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•aSSHSHSHSHSaSHSSiacLSHSHSaHHSHSHBSBHHHSHSail
KLONDIKE
THE LAND OF GOLD
miugtrateD
CONTAINING ALL AVAILABLE PRACTICAL
INFORMATION OF EVERY DESCRIPTION
CONCERNING THE NEW GOLD FIELDS
*•
WHAT THEY ARE AND HOW TO REACH THEM — A SHORT
HISTORY OF ALASKA — A SYNOPSIS OF THE PERSONAL
TESTIMONY OF MINERS WHO HAVE BEEN ON THE
GROUND— A DIGEST OF THE MINING LAWS OF
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA— THE
LATEST AUTHENTIC MAPS, WITH A
REVIEW OF THE FAMOUS GOLD
RUSHES OF THE WORLD
BY
CHARLES FREDERICK STANSBURY
PUBLISHED BY
F.TENNYSON NEELY
114 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
1897
Copyright, 1897, by Charles Frederick Stansbury.
F 93/
K59320
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Mz^l^
JlC'lv'S. POO^'
.^/•«?r'«.
^
An earnest desire to ootain practical infor- Imation concerning the gold fields in the Klon- dike in a non-hysterical and concrete form, I prompted the author of this work to seek such 'knowledge. Not being able to find it, he com- piled this volume from the best sources of in- lyformation for the benefit of himself and the I j)ublic.
^^•^
INDEX.
PAGE.
Klondike Gold Fields 5
Human Documents 3'
A Practical Chapter 7
The Law of Mining 12
A Short History of Alaska i [
Famous Gold Rushes i
Poem I
Gold and its Victims i
I
I,
i\
•%
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
Gold! goldl gold! gold I
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled ;
Heavy to get and light to hold ;
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold.
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled ;
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould ;
Price of many a crime untold ;
Gold! goldl goldl gold!
— Thomas Hood.
The Klondike gold fields of Alaska are so ' called because situated on and about the Klon- dike TRiver, a tributary of the Yukon Eiver, into which it flows at a point just above the settlement of Forty Mile. It is within the territory of British Columbia, is under Can- adian rule, and is governed by Canadian law.
Mr. Harold B. Goodrich, of the United
I States Geological Survey, is authority for the statement that the name Klondike is a miner's corruption of the Indian " Throndink," or
6 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
Thron Diuck, according to Canadian spelli which means ' ' water full of fish. " The lit river bearing the name has, he says, from time immemorial been a favorite fishing ground for the gens des bois, who meet at its mouth and wait for the salmon to ascend every June. The old name, Reindeer River (or Deer River),! was given by Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka in 1883, and is on the United States Coast Sur^ vey Charts that have appeared since then.
The discoverer of the rich placer diggings of the Klondike is known to be George W. Cormack, a working miner, who was generally known as Siwash George, and the first claim was staked on Bonanza Creek, a small tributary of thej Klondike River. The staking of this claim occurred on August 17, 1896, and marks the beginning of a wonderful era for Alaska. There are a large number of such creeks as; Bonanza, each said to be equally rich in gold deposits. Among them are the El Dorado, Victoria, Adams, McCormack, Reddy Bullion, Nugget Gulch, Bear, Baker and Chee-Chaw , Ka. This region, which in July, 1896, was comparatively speaking, uninhabited, is no^, dotted with hundreds of miners' tents, as white
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 7
as the snow which will begin to fly in Sep- tember.
Jta^the summer of 1896 a party, consisting of Messrs. Spurr, Schrader and Goodrich, was sent by the United States Geological Survey to investigate the American gold fields of Alaska. To quote Mr. Goodrich, they ' ' stopped a few hours at the little Indian village, where Dawson City is now located, and then passed on into American territory. This was on the 5 th of July, and at that time all was quiet along the Klondike. Later on, however, just as we were going out of the country, and were within 500 miles of the
I mouth of the Yukon, we learned from miners who had been there that there was a great stampede to the new discoveries. Even then no hint was given of its great richness, al- though good prospects had been found, and as high as $1 to the pan was reported."
It thus appears that on July 5, 1896, all was quiet along the Klondike, or as Mr. Goodrich refers to spell it, the Clondike. There is a general concensus of opinion among returned miners, that the best way to Veach the new gold fields i^ by way of Juneau.
8 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
The distance from that point is 650 miles, and thirty days should be allowed to traverse it under ordinary conditions.
Juneau*
Juneau is the key to the new Klondike region and the head waters of the Yukon. The water route, by way of St. Michael, is of secondary consideration. Juneau is a centre of importance. Some enormous mining plants are in operation among the quartz veins with- in sixty miles of the town. The coast mines about Seward City, represent the investment of vast capital by the Rothschilds and their friends. D. 0. Mills, New York, the Noewells, of Boston, the Berners' Bay Mining and Mill- ing Company, directed by Colonel John F. Plummer, New York, are among those inter- ested in this district. The product of the Juneau mines for 1896 was $2,500,000. At present the rush is to the placers, but undoubt- edly the stream will later set back toward the quartz fissures in the mountain altitudes nearer the sea. The Yukon is navigable in s mer for about 1200 miles, and all of it&
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THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 9
numerable tributaries are said to carry flour gold, which increases in coarseness in the journey towards the mouth of the stream. But a small fraction of this country has been prospected, and that not thoroughly. The mineral resources of Alaska may be said to have been, as yet, barely scratched.
For the land trip by way of Juneau and the Chilkoot pass, all outfitting should be done at Seattle, where ample supplies and implements for miners are kept in stock. In planning a trip to the Klondike, it is well to regard Seattle as a base of supplies. Only those persons who intend to engage in mining should make the journey to the gold fields, as there are but two industries in Alaska — mining and fishing.
The trail from Juneau to Klondike leads across a number of lakes and along the beds of many streams. This route is by way of the now famous Chilkoot Pass, the crossing of which is both arduous and dangerous for ten ■nonths of the year. Snow storms at the Pass, :he violence of which renders it so dangerous, occur as late as May and June and as early as September. Chilkoot Pass reaches an eleva- tion of 4,100 feet, and is one of two openings
10 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
in the mountain range, the peaks of which ris|ie to a height of 10,000 feet. The snowstorn! which afihct the pass are sudden, furious ah treacherous, and constitute the greatest dangei^,' in passing from Juneau to the Klondike.
In 1883, Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, o the United States Army, an able, indefatigable' officer, noted for the accuracy of his reports, made the passage to Lake Lindeman, in the Klondike, through the Chilkoot Pass, to which he gave the name of Perrier Pass. Though some mechanical facilities have been added to lessen the difficulties of surmounting it since his day, yet his experience ought to prove of great value to those who desire an accurate knowledge of the frowning barrier that lie between the Pacific Ocean and the New El Dorado. Therefore a brief summary of hist report to the Secretary of War is here given. I He says : "There are some three or four passes | through the coast range of Alaskan mou tains, leading from the inland passages of th! Pacific Ocean to the sources of the Yuko Eiver * * * The Lynn Channel, at it^ head, divides into two deep inlets — the Chilkat! and the Chilkoot, each receiving rivers at thelri
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 11
heads, and from these valleys lead out trails that reach different sources of the Yukon Eiver (the Klondike being one), and that have been known to have been traveled by the Chil- kat and Chilkoot Indians, respectively, for many years in the past. * * * The Chilkoot Trail leads up the inlet to a branch once called the Day ay (Dyea), and through it to the mouth of a river of the same name, thence to its head and across the mountains to one of the sources of the Yukon, its disadvantages being the three or four canons, rapids or cascades that obstruct that part of the river to which its leads."
In this connection it must be recalled that Lieutenant Schwatka crossed the Pass fourteen years ago, which makes the following passage from his report singularly prophetic: "Mining parties, in small numbers, had also crossed this trail in order to prospect the head waters of the Yukon for valuable minerals, but as far as any results were obtained, outside of their imposed labors, nothing had been gained by their at- tempts ; still their adventurous efforts should receive the highest commendation, for had they been, 07- sJwuld tJiey be, successful in
t';.
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^2 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
their IseoS?' "''™''''' "^ ">« ^''i™ "^ l'' ''The Indian Pac]rpr« " ^ ^-
"over these n.ount2r;;sr*ran '''"'''■•'• pounds, although one tS T V , r^*"'^ ^"» readily with m °L f ^ ''''"' ^^^"^''^d along
that his party emnW / °'"'''" '"^°™«'' "e The cost rftaSrof '"' *'"* ''^^"^'^ ««■ — the Chi koot tail ,' ^'* ("^ P""''''^) from $9 to $12 a*d tl i^'^^^^^s has been chned to see m~M"^ «'«^« "^ot in- * * * AfterThad . ?^ '■^''"^^'J '--^tes. -ay blamed the i^nsT ,.*' *™' ' "^ "-^ in n.ai„taining whafsTeLXf fiT /*"^™- exorbitant, and only „ 7 "^''' to be
^ouM do this e:.t™Lr? r^ *''^t *«y reasonably. " "'^''^'^'^''iy fatiguing labor so
Eegarding Dayay (Dyea^ T • . o says: ■'^ •'^ *^y«a), Lieut. Schwatka
~rchSert*tre1 T'''^ '' °' t^-ame Archipelago, a rivlSel^Tt r ''^" °^ *« -covered .ithspii: 2 ---M.h
la:
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 13
the top, the latter predominates in the lower levels, the former in the higher and capped with barren granite mountains, covered on the top and in the gulches with snow and glaciers, which furnish water for innumerable cascades and waterfalls. These glaciers on the moun- tain tops become better marked as the river is ascended. One on the west side of the Dayay may be said to commence opposite the mouth of that stream, if not before, and con- tinue along it some ten or twelve miles until the outline could no longer be followed in the fog and mist that nearly always cling to their faces, especially during the warm summer months, when the atmosphere charged with moisture from the warm waters of the near Pacific is driven against them by the sea breezes."
With reference to game in this section Schwatka says:
' ' The Oregon blue grouse could be heard hooting in the woods, and in the quiet even- ings a perfect chorus of them filled the air. Trout had been caught in the fish wires of the ' Stick ' Indians and offered us for sale. The tracks of black bear, fresh and old, were very
14
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
numerous, and one was seen but not secured. Mountain goats and deer can also be added to] the game list."
It was on July 10th that Schwatka started to cross the mountains at Chilkoot Pass. He says: "The party started at 7.30 a. m., the trail leaving the narrow valley, oftentimes not wider than the river bed itself, and leading up over the mountain spurs of the eastern side of the stream. The difficulties of the inland walk- ing has already been described, and the pres- ent was no improvement on it in any particu- lar. Occasionally the path would debouch into the river-bed wherever it w^as wdde enough to give a mile or two of walking and W' ading and then would strike over the mountain sides again. At places on the latter it would be very easy to lose the trails where they followed for long distances over great winrows and ava- lanches of broken boulders and shattered stones varying in size from a person's head to the size of a small house."
The actual distance across the Chilkoot Pass is eleven miles, but it is fully equal to thirty miles over an ordinary road. The crest of the Pass is 4,100 feet above the sea level. The
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THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 15
Indian packers show marvellous agility in climbing the steep declivities where a false step would hurl them hundreds of feet below. In many cases footholds have to be cut in the glacial snow, and it is often necessary for an advance party to prepare a trail for the pack- ers. Climbing the Pass is of the most severe Alpine character, even when unencumbered, and it seems almost marvelous that men should be enabled to make the ascent laden with 100 to 160 pounds of freight. From the highest notch in the pass the moim.tains can still be seen towering thousands of feet above on either side.
I Beyond the apex of the pass down to Lake Lindeman and the Klondike the trail is more easily followed, although the traveling is very irksome.
The Indian tribe that inhabits the region of , the Klondike is the Tahk-Heesh, known locally
-> as the "Sticks." Numerically the tribe is a
1 0 small one and they seem to conform to the un- prolific and dreary aspect of the country which
I M they inhabit. They are very wretched looking objects, garbed in a combination of civilized and native clothes. They are of average size, and all of them have the appearance of being half
■ /
16 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
starved, notwithstanding which they are equal to the better looking Chilkat Indians in the matter of carrying large packs. They subsist almost entirely upon salmon, which they dry in the sun without salt for winter consump-j tion. I
A word must be said about the mosquitoes! that for three months of the year infest the\ Klondike region. In certain places and at cer- X tain times they constitute a menace to the life and sanity of man, while even such tough ani mals as the black bear frequently succumb to them. Lieutenant Schwatka states that the may be said to have been the worst discomfor I his party was called on to endure. They often, he says, ' ' made many investigations, usually j carried on in explorations, impossible of execu- i tion, and will be the great bane of this coun- \ try, should the mineral discoveries or fisheries ' ever attempt to colonize it. I have never seen their equal for steady and constant irritation in any part of the United States, the swamps of New Jersey and the sand hills of Nebraska not excepted. It was only when the wind was blowing, and well out on a lake or wide p 3r- tion of the river that their abominable torment
"I
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 11
ceased." The small black gnat is at times almost equal to the Alaska mosquito as an insanity breeder.
The testimony regarding Alaska's greatest pest is endorsed by all of the miners and tour- ists who have sojourned in that country.
The proximity of the Klondike region to the arctic circle renders it sufficiently a ' ' land of the midnight sun " during the summer months for a person to read the type of an ordinary newspaper at midnight without resorting to artificial light. At such times but one star, Venus, is visible in the cloudless sky. The long winter months, on the contrary, are en- shrouded in perpetual twilight.
Dr. Krause, a German savant, explored and mapped the Klondike region very accurately, and his maps and data, probably the most com- prehensive extant, appear in the proceedings of the Bremen Geographical Society for 1882. Miners and prospectors cannot be warned too often against placing reliance on maps con- cocted by guesswork by parlor authors. Many a poor fellow has been lured to his death by following these geographical wills o' the wisp.
Generally speaking, the climate of the
^* ,, Hhful and the con-
Klondike distxlct is W^*-l^^,„,deeven
ditions of -^"J^^^'^l^iug, gof .*°t enioyable with waim ^^ ^ids to
— T^^'aTtSort-ately at present healthftdness aie u ^_^^^^^_
xnostly conspicuous by the ^.^^^.^^ in
The Klondike sf J^f 'i^eer diggings, al-
Sfn^-^eins tlie.«^--l^^^^
constitute the »--f ^, ^^^g an eno— basin of the Y»ton, <^" ^^^ ^^, ,tb-
area of the interior "^ f'^ i^d, contain- :est terntory !s ^^;::^;Xopper and other ing besides gold, maroie,
metals. , ., ^ew placer diggings
The mining season aUtonP^ ^^^ ^^^
would under ordinary -n ^^^ ^^^,,,,
about three months of J temtoownas
necessities have ^^^"^^^.^ and rumiing tun- ..buming"-sintog sha ^^^ ^^^^^^
nelsbymeansof toe^ the banks of
dirt is eriracted and st .^^ ^^^^^ ^^ter
streams. When the r .^^^ ^^^„i,, in the spring the siuic
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 19
tion, and washing out the gold is the order of the day for three months.
