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Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film^s d des taux de reduction diff6rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich(&, il est filmi h partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m^thode. 1 2 3 « 5 6 THE NEW ARCTIC EL DORADO. KLONDIKE AND TIIK GREATEST OF GOLD-RUSHES. BY HENRY WYSHAM LANtKR. THE little Thron-Diuck ("Plenty of Fish" ) River, a thousand miles west of San Francisco and far up under the shadow of the arctic circle, has shown that 'he huge '"chowichie" and the white- fish, whose abundance made it known to the annually half-starved Indian, are a most insignificant item in its resources, a.id the fame of its golden sands has sped to every corner of the civilized world. Two years ago the average man's knowledge of the great Northwest was limited to the fact that we owned a lot of frozen land up there called Alaska, whose glacier scenery attracted a few ship-loads of tourists every summer and about the boundaries of which there was a dispute with Canada. To-day it would be hard to find any one who has not heard of the Klondike, Bonanza, and Too Much Gold Creeks, the Stewart and Hootalinqua Rivers, Dawson City, and all the other names with which our newspapers and magazines have been flooded. And there has been ample cause for this sudden accession of interest. Within two months after the Excelsior brought down the first half million in the summer of 1897 these new placer fields had produced nearly five million dollars' worth of gold— a record beside which the Austra- lian excitement of 185 1 and the California stampede of 1849 alike sink to insignifi- cance. It is a strange land which contains this golden magnet— a mountainous land where ; I e^H' (n> fi'^i TN£ NEIV ARCTIC EL DORADO. 1O9 f 1:NTKANCK 'IO (^)UKKN CHAKI.OTTE sound, URITISU COLUMBIA. cold season is somewhat al- layed by the glorious auro- ras. From September till March '• luminous waves and radii of pulsating rose, pur- ple, green, and blue flames light u]3 and dance about the heavens — gorgeous arches of yellow bands and pencil- points of crimson fire are hung and glitter in the zenith." In the hot, moist summer the moss is dotted with flowers : phlo.x and blue iris, white and yellow pop- pies, red-flowered saxifrage, broad-leaved Archangelica, and over all ferns and the tleecy while plumes of the Equisetum grasses. With the heat comes also countless swarms of mosquitoes, horse- flies, and gnats, so vicious the ground below the yellow-green moss and and pestilential that they have been known the gray lichens — often a foot thick — is to drive the wild animals into the water never thawed for a depth of more than two for refuge. There are regions where the feet, even when the fierce licat of the twelve dogs, woolly-haired as they are, cannot weeks' summer sends tiie thermometer up to survive the attacks of these little plagues, a hundred degrees in the shade. For eight and where the natives do not dare to walk or nine months every stream is locked with through the woods in midsummer, wrapping an icy covering, and the snow lies thick over up their heads with cloths and skins and the whole country. Then comes the dreaded wearing thick mittens whenever they go out "poorgas," when the thermometer drops to into the open air. sixty or seventy below zero and the blizzardy "The traveler who exposes his bare face winil dashes the snow into one's face and eyes " like hot shot"; and when the sun does shine it is with a feeble paleness. The day lasts two hours and the night is a twilight. At sunrise and sunset in the autunni and early winter, how- ever, the clouds are lit with wonderful hues and the deso- late bleakness of the F— May. sTKAMsnir i.oAlllMi KOK ALASKA. 3ft^d0 170 THE NEW ARCTIC EL DORADO. m ' ■ v; f ^;;v^-;-^i '' >;- ' !i?yjsai^J» ! ^^ VlliW O!" JUiNEAU, KKU.M TUB MUUNTAIN TOT. at this time of the year will speedily lose his natural appearance : his eyelids swell up and close; his neck expands in fiery pimples, so liiat no collar he ever wore be- fore can now be fastened around it, while his hands simply become as two carbuncled balls." This is one, and the disagreeable, side of the picture. On the other hand, the veteran Joseph Ladue declares he has chopped wood in his shirt-sleeves when the thermometer was seventy degrees below zero without feeling particularly uncomfortable, and many travelers have witnessed to the exhilarating and bracing effects of the dry cold along the Upper Yukon and in the mountain passes. And, more than all. and a consideration that blots out the hardships with a golden haze, it is in this land that George Cormack (Carmack or McCormack) made the lucky strike which drew to Dawson City first every prospector along the Yukon and speedily thereafter thousands from all over the world. Alaskan gold is by no means a new thing. The existence of the precious metal there has been known for fully fifty years, and since 1880 the mines near Juneau have been continuously and profit- ably worked. A year after the excitement over Juneau's dis- covery gold was found on the Big Salmon River and a few hardy prospectors made iheir way into the Yukon country. They did not meet with any very instant success, and in 1883 there were but thirteen white men in the whole re- gion. These indefatigable pioneers persisted, and be- fore long Forty Mile Creek, Sixty Mile and Birch Creeks, and the Koyukuk Ri\ er had each in succession been the cause of a " stampede " from the previous diggings. In 1893 new discoveries in- creased the population of Forty Mile to a thousand besides the men in camp at Circle City, close to where the river crosses the: arctic circle two hundred miles further down. To these men came the news in August, 1896, that "Stick George" Cormack with a couple of Indians had panned out 51,200 in eight days on Bonanza Creek, a little tributary of the Klondike. The news spread as such tidings do, and in a few weeks Circle City and Forty Mile Creek MAIN blKUlil, SKAOUAY. THE XEIV ARCTIC EL DORADO. 