived banks - the Canadian Bank of Commerce and the Bank of British North America - where it was packed in strong, square, iron-bound boxes for shipment by steamer to Seattle and San Francisco.

A complete assaying office was established, where miners could have their gold assayed at about the same cost as "outside," plus freight and insurance, and received drafts or bank-notes for the full value. No lot of less the 50 ounces was received for assay. The gold came from the smelter in ingots weighing 40 to 100 ounces, of the shape and size of a chocolate cakes. The gold from the different creeks varies greatly in fineness.

Lower Bonanza          $15.75 - $16.35 to the ounce
Upper Bonanza          $16.75 - $18.50
Eldoroda                   $16.50
Dominion                  $17
Forty-Mile and Birch   $17.50
Minook                     $18

The Bank of Commerce "vaults" were two wooden tin-lined boxes, 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, with a lid. Upon one occasion I saw these half full of gold sacks, also 5 boxes of gold packed for shipment, each holding from 500 to 800 pounds of gold-dust - close to a million dollars in all. Each shipment of gold was accompanied by a mounted policeman armed with a Winchester rifle.

There have been curious checks presented to cashiers of banks. There never was one more unique than a check presented at the Bank of Commerce in Dawson. It was written on a piece of spruce lumber about 6 inches square with a wire nail "toe-nailed" into it's upper edge. It read:

The valley of the Yukon and tributaries, with its more than 330,000 square miles of area - is dry; the rainfall is small and the temperature hot in summer; in winter the air is dry and excessively cold, and the snowfall is light. Vegetation is confined mainly to a moss which covers the ground to a varying thickness, and to three varieties of trees - spruce, white birch, and cottonwood. These are found abundantly from the lowest valleys to the tops of all but the highest mountains. In the flat valleys of the streams, exposed to the rays of the sun and with plenty of water, the spruce grow as quickly as anywhere in the world, some attaining a diameter of two feet, while trees a foot in diameter are common. On the sides of hills, however, the trees become suddenly stunted, the spruce rarely exceeding a few inches in thickness, but the rings of growth being as thin and close as the leaves of a book. The white birch, not less beautiful here than southward, rarely exceeds eight inches in thickness; cottonwood attains to a foot in diameter. Towards the mouth of the Yukon the temperature becomes milder, and grasses grow luxuriantly; but the trees grow smaller, until the characteristic tree-clad landscape of the Yukon merges into a bare, rolling tundra, or frozen morass, skirting the shores of Behring Sea. In consequence of the long hours of sunshine, garden vegetables, when planted on hill-sides exposed to the sun, spring with great rapidity out of the fertile soil. Potatoes are grown to a weight of 7 or 8 pounds, turnips 16 pounds, while cabbages, radishes, etc., are readily raised. The agricultural possibilities of the Yukon are greater than has been generally supposed, but the short summer probably will not allow the raising of cereals or fruits that require a long season to ripen, and it will hardly support an independent agricultural population.

Animal life in the Yukon valley is not so varied as farther south, but its species are important, and in places exceedingly abundant. Easily first is the moose. This the grandest of the deer family, is found in the whole region of the trees, and is very abundant on the Klondike - undoubtedly much more plentiful than in any part of its more familiar range to the extreme south and eastward. Of the stature of the tallest horse, it wanders at will from valley to mountain-top, in winter browsing upon tender twigs of the willow and white birch, the light snow not impeding it's movements and causing it to "yard," as farther south. In summer it is hunted by lying in wait for it at paths leading to certain lakes. During the winter of 1897-98 probably 150 were killed around Dawson by Indians and white men. A few years ago moose-hams could be purchased for $3 each; now they bring $1 to $1.50 per pound, the hides being worth $25 to $30 each for moccasins and the larger gold-sacks. The moose of the extreme west of Alaska has lately been found to be of a new species, distinguished chiefly for its great size, and has been given the name of Alces gigas. The moose of the Klondike, when specimens have been examined by naturalists, will probably be found different both from the latter and from the common moose, Alces american.

The woodland caribou roams as far north as Big Salmon River. North of there, and ranging to the shores of the Arctic Ocean and Behring Sea, is the barren-ground caribou, or wild reindeer, found often in immense bands, which migrate each year in search of a peculiar grey moss which constitutes their food. The headwaters of Forty-Mile and of the Klondike are two centres of great abundance.

In June or July, 1899, gold was discovered in the sand of the beach in Snake River and "Anvil City" was laid out. When the news reached Dawson 8,000 men left that place in a week. On October 1st Anvil City, or "Nome City," at the mouth of Snake River, was a town of 8,000 souls, with warehouses, saloons, theatres, tents, and cabins extending for four miles along the beach. The output of the region for the summer is estimated at $2M. In the spring it is expected that not less than thirty or forty thousand persons will reach the new diggings, which are comparatively easy of access.

As this goes to press, the output for the third clean-up at Klondike is reported as $20M, taken almost wholly from the creeks previously described. Dawson has a population of 10,000, with brick houses, an electric tramway under way up Bonanza Creek, and a telegraph line to Skagway. The railroad is being extended towards White Horse Rapids, where a lode of copper had been reported.  A few days after the Cape Nome stampede, cabins that had previously been valued at $500 or more were to be had for the taking. The town has been much improved in appearance, and there are many desirable features of social life - such as clubs - that did not exist before.

Jack Carr, the United States mail carrier, referring to the wonderful change that has taken place in these years, is reported to have said: "If any one had told me a person could make the trip in winter from Dawson to Skagway without lighting a match I couldn't have believed it."