The reconnaissance made in 189G by Mr. J. Edward Spurr and two assistants of the U. S. Geological Survey, which has already been referred to, has resulted in a report which is of great interest in that it refers in detail to that portion of the Alaskan gold fields im- mediately contiguous to the Klondike district, and which lie within the United States.
Concerning the Yukon Gold Belt, the report says:
Yukon Gold Belt.
Running in a direction a little west of north- west through the territory examined is a broad, cojitinuous belt of highly altered rocks, which crosses the area actually examined approxim- ately as shown on the map. To the east this belt is known to be continuous for 100 miles or more in British territory. The rocks constitut- ing this belt are mostly crystalline schists associated with marbles and sheared quartzites, indicating a sedimentary origin for a large part of the series. In the upper part a few plant remains were found, which suggest that this portion is probably of Devonian age. These altered sedimentary rocks have been shattered
20 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
by volcanic action, and they are pierced by many dikes of eruptive rock. Besides the minor volcanic disturbances, there have been others on a large scale, which have resulted in the formation of continuous ridges or mountain ranges. In this process of mountain building the sedimentary rocks have been subjected to such pressure and to such alteration from attendant forces that they have been squeezed into the condition of schist, and often partly or wholly crystallized, so that their original character has in some cases entirely disap- peared. In summarizing, it may be said that the rocks of the gold belt of Alaska consist largely of sedimentary beds older than the Carboniferous period ; that these beds have undergone extensive alteration, and have been elevated into mountain ranges and cut through by a variety of igneous rocks.
Throughout these altered rocks there are found veins of quartz often carrying pyrite and gold. It appears that these quartz veins were formed during the disturbance attending the uplift and alteration of the beds. Many of the veins have been cut, sheared, and torn into fragments by the force that has trans- formed the sedimentary rocks into crystalline schist; but there are others, containing gold, silver, and copper, that have not been very much disturbed or broken. These more con- tinuous ore-bearing zones have not the charac-
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 21
ter of ordinary quartz veins, although they contain much siHca. Instead of the usual white quartz veins, the ore occurs in a sheared and altered zone of rock and gradually runs out on both sides. So far as yet known, these con- tinuous zones of ore are of relatively low grade. Concerning the veins of white quartz first men- tioned, it is certain that most of them which contain gold carry it only m small quantity, and yet some few are known to be very rich in places, and it is extremely probable that there are many in which the whole of the ore is of comparatively high grade.
No quartz or vein mining of any kind has yet been attempted in the Yukon district, mainly on account of the difficulty with which supplies, machinery, and labor can be obtained; yet it is certain that there is a vast quantity of gold in these rocks, much of which could be profitably extracted under favorable conditions. The general character of the rocks and of the ore deposits is extremely like that of the gold- bearing formations along the southern coast of Alaska, in which the Tread well and other mines are situated, and it is probable that the rich- ness of the Yukon rocks is approximately equal to that of the coast belt. It may be added that the resources of the coast belt have been only partially explored.
Besides the gold found in the rocks of the Yukon district there is reason to expect paying
22 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
quantities of other minerals. Deposits of silver- bearing lead have been found in a number of locahties, and copper is also a constituent of many of the ores.
Gold Placers.
Since the formation of the veins and other deposits of the rocks of the gold belt an enor- mous length of time has elapsed. During that time the forces of erosion have stripped off the overlying rocks and exposed the metalliferous veins at the surface for long periods, and the rocks of the gold belt, with the veins which they include, have crumbled and been carried away by the streams, to be deposited in widely different places as gravels, or sands, or muds. As gold is the heaviest of all materials found in rock, it is concentrated in detritus which has been worked over by stream action,- and the richness of the placers depends upon the avail- able gold supply, the amount of available detritus, and the character of the streams which carry this detritus away. In Alaska the streams have been carrying away the gold from the metalliferous belt for a very long period, so that particles of the precious metal are found in nearly all parts of the Territory. It is only in the immediate vicinity of the gold- bearing belt, however, that the particles of gold are large and plentiful enough to repay
<
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 23
working, under present conditions. Where a stream heads in the gold belt, the richest diggings are likely to be near its extreme upper part.
In this upper part the current is so swift that the lighter material and the finer gold are car- ried away, leaving in many places a rich de- posit of coarse gold overlain by coarse gravel, the pebbles being so large as to hinder rapid transportation by water. It is under such conditions that the diggings which are now being worked are found, with some unimport- ant exceptions. The rich gulches of the Forty Mile district, and of the Birch Creek district, as well as other fields of less importance, all head in the gold-bearing formation.
A short distance below the heads of these gulches the stream valley broadens and the gravels contain finer gold more widely dis- tributed. Along certain parts of the stream this finer gold is concentrated by favorable currents, and is often profitably washed, this kind of deposit coming under the head of * ' bar diggings. " The gold in these more extensive gravels is often present in sufficient quantity to encourage the hope of successful extraction at some future time, when the work can be done more cheaply and with suitable machinery. The extent of these gravels, which are of pos- sible value, is very great. As the field of ob- servation is extended farther and farther from
\
I
the K0ia-beari«gl=elt, f^^ gf^Cnd only in '^^^'"fd ?r dSnce« by the cu«e-*ge„eval rule, that tl« P';°»tearing rock.
r-rioufyounger recto -1^^^^^^^^
from Carboniferous toJ!|^y conglomerates
Ind are made »P ^t ^'i* Bome s^\^^
material. aeposition, ana xu
and some o£ tnem co concentrated m
the more ancient rocto an ^^^ ^t
the same way as ^ f ^/°^o places it is cer-
river gravds. ^^J^Z^l'^^ ^e really fossil
tain that tljese c°«g^me ^^ .^^^t-
Coal*
n..v rocks wticli overlie the gold- In the younger rocKS wm
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 25
bearing series there are beds of black, hard, glossy, very pure lignitic coal. An area of these coal-bearing strata lies very close to the gold-bearing district, in the northern part of the region examined, and as the beds of coal are often of considerable thickness and the coal in some of them leaves very little ash and contains volatile constituents in considerable amount, it is probable that the coal deposits will become an important factor in the develop- ment of the country.
Conditions of Mining.
There were probably 2,000 miners in the Yukon district during the past season, the larger number of whom were actually engaged in washing gold. Probably 1,500 of them were working in American territory, although the migration from one district to another is so rapid that one year the larger part of the population may be in American territory and the next year in British. As a rule, however, the miners prefer the American side, on ac- count of the difference in mining laws. These miners, with few exceptions, were engaged in gulch digging. The high price of provisions and other necessaries raises the price of ordi- nary labor in the mines to SlO per day, and therefore no mine which pays less than this to each man working can be even temporarily
26 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
handled. Yet, in spite of these difficulties, there was prolDably taken out of the Yukon district the past season, mostly from American territory, approximately $1,000,000 worth of gold.
An overland route should be surveyed and constructed to the interior of Alaska. All the best routes which can be suggested pass through British territory, and the co-operation of the two Governments would be mutually beneficial, since the gold belt lies partly in American and partly in British possessions. At the present time Mr. Spurr thinks that the best route lies from Juneau, by way of the Chilkat Pass, overland to the Yukon, at the junction with the Pelly. This trail has al- ready been gone over with pack horses by a pioneer named Dalton, who reports a good grazing country and no great obstacles to overcome. The Chilkat Pass is considerably lower than the Chilkoot, over which the Geo- logical Survey party of 1896 passed. If a wagon road, or even a good horse trail, could be built as indicated, the cost of provisions and other supplies would be greatly reduced, many gravels now useless could be profitably worked, and employment would be afforded for many men. With the greater development of placer diggings would come the development of mines in the bed rock. ♦^ Besides the coal which has been alluded to,
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 27
there is abundant timber throughout the whole of the interior of Alaska, along the valleys of the Yukon. For four or five months in the summer the climate is hardly to be dis- tinguished from that of the northern United States — Minnesota or Montana, for example ; and although the winters are very severe, the snowfall is not heavy. Work could be carried on underground throughout the whole of the year quite as well as in the higher mountains of Colorado.
Future Development*
As shown on the map, the area hastily ex- amined during the past season is but a portion of the great interior of Alaska. That gold occurs over a large extent of country has been determined, but the richness of the various veins and lodes remains to be ascertained by actual mining operations. Gold is known to occur in the great unexplored regions south of the Yukon, because of its presence in the wash of the streams ; and it is quite probable that the Yukon gold belt extends to the north and west ; but this can be determined only by fur- ther exploration. That a second ' ' California gold belt " exists in Alaska may not be prob- able, but that there is fair prospect of a steady yield of gold is certain.
There appeared in the New York Sun of
28 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
January 24, 1897, a description of the un- known region lying north of Cooks Inlet, accompanied by a sketch map made by the prospectors. This map takes in a rather large area, and shows that the Alaska Mountains are broken down north of Cooks Inlet, and that the Sushitna River extends almost directly north 150 miles, when it branches, one large tributary coming from the west and another from the northeast. The latter was followed up northward 200 miles to a large lake. The prospecting party report that they found fine gold in nearly every pan, and on the upper river platinum. The rocks for the last forty miles below the falls and above the forks of the river are slate, porphyry, and granite, many veins of white quartz running through the slate. One specimen assayed well in silver, copper and gold. This is in the area to which it has been proposed to send one of the Geological Survey parties the next field season.
On July 3, this year, about 1,300 gold seekers were scattered along the trails leading to the Klondike. There were 100 at Lake Lindeman, 270 at Lake Bennett, 400 along the river between the two lakes, and 600 at other points. Three companies have been organized to construct railroads into the Yukon country,
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 29
on Canadian soil, and surveys are being made. One projected route is from Lynn Canal on White Pass. Ex- Senator Salisbury, of Dela- ware, has men in the field laying out a route from Takou Pass, while yet a third party is examining the Chilkat route.
In Silver Bow Basin the Ebner mill is run- ning on high-grade ore, and the present plant is to be doubled this season, ten more stamps having been ordered.
The Alaska-Juneau Company, operating in Silver Bow Basin, during June milled 2,300 e tons of ore and cleaned up $16,300. During
I- the same period the Treadwell milled 23,596
^ tons of ore and cleaned up $67,000, at an ex-
!^ pense of $28,871. The Mexican milled 14,000
^ tons, netting $17,900.
jQ. The first strikes were made there about two
a years ago, and they were so rich that the
lid stories of them which reached the mining
^d settlements at Forty Mile and Circle City were ' -r riaiculed. The result was that throughout the
^^y summer there was no rush to the wonderful ^cei iiew diggings. Men came into Circle City or ot Forty Mile and announced that they had taken $40, $50, or even $100 from a pan of dirt on
CO,
30 THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS.
the Klondike, and the only result was to raise a laugh. The men who told the stories laughed too, took their supplies and went back. But their laugh was best, for they told the tiTith, and those who wouldn't believe it only left them the more time to pick the best for them- selves.
In the fall, when the camps filled up with the men from the other diggings, but no one came in from the Klondike, it began to dawn on Circle City and Forty Mile that perhaps, after all, there was truth in the wonderful stories. Then began a great rush for the Klon- dike. It was like the old days of placer min- ing in California, and the whole stream was staked out in less than a week. Then the El Dorado, a little branch of the Klondike, was prospected, and there the rich Berry claims are located, from one of which $240 was taken from one pan of pay dirt.
The world has never seen such placer mines as those of the Klondike. California in its very best days was nothing like it. Placer miners will work claims with gi'eat energy that pay 10 cents a pan, but claims on the Klondike all last summer averaged a dollar a pan.
THE KLONDIKE GOLD FIELDS. 31
Miners' wasres in the Yukon country had been $10 a day before the Klondike strikes. Last summer they rose to an ounce a day, and even more. They can't get the dust very clean by their primitive methods, so an ounce up there is worth only about $17.50 or $18, but that is a big increase on $10.
HUMAN DOCUMENTS*
Personal Statements From Those Who Have Been There.
In the midst of hysterical and conflicting rumors about the new gold fields, two bold facts are patent. First, upward of $5,000,000 in gold dust and nuggets have reached San Francisco from the Klondike, and second, that thousands of argonauts of '97 are flocking to the New El Dorado.
The reason for the conflicting rumors is self- evident. Two influences are at work exactly as they are in Wall street and in the same way, namely, the bulls and the bears. The bulls are booming the Klondike to an extent that outrages credulity. The bears, on the contrary, cannot invent any story too horrible to depict the new field. The bulls are anxious to have^ the new region flooded with humanity. The bears desire to keep the people out. Who are the bulis ? Who are the bears ? The answer is not difficult to find. The bulls have something to sell — they are the railroad,
/
THS KULL
(TWO •IDEfi o:
I
' ' What proflteth a man. ' ' —.V. Y. Herald. THE BEAB.
PICTtJRE.)
t-l
1^
HT7MAN DOCUMENTS. 88
steamship and transportation companies; the merchants and dealers in mining machinery and necessaries; the adventurers, who create fake mining companies and sell the shares in large nmnbers at small prices to a feverish, gullible and eager public ; the holders of titles to mining claims in Alaska, some good, some worthless, and lastly, the class that lives on the weaknesses of aggregated masses of excited humanity, the gamblers and purveyors of vice of all kinds.
The bears are much less numerically than the bulls. They are interested in keeping people out of the New El Dorado. They are exercising a very human quality by crying "wolf," and trying to get all that is possible for themselves, and keep away the crowd until they can partition the balance among their friends. In all mining rushes there have been bulls and bears, and probably always will be.
As all men view human testimony from a different coign of mental vantage, and as it is yet too early for any one to assume the func- tions of an historian of the Klondike, the state- ments, as reported in American newspapers, of a considerable nimiber of men who have be«n
84 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
on the ground are here given for what they are worth. The statements have been shorn of all superfluous verbiage and are jumbled to- gether somewhat in the order in which they appeared in the press throughout the country. Although they form a kaleidoscopic picture cf the gold fields, the reader can draw conclusions according to his experience of human nature and his mental attitude.
Joaquin Miller, the poet, writing from Vic- toria, B. C, on July 26, 1897, says :
Y * There will be no starvation under any cir- cumstances in the Klondike mines either this year or next. , A great many people are crying *'wolf!" when they can, as you can see by a little counting, find no wolf at all. ( For, to Bay nothing of the thousands of tons taken in by the steamer, all the men who have gone in by the way I am now going, what is called the "short cut," took in and are still taking in loads and loads of supplies^
"Now, I am not going to take the responsi- bility of advising any one to come on this year. But of two things I am certain, from what I have found out since coming to the Sound. First, there is no possible chance for a famine
HTTMAN DOCTTJEENTI. 8S
in the mines, and, second, th© dangers and hardships and cost of getting there have been greatly exaggerated."
On the same day, Louis Sloss, th© head of th© Alaska Commercial Company said : "I regard it as a crime for any transportation company to encourage men to go to the Yukon this fall. With the present and prospective rush, it will b© impossitle to get enough provisions through to supply the demand. The Seattle people who are booming the steamship lines may be sincere, but a heavy responsibility will rest on their shoulders should starvation and crime prevail in Dawson City next winter.
" We have tried to give the facts to all ap- plicants and discourage this wild rush of clerks, professional men and women who are unused to any hardships, and whose chances of get- ting out of the country aUve will be veiy slender, even though they should make money. Conditions are radically different from those in California in the early days. /"Those who crossed the plains or came by the Isthmus, found here a genial climate and plenty of food. They also turned to other vocations when mining proved unprofitable. But on the
86 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
Yukon, if a man can't get work as a miner, he must leave the country or starve. ' If it is winter he cannot get out, and so, should the food supply run low, hundreds will perish miserably. Hence, I repeat it is a crime to encourage this rush, which can only end in disaster for three-quarters of the new arrivals."
A New York man, whose interests would not allow the publication of his name, familiar with Alaska mining and Alaska mines, made some interesting statements in the course of an interview published in a metropolitan news- paper, on July 14, 1897. " There is this differ- ence," said he, "between California in '49 and Alaska in '97. Alaska is all staked out. The news has not gone abroad until the people near at hand, the people who have spent money, time, and their very lives in developing the country, the people, in short, who deserved the reward, had seized on everything in sight.
Down along the coast in the quartz lodes, the stamp mills have been established one by one, twenty stamps here, forty there. They have not any of them begun to be worked as hard as the available ore will permit. Work in Alaska cannot be said to have begun,
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 37
There was never anywhere anything like it. To sum the whole thing np, I believe that right in the Alaska gold deposits is the mother vein of the gold of North America. The placer deposits in the Yukon country are the wash- ings from those same rich sources. Years ago, in 1888, as nearly as I can remember, the placer miners began working over Chilkat Pass and into the Yukon district. Poorly clad, badly provisioned, they went out year after year. Some of them went half crazy. But they found gold. They came back and brought their friends in with them next time. The very immensity of what they found worked in their favor. They told the truth, the exact truth. It sounded like the boastful inventions of men who were trying to conceal their disap- pointment. Now, when the gold dust itself is beginning to come out of the mountains, people believe them. But its too late now to go up there with the idea of making money out of the mines. Everything is gobbled up. It is no poor man's country. A man might as well start out from Juneau, after all his kit and outfit are bought, without a cent as without $500 or $600. But it is a country every
S8 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
American who can afford to travel ought to see."
Another New Yorker, John F. Plummer, who is interested in the Alaska stamp mills, knows the region well, having been there frequently, and who could give ' ' some inside facts " to tho general public if he cared to, has thus far con- fined his comments for publication to tho fol- lowing optimistic statement : ' *■ Too much can not be said about the wealth of that whole country. The Alaska purchase was the crown- ing act of William H. Seward's life."
What the actual conditions at the Klondike diggings are and have been since the first big strike there in the midsummer of 1896 will be a matter of more interest to the reader than any opinions and speculations of Easteioi ' ' ten- derfeet."
On March 24, 1897, Oscar Ashby, in a per- sonal letter dated at Circle City, said in part :
'' Our town is very quiet at present, every one having gone to the big excitement at Klon- dike. Everybody has gone crazy over it. This country has an unparalleled future. There are thousands of acres that men will not, in fact, cannot, look at until provisions are
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 89
cheaper. I understand that wages here will be $12 a day. There is not enough help to supply the demand on the creeks. Dogs are worth all kinds of money, from $75 to $300 each."
Another report stated that live dogs were worth from $2 to $5 a pound, being a scarce commodity in that region. Flour at Klondike was worth $100 a sack of fifty pounds, and everything else in proportion. At that time (March, '97), according to a private letter from a miner, who is perfectly trustworthy, gravel was frozen eighteen to twenty feet deep to bed rock. He says : ' ' We burn a shaft down and then drift, using fire instead of powder. The gravel runs in gold from $5 to $150 a pan, and the young fellow on a claim above me panned out $40,000 in two days. I was offered $250,000 cash for my claim. I still hold the ground, and will be either a millionaire or a pauper in the fall. Every newcomer in the camp is offered big wages, as high as $50 a day, but seldom will any one work for another. The only phantom that stands in our way to the goal of a millionaire is grub. I have provisions enough to last me till next June, and I am as
40 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
well fixed as any man in the country. If the boats do not get up the river before July we will be in hard times. "
Doubtless this miner was able to lay in such food supplies as he required, as boats went up the river some time prior to July.
On July 14 the steamer Excelsior arrived in San Francisco, bringing with it $250,000 in gold dust for the Alaska Commercial Company. The same steamer brought forty miners from the new Klondike mines, with gold amounting tc» over $500,000. Eanging in size from a hazelnut to fine birdshot and grains of sand, this mass of yellow gold was poured out on the counter at Selby's smelting works on Mont- gomery street, the United States Mint having closed for the day when the miners arrived, and then shovelled with copper scoops into the great melting pot. Those who saw the gold in one heap said no such spectacle had been seen in 'Frisco since the days of '49, when miners used to come down there from the placer districts and change their gold for $20 pieces. Mr. and Mrs. T. S. Lippey, who left the Golden Gate in April, 1896, were the luck- iest of these miners. They went in by way of
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 41
Juneau, over the divide, and Mrs. Lippey, who is small and sinewy, with skin tanned to the color of sole leather, was the first woman to go over this trail. She seemed to have profited physically as well as pecuniarily b} her hard- ships in the Yukon territory, and the antlers of a moose which she exhibited on her arrival testified to her skill as a rifle shot. The Lip- peys brought back 860,000. Similar instances of good luck might be chronicled here indefi- nitely, but it is far from the purpose of this little volume to mislead any one by relating only the stories of those who have ' ' struck it rich " in Alaska. For every individual on whom fortune will smile in this great unde- veloped country, there will be a dozen who will perish from exposure or starvation, or come to an untimely end from some other cause. . But it were foolish to play the role of a prophet of evil to those adventurous spirits who are seized with the gold fever. Many of them will go anyway — in spite of friends' dissuasions, wives' tears or the binding ties of heme. To such men there is advice and information in these pages that will prove invaluable.
But more is to be said concerning the won-
4^ HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
derful discoveries in the Upper Yukon region, and we shall repeat only verified facts in our effort to present w^hat every intelligent Ameri- can citizen ought to know. The steamer Ex- celsior, to which we have alluded, also brought a letter from one of the officials of the Alaska Commercial Company, at Circle City, giving this account of the stampede to the new dig- gings :
' ' The excitement on the river is indescrib- able, and the output of the new Klondike dis- trict is almost beyond belief. Men who had nothing last fall are now worth a fortune. One man has worked forty square feet of his claim, and is going out with $40,000 in dust. One- quarter of the claims are now selling at from $15,000 to $50,000. The estimate of the dis- trict is given as thirteen square miles, with an average of $300,000 to the claim, while some are valued as high as $1,000,000 each. A number of claims have been purchased for large sums on a few months' credit, and the amount has been paid out of the ground before it be- came due.
" At Dawson sacks of gold dust are thrown under the counter in the stores for safe keeping.
HITMAN DOCUMENTS. 48
The peculiar part of it is that most of the loca- tions were made by men who came in last year, old-timers not having had faith in the indica- tions until the value of the region was assured, whereupon prices jumped so high that they could not get in. Some of the stories are so fabulous I am afraid to repeat them for fear of being suspected of the infection.
' ' There are other discoveries reported a little beyond and on the Stewart Eiver, but these have not yet been verified. Labor is $15 a day and board, with 100 days' work guaranteed ; so you can imagine how difficult it is to hold em- ployees. Men who were looking for bits last year are now talking and showing thousands, and the air is full of millions. If the reports are true, it is the biggest placer discovery ever made in the v/orld, for, though other diggings have been found quite as rich in spots, no such extent of dirt has been known which prospected and worked so high right through."
Mr. J. C. Hestwood, who has spent three years in Alaska, has given a very good descrip- tion of the chances for the tenderfoot. He says : "To go into the Yukon requires $250 for an outfit, and about the same amount in
44 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
cash. To do anything in mining, except as a day laborer, requires from |5,000 upward. The rich pay dirt is only struck near the bed rock, and this generally lies from eighteen to twenty-five feet below the surface. The method of mining is to remove the surface mass, which is eighteen inches thick, and then build a fire, which burns all night. In the morning the gravel is shaved down about two feet. This is shovelled out, and another fire is built, and in this slow and laborious way the gromid is removed to bed rock. This work can be carried on all winter, except when the mer- cury falls below 60^.
"Dawson City is having a remarkable boom. Provisions were scarce and dear last winter, and all supplies are costly. An ordinary 75 cents pocket-knife sells for $4, and shoes bring from 16 to $8. A dog sledge-load of eggs was brought in last winter from Juneau. About half were spoiled, but the whole lot sold readily at $4 per dozen. Flour sold as high as |1 a pound."
Mr. Hestwood has a mine in the new Bonanza Creek district. He thus describes his output: "The gold is the color of brass, and is worth
HUMAN" DOCUMENTS. 45
116 to $17 an ounce. It isn't as pure gold as is found elsewhere on the Yukon, We didn't hear of McKinley's election until last June, but there were few silver men in camp. Some, however, feared that gold would depreciate in value because of the prospective enormous out- put of these mines. Circle City and Forty Mile have suffered the usual fate of mining camps which have petered out, only these camps have not petered out. When gold was found in such astonishing quantities on the tributaries of the Klondike the whole population of those camps moved bodily to the junction of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, where Dawson City is established. This district, the richest placer country in the world, was discovered by an old hunter named Cormack, who has a squaw for a wife and several half breed children.
" It is easier to reach Dawson City now than when the discovery of gold was first announced. Appliances have been placed at all the moun- tain passes, so that heavy loads are pulled up steep inclines and let down on the other side. I look for a big rush next year, and there will be wonderfxil stories to tell when the season is
4:6 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
ended. Dawson City is not a paradise by any means, but there are much worse places.
The winter cold is intense, but as there is plenty of timber around we do not suffer. Our summer lasts about six weeks, but during that time it is very warm. The day we started it was 93° in the shade. The mosquito is our worst enemy."
An old miner, Alexander Orr, who spent eight years in Alaska has this to say about Dawson: "It is not like most of the mining camps. It is not a tough to-wTi; murders are ahnost unknown. The miners are a quiet, peaceable kind of men, who have gone there to work, and are willing that everybody else shall have an equal chance with themselves. A great deal of gambling is done in town, but serious quarrels are the exception. As a gambling town I think it is equal to any I have ever seen, and this, by the way, is always the test of a mining camp's prosperity. Stud poker is the usual game. They play $1 ante, and often bet $300 or $500 on the third card."
The following short interviews with returned miners will perhaps convey the best idea of what has been done at Dawson and vicinity:
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 47
"I went to Alaska two years ago," said Fred. Lendeseen, ' ' and when I left there I brought with me $13,000 in gold dust. I have had con- siderable experience in mining, and say with- out hesitation that Alaska is the richest coun- try I have ever seen. I have an interest in a claim near Dawson and am going back in the spring of '98."
Greg. Stewart:
"I had a partner and I sold out my in- terest for $45,000 and put my money back again at interest in mines. My partner had 1,500 ounces of dust, but it fell short four ounces on the way down. The dust will go over $17 an ounce, but we are all waiting for returns from the smelting works. I brought a few hundred ounces with me, but I get interest of two per cent, on short loans."
William Kulju:
''I brought down just 1,000 ounces of dust and sold it to smelting works. I worked at El Dorado Creek, near Dawson, and was in that country about a year and had a couple of dollars and a pack last summer when I went in, I sold my claim for $25,000, part cash and the balance to be paid as it is taken out. Now
48 HUMAN DOCtJMENTS.
I am taking a trip to the old country — Fin- land— and am coming back in 1898."
Con. Stamatim:
"I was mining on shares with a partner. He's still there. We worked on Alexander Mc- Donald's ground in El Dorado for forty-five days and took out $33,000. We got fifty per cent, and the other half went to McDonald. Then we divided our share and I came away."
Thomas Hack:
<'My dust will bring more than $6,000. I have an interest in two claims on the El Dorado. One partner sold out for $50,000 and another for $55,000. I had an offer of $50,000, but refused just before I came out."
Eobert Kooks:
''I've been four years in Alaska. I had a half interest in a claim on El Dorado Creek and sold out to my partner for $12,000. I bought a half interest in a claim on the Bonanza, be- low the Discovery claim, and my share is worth easily $15,000. I brought $14,000 in gold dust, and shall return in the spring of '98 after rest and recreation."
Thomas Cook:
" It is a good country, but if there is a rush
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 49
there's going to be a great deal of suffering. Over 2,000 men are there at present and 2,000 more will be in before snow falls. I've been at placer mining for years in California and Brit- ish Columbia, and the mines at Dawson are more extensive and beyond anything I ever saw. Last year I did very well at Dawson. I have a claim worth about the average, they run from $25,000 to $50,000, on Boar Creek, across the divide from the Bonanza."
M. S. Norcross:
*'I was sick and couldn't work, so I cooked for Mr. McNamee. Still I had a claim on the Bonanza, but didn't know what was in it, be- cause I couldn't work it. I sold out last spring for $10,000, and was satisfied to get a chance to return to my home in Los Angeles."
John Marks:
"I brought $11,500 in gold dust with me, but I had to work for every bit of it. There is plenty of gold in Alaska, more, I believe, than the most sanguine imagine, but it can not be obtained without great effort and endurance. The first thing for a poor man to do when he reaches the country is to begin prospecting. As snow is from two to five feet deep, prospect-
50 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
ing is not very easy. Snow must first be shovelled away, and then a fire huilt on the ground to melt the ice. As the ground thaws the shaft must be sunk until bed rock is reached. The average prospector has to sink a great many shafts before he reaches any- thing worth his while. If gold is found in sufficient quantities to pay for working, he may begin drifting from the shaft, and con- tinue to do so as long as he finds enough gold to pay."
S. B. Hollinshead:
' ' I was in the diggings about two years and brought out about 1,500 ounces, which I sup- pose will bring $17 an ounce. I'm not sure about going back, though I have a claim on Gold Bottom Creek, fifteen miles from Bonanza. It is less than a year since I located my claim. My dust will bring over $25,000."
Albert Fox:
" My partner and I went into the district in 1895 and secured two claims. We sold one for $45,000. I brought 300 ounces, which netted $5,000. Everybody is at Dawson for the present. The district is apt to be overrun. I wouldn't advise anyone to go there this fall
I
MAP OF YUKON DIGGINGS. — ARRO'WS SHOW MINERS* ROUTE.
It" >■ O
a
n o a
OD
M
I
M
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 61
('97) for people are likely to go hungry before next spring."
The founder of Dawson City is James Ladue, who has been in Alaska for fifteen years. He did not strike it rich until the discovery of gold in Bonanza Creek. On July 16th, 1897, Mr. Ladue made the following statements to a newspaper correspondent in San Francisco: /"Dawson City is not unlike some of the mining towns here in this State (California) and elsewhere, with the difference that no lawlessness exists. The people realize that they must depend to a cer- tain extent on one another, though the Cana- dian Government has been a powerful factor in keeping down the unruly. The history of Dawson City is interesting. I built the first house in it and raised the first American flag./ The discovery of gold in that immediate local- ity was made by Robert Henderson, who had been prospecting for years in the great north- west at a place called Gold Bottom, although George W. Cormack brought to lighl; the riches of Bonanza Creek. As soon as news of the great find reached Circle City and Forty Mile men threw up their claims and hastened to the new fields. There was promise of trouble at
62 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
first because the men were crazed over the prospect, but cooler heads finally prevailed and a meeting was held on the banks of the creek and ground was allotted to each man. The claims were cut from 500 to 100, and there was again a threat of trouble until the Dominion Surveyor, William Ogilvie, arrived and resur- veyed all claims. Under the new ruling each claim extends 600 feet along the bottom of the creek, the width being governed by the dis- tance between the mountains. This will aver- age 600 feet, though there are some claims 1,000 feet wide."
On July 17, 1897, the steamship Portland, belonging to the North American Transpor- tation and Trading Company, reached Seattle direct from St. Michael's, at the mouth of the Yukon River in Alaska, with sixty-eight pas- sengers— mostly miners fresh from the Klon- dike placer mining district, from which more than $1,500,000 gold was taken in the winter of 1896-7.
These argonauts brought back one and one- half tons of gold in nuggets and dust, worth in round numbers $1,000,000. They reported that from San Francisco to the furthermost point
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 68
in Alaska the coast was wild with the excite- ment growing out of the fabulous finds in the Klondike. It is fifty miles by river from Forty Mile, on the Alaska boundary, to the scene of the recent finds, and about forty miles in a straight line.
William Stanley of Seattle, formerly a black- smith, went into Alaska in 1895. He returned home with $115,000 in gold nuggets and dust. His claim is on the Bonanza Creek, five miles above Dawson City.
Clarence Berry, formerly a farmer of Fresno, Cal., brought back seven sacks containing $135,000, having gone to the Yukon in 1894, "My luck was bad for three years," said he to an interviewer. " Last fall I came out and married, and when I went back I heard of the Klondike. I was early on the grounds, locating with other parties three claims on El Dorado Creek. We struck it rich. That's all there is to tell. Last winter I took out 8130,000 in thirty box Lr-.gths. A box length is 12 by 15 feet, and in one length I found $10,000. An- other time the second largest nugget ever found in the Yukon was taken out of my claim. It weighed thirteen ounces and was
54 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
worth $213. I have known men to take out $1,000 a day from a drift claim. Of course the gold was foimd in pockets and those finds, you can rest assured, were very scarce. I would not advise a man to take in an outfit that would cost less than $500. He must expect to be dis- appointed and the chances are that he may work for years without finding a paying claim, and again he may be lucky enough to strike it rich. The comitry is wild, rough, and full of hardships for those unused to the regions of Arctic winter. If a man makes a fortune he is liable to earn it by severe hardships and suf- ferings, but then grit, perseverance and luck will probably reward hard work with a com- fortable income for life."
Henry Anderson, a native of Sweden, came back to Seattle with. $45,000 spot cash, the pro- ceeds of the sale of a one-half interest in a claim on El Dorado Creek. T. J. Kelly and son of Tacoma went into the diggings in 1896 and made $10,000. The son is in charge of the claim, the father having returned on the Port- land.
Frank Keller of Los Angeles, went to the gold fields in 1896, mined during the winter
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 55
and sold his claim for $35, 000. William Sloat, formerly a dry goods merchant of Lanimo, B. C, sold his claim for $52,000, and with the gold he took from the mine came back on the Portland. Another man named Wilkenson of Lanimo, sold his claim for $40,000 and came back to stay.
Jack Home, a pugilist of Tacoma, dug up $6,000 and left the field for good. Frank Phiscator of Baroda, Mich., returned with $96,000, the result of his labors in Miles.
J. Keller, who did well in Klondike, returned on the Portland, and had this to say about the country: "It was 68 degrees below zero last winter and the ground was frozen to the depth of forty feet. The snow doesn't fall to any great depth, three feet being the greatest, and that was light and fleecy frost. All the gold is taken out of gravel by thamng in the summer. There are nine months of winter. We left Dawson City on a river steamer on June 19, and were eight days reaching St. Michaels, 1,800 miles. The weather in Klondike was warm and sultry, much wanner than it seemed and mosquitoes were in myriads. They are in the water one drinks. They give a man no
56 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
rest day or night. It is a horrible country to live in, but it is extremly healthy. Every man is on his good behavior and for a mining country has as good, orderly, law-abiding citizens as I ever saw."
Americans, who emigrated en masse from Forty Mile, the Alaska diggings, and from CiTcle City, when the news of the great strikes reached these places in the spring of 1897, are largely in the majority among the claim owners in the Klondike country.
There are two routes that lead into the Klondike. By steamer from Seattle to St. Michaels, and then by river boat up the Yu- kon to Dawson City, is the best but the more expensive route, which takes thirty-five to forty days, the cost being $180. Each steam- er passenger is allowed but 150 poxuids of baggage. The other is a land route by way of Juneau, over which it is impossible to carry any large quantity of provisions, as every pound of supplies must be carried on Indians' backs over Chilkoot Pass and by frequent por- tages separating the lakes and streams on this overland route. Dogs are also used in sled- ding supplies over the mountains to camp.
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 57
Because of fierce storms, the Juneau route after September 15 is impassable to all except Indians, and even they sometimes perish on the journey. This trip is described by Joseph Ladue, who owns the town site of Dawson City, in this wise : ' ' Leaving Juneau, you go to Dyea by way of Lime Canal, and from there to Lake Lindemaan, thirty miles on foot, or portage, as we call it. The lake gives you a ride of five or six miles, and then follows an- other long journey overland to the head waters of Lake Bennett, which is twenty-eight miles long. On foot you go again for several miles, and then the caribou crossing of the river fur- nishes transportation for four miles to Tagish Lake, where another twenty-one-mile boat ride may be had.
' ' This is followed by a weary stretch of mountainous country, and then Marsh or Mud Lake is reached. You get another boat ride of twenty-four miles, and then go down the creek for twenty-seven miles to Miles Canon and to White Horse Rapids.
' ' This is one of the most dangerous places on the entire route, and should be avoided by all strangers. The stream is full of sunken
58 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
rocks and runs with the speed of a mill-race. Passing White Horse Rapids, the journey is down the river for thirty miles to Lake La- barge, where thirty-one miles of navigable water is found. Another short portage and Lous River is reached, where you have a 200- mile journey, which brings you to Fort Sel- kirk. At this point Pelly and Lous Rivers come together, forming the Yukon. From that point on is practically smooth sailing, though the stranger must be exceedingly care- ful.
' ' It may be said with absolute truth that Dawson City is one of the most moral towns of its kind in the world. There is little or no quarrelling and no brawls of any kind, though there is considerable drinking and gambling. Every man carries a pistol if he wishes to, yet it is a rare occurrence when one is displayed. The principal sport with mining men is found around the gambling table. There they gather after nightfall and play until the late hours in the morning. They have some big games, too. It sometimes costs as much as $50 to draw a card. A game with $2,000 as stakes is an or- dinary event. But with all of that there has
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. bd
not been decided trouble. If a man is fussy and quarrelsome he is quietly told to get out of the game, and that is the end of it. Many people have an idea that Dawson City is com- pletely isolated and can commimicate with the outside world only once in every twelve months. That is a big mistake, however. Circle City, only a few miles away, has a mail once each month, and there we have our mail addressed. It is true the cost is pretty high, $1 a letter and $2 for a paper; yet by that ex- penditure of money we are able to keep in direct communication with our friends on the outside. In the way of public institutions our camp is at present without any, but by next season we will have a church, a music-hall, a schoolhouse and a hospital. This last institu- tion will be under the direct control of the Sisters of Mercy, who have already been sta- tioned for a long time at Circle City and Forty Mile Camp.