171 were practically deserted. At first the older Since the first of the year the number leav- hands doubted the truth of the report; ing J'orlland and Seattle has been limited they had been deceived very often and this only by the capacity of the \essels, and was entirely new territory, which had been there seems every probability that more passed by as altogether unpromising. In than a hundred thousand people will attempt this way it happened that a number of the to reach the new placer-fields during 1898. best claims were obtained by "cheechacoes" When one realizes that fifteen years ago (tenderfeet), but with the confirmation of the population of the entire Yukon Valley, the wild rumors even the paying diggings which with its tributaries comprises over half were forsaken in the mad fear lest the luck a million square miles, was abcjut a dozen should pass them by. Joseph Ladue staked white and less than two thousand Indians; out a town site at the junction of the Klon- when one remembers further that it took dike with the Yukon and put up the first nearly three years to add a hundred thou- house in September, 1896. In less than si.\ months Dawson City, as it was called, had over five hun- dred houses, including hotels, restaurants, saloons, and stores. The news reached the Pacific coast in due time, but the knowing ones had heard too many Alaskan gold lies to get up any very general enthusiasm. People did get to talking, however, after Mr. Ogilvie's report to the Canadian government, and then in the summer of 1897 the Excelsior and the Poftland ■^■x\\gi\ into port, the former with half r million, largely from Forty Mile Creek and Circle City, the latter with some seven hun- dred thousand dollars' worth of gold and six of the lucky prospectors sand miners to the population of California from the Klondike. The ecstatic lavish- in 1849, 'he magnitude of this vast move- ness of one of these grizzled old chaps, who ment will be better appreciated, was so overcome that he hurled handfuls of The air has been full of projects for rail- small nuggets into the crowd, was hardly roads to the Klondike region, and a con- necessary to start the blaze of excitement, tract has actually been made by the Cana- From this time to the end of the year nearly dian government which will probably secure nine thousand gold hunters went north from better communication before very long, the coast cities and about half of them got But four-million-dollar roads a'-e not con- through to the promised land, 1,200 going structed in a month, and the man who by the all-water route to St. Michael's, near wishes to do any prospecting on the Tapper the mouth of the Yukon, while about 3,600 Yukon in 1S98 must leave Puget Sound by managed to cross the n. These will cost about $140 to $150 and should in every case be good if bought at all. The men who have made the trip declare that it is better to leave out some things which see m necessary than to burden one's self with what is not going to be really useful. The travelers must carry also a full set of prospect- ing and mining imple- ments, and take along either a boat "knocked down" or the tools with which to build one on the lake shores sage but for this mass of supplies. They for the trip down stream. With a year's put him at the mercy of the Indian packers, provisions, hardware, and cooking utensils whose prices rise with the demand to the one's luggage amounts to the formidable most exorbitant rates (three or four hundred total of a couple of thousand pounds. It dollars was a common price for transporta- is this fact, of course, which makes all tion over this thirty miles last season), and the trouble in the journey. With all the who were entirely unequal to the task of perpendicular rise of the last thousand feet keeping the trail clear. Moreover, even between Sheep Camp and the summit of this precarious means fails at the first tjie Chilkoot, an ordinarily active pedestrian breath of winter, for the Siwash has no love Vvfould find little trouble in making the pas- for packing through the snow, and there have been during the last six months several thousand pilgrims camped at Dyea and Skaguay, unable to advance over the snow- bound route. When the miner has reached the scene of opera- tion and decided where to try his chances, the ex- perts say the newcomer will do better to strike out for himself instead of ma- king for the already over- crowded region just about Uawson. Having found "pay dirt," he will need a little special knowledge of - * . the mining laws not to get himself into trouble. All the late discoveries have , been in Canadian terri- CHURCH AT jiNBAu. torv, wiicrc tile following INDIAN GKAVEVARD AT JUNEAU. 1^4 THE NEW ARCTIC EL DORADO. laws are in force for - •■• placer-mining — the only sort attempted as yet in the Yukon region : For " bar diggings " the claim shall be a strip of land one hundred feet wide at high-water mark and extending along the river to its lowest water- level — bar diggings being defined to mean any part of a river over which water extends in flood seasons but not at low water. The sides of such a claim are two parallel lines at right angles to the stream, marked by four posts, one at each end at high-water dred feet in length, measured along the mark and one at each end at the water's stream, and extend from base to base of edge. One of the posts must contain the the hills on each side (or from "bench" to miner's name and the date of staking. "bench"); except that when the benches For "dry diggings'" — mines over which are more than six hundred feet apart the a river never extends — the claim is limited width is limited to that size, and when the to one hundred feet square, marked at each benches are less than one hundred feet corner as described above. apart the width may be extended to one "Creek and river claims" are five hun- hundred feet, to be marked as above. Within sixty days the claim must be recorded at the nearest law ofliice and a fee of $15 is re- quired for registry, with an annual fee thereafter of $100. The government proposes to collect a ten- per-cent royalty on all re- turns of less than ^500 a week, twenty per cent on greater re urns — when the police force is adequate! If the claim is the first on this particular stream the four-inch boundary stakes (eighteen inches in the ground and eighteen inches above) are marked "O." The next claim going up stream is " one above ": the next below is "one below," and so on. The I TOMI) UK AN INIIIAN CHIRP THE NEW ARCTIC EI. DORADU. 175 I claims between the "forties below" and the "forties above" are the only ones in which the miner has any right to count with reason upon ever sharing al all in the original discoverer's luck. Vox the " pay streak" is by no means always under the stream bed. The theory has been advanced that the former is the bed of an old glacier which has brought down the gold; at any rate, its course widens and deepens without nnich regard for tlie present water-course. As a rule the miner strikes first a stratum of frozen muck from four to thirty feet deej); next comes a layer of rubble averaging three or four feet, then a thin layer of dirt or clay, sometimes not more than a foot thick, and beneath this, resting on the bed rock, lies the golden streak, sometimes so rich that the "nuggets and flakes of gold have to be mixed with dirt to be sluiced." Ordinarily, how- ever, the pay dirt is thrown up on the dump during the winter, the frozen ground being thawed with fires. In the spring this frozen heap soon melts and can be shoveled into the sluice-boxes, where the dirt and gravel are washed off, the heavier gold sinkirtg to the bottom and being caught by the cross cleats. Of course gold-dust is the uni\ersal cur- rency, at the rate of seventeen dollars or more, and the precious yellow grains are stored and carried in all sorts of recepta- cles, from a buckskin bag to a rul)ber boot. It is very significant of the absorption in the business of gold-hunting that life and property are by all accounts as sate in INDIAN MISSION AND TOTEM-POLE, 'one STEAMSmi' *'(;oK(lNA," WRFtKKn WlMLIi NHTfKMNC. FKnM ALASKA Dawson as in New York. All the miners agree in their stories of fortunes being kept in crazy little "shacks," of the swift punish- • nientmetedouttothe"claim- jumper," and of the useless- I ness of firearms. Gambling and drinking are the chief pastimes, but the feeling that each man is a potential millionaire seems to be more efficacious in in- spiring order and respect for one another's jnoperty than . some thousands of years of civilization have been. It is a strangely picturesque de- velopment; men becoming law-abiding from an access of the very causes which have so often sufficed to drive them to crime. 176 THE UNITED STA TES AND HA IV AH. There have been no lack of Jeremiads preached on the subject of this arctic I'aclo- lus. Reports that the chxims were all taken, that there had been no new placer discover- ies since the first rush, and that the whole Yukon settlement was on the verge of starvation have alternated with graphic descriptions of the hardships and dangers awaiting the prospector before he can even reach the mining region. The scientific experts, too, have declared that nine out of ten of the men who try their fortunes would do far better physically, morally, anc' finan- cially by staying at hf)me. It is, moreover, estimated that the vast army of prospectors, the vanguard of which is now starting Alaska-ward, will spend ';i 1S98 some sixty millions of dollars — to produce one fourth of that amount. But all theje arguments are rs vain babble in the ears of the Argo- naut. He has seen or known or read of the men who took five thousand dollars out of forty square feet in Claim No. 30 ; of the sixty-two thousand dollars that came from twenty-four square feet in El Dorado Claim 13 ; of Mrs. Lippi and Mrs. ]>( 1 ry, who poked six thousand dollars out of a discarded dump in a few days, while one of the men of their party .secured a million-dollar claim ; of the man who took seven hundred dollars out of one pan of dirt — and so on through a crescendo of fact and fiction. With his mind set on these things he heeds discoura- ging talk not half so much as he does the mosquitoes. Give him any item of infor- mation about the Klondike, or anything Alaskan, however incorrect, and his atten- tion is yours, but to all else he is deaf. There is some foundation for this. r- tainly the successful prospectors so far have owed their good fortune to apparently blind chance, and no one need hesitate from inex- perience when luck is the ruling factor. Hut it is ur.deniable that any man not in first- class phy.sical condition and who has not at least seven or eight hundred dollars will be more than foolish to set his face toward the Yukon. A thousand dollars is not a bit too much, but if the gold-seeker is very determined it is really possible by working for otheis to save up enough money in a few weeks after reaching Dawson to pur- chase an outfit. Unskilled labor , 1 • i s commands ten dollars a day, and an able mechanic can easily secure an) where from fifteen to thirty. Since it is possible for a strong and healthy man to live with an expenditure of three to five hundred a year such wages as these leave a handsome margin. Whatever may be the immediate results of the tremendous influx of miners into these Alaskan and Northwest Territory re- gions there is no doubt whatever but that this hitherto desolate portion of our conti- nent is entering upon a new and most stri- king phase of development, and he would be a bold prophet who would venture to picture the state of affairs along the mighty Yukon in another decade or two.