" Nearly a score of children were in Dawson City when I left, so I donated a lot and $100 for a school. No one can buy anything on credit in Dawson. It is spot cash for every
60 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
one, and payment is always gold dnst. Very few have any regular money."
At this writing Dawson promises to li£ive 30,000 or more before the spring of '98, when a new route to the Klondike will be opened from Juneau to Fort Selkirk, on the Yukon, overland. It has been inspected and pro- nounced practicable by Capt. Goodall of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. It crosses the divide over Chilkat Pass, which is lower and more easily traversed than Chilkoot Pass. This trail is named from old Pioneer Dalton and is about 700 miles long. No lakes or rivers are on the route, the trail running over a high level j^rairie, \\diich is well adapted for driving stock, but for men the tramp is too long.
Mr. H. A. Stanley, the proprietor of the Binghamton Evening Herald, went to Alaska for his health in 1896. He spent the winter on St. Michael Island, and was the only news- paper man who witnessed the arrival of the "Portus B. Weare,"the first passenger steam- er to reach there from up the mighty river, after the great discoveries in Klondike. Mr. Stanley sent an interesting letter to his paper
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. CI
dated June 27, 1897. From the letter are here given a few graphic excerpts :
' ' The Weare steamed around the low head- land and drowned the frantic cheering of the crowds on both banks with its hoarse whistle. The Portland and Excelsior, drawing in excess of nineteen feet of water, were obliged to lie out a mile or more from shore, but the Weare, built for river traffic, and drawing only a few feet, was enabled to steam up the shallow har- bor and touch the dock. As she steamed near, friends who had not met in months or years greeted one another from deck to deck, and wives and children, who had come to meet fathers and husbands, frantically threw kisses, and wept and laughed by turns. A more ex- cited throng was never seen.
"That the Weare brought good news was evident. Husbands, fathers and friends held up nuggets of glittering gold or bags of it before the eyes of those aboard the Portland, and the news was shouted across that a great strike had been made. ' Circle City is busted, ' ' Only three white men live in it,' ' The Klon- dike is the richest mining region on earth to- day; hurrah for the new proposition,' 'Circle
o'2 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
City is the silent city,' These and kindred shouts rent the air. There was as great de- sire in the Portland to hear the news from up the river as there had been at St. Michael to hear from the outer world. * * * j talked with many of the returning miners. One, a poor boy of twenty-three, seemed dying of scurvy. In answer to my questions as to how big a stake he had, he raised his glassy eyes and said, ' don't ask me questions. I've had good luck and hard luck.' I was told that he had about $70,000 for his eighteen months of privations, but that he had hardly paid ex- penses before he made his strike in December, 1896. * * * A captain of mounted police told me that the news of the great strike in the Klondike did not get to Circle City until December 15, '96, when there was a stam- pede. "
A great many of the gold seekers go from San Francisco, but an equal, probably greater, number will doubtless be setting out from Seattle, the facilities for travel from that port having been increased by the transportation companies, and, of course, they will be further increased to meet future requirements.
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 63
A former superintendent of the public schools of Seattle, W. P. C. Richardson, who spent several vi^ars on the Yukon, gives the following account ot iiis observations :
' ' The Klondike is a stream several hundred miles long, as nearly as can be estimated, and from 200 to 300 feet wide, exceedingly rapid and difficult to navigate, by reason of swift current and overhanging trees, or sweepers, as they are called in that country. Its waters were clear before the discovery of gold, but they are now muddy from the wash of sluice boxes. The mines are not on the Klondike proper, but on Bonanza, Hunter, Bear and other creeks. The Bonanza empties into the Klondike about a mile from its mouth. Him- ter Creek is fourteen miles above, while El Dorado is a branch of Bonanza, branching off several miles from the mouth of the Klondike. The stories of the wonderful product of the rivers and creeks I have named are not in the least exaggerated. On the contrary, the true story remains to be told. From what I have seen of it, I think it has a solid bottom, good for the next twenty-five years as a placer min- ing country, such as the world has rarely pro-
64 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
duced. As soon as transportation facilities are secured, it will not be a bad country to live in. Stewart Kiver, farther up, in my opinion, is equally rich. It was prosj^ected in 1880, and its bars panned out as high as $100 to a man in one day. The river diggings along Stewart Eiver were only abandoned by reason of their being so remote from the base of sujDply at the time to which I refer. Like the Klondike, this river has its source in the Eocky Mountains. The Rockies here present the same general appearance of the Cascade range as seen from Seattle. These mountains have not been pros- pected, and they present an exceedingly at- tractive field to the prospector. In my oi^inion, they not only contain placer gromid, but very rich quartz. Stewart River is larger than the Klondike, and Will soon be a scene of greater activity than is now witnessed on the tribu- taries of the Klondike."
As so many interests are concentrated in and about Dawson City, it is pertinent to quote the latest statements, at this writing, of Joseph Ladue, who built the first cabin there, erected the first sawmill and secured the patent to the site which he is said to be selling in lots in reg-
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 65
Illation boom town style. He tells the story as follows :
" I went north in the summer of '82, and landed at Sixty Mile Creek, in the Northwest Territory, but had no luck at all. I next tri^d the Stewart River, and mined for one summer in the bar diggings, as they call them. These are deposits of fine gold brought down by the rivers from the glacial regions and lodged in bars formed by the eddies in the river. I did a little better there, but did not begin to get much, so I went to Belle Isle Station, in Alaska, and started trading for the Alaska Commercial Company. I kept that up until the fall of 1886, when I went to Forty Mile Creek, and did well at bar and gulch diggings •<t the first gulch in the river, which is known as Franklin Gulch, because the first rich strike was made there by H. H. Franklin, who founded the town of Juneau. I mined for two whole summers at Forty Mile Creek, and then went over the boundary line, about 300 miles, to Fort Selkirk, where I began ranching. I raised potatoes, turnips, radishes, cabbages, barley and oats, but the frost nipped almost everything, and I struck out again by estab- lishing Sixty Mile Fort, or Ogilvie Fort, as a trading post. I put up a sawmill for the Alaska Commercial Company and remained there until last fall.
Robert Henderson was prospecting for me.
a
66 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
and I have helped him out for four years. In fact, I kept him going. If I had not the chances are that Klondike would never have been discovered.
" ' Rich ? ' I don't dare to say how rich it is. It is richer than any man has any thought of, and I am fearful only that people will rush in there in such numbers that they will create a famine.
" I founded the town of Dawson, and gave it the name of Mr. Dawson, who had charge of the first surveying party for the Canadian Government in 1885. He is a very able and sociable man, and I named the town site as a little compliment to him. It is the most suit- able place that could be found in all that region, because it is fine, level groimd, with good landing at the water's edge, and behind it is rolling country. The Klondike district is about twelve miles off. I moved the sa^vmill to Dawson last fall ('96), and it is rumiing steadily. The men stand behind one another waiting to obtain their lumber, and it was all I could do to supply the demand. When I first located the town, and built the first cabin, the surveyors of the Canadian Government staked it out and I was made Postmaster, but I had too much other work to do, and had to give up being a public official. The town is laid out in streets and avenues, numbered in
PICTORIAL MAP —JUNEAU TO KLONDIKE .
—S. Y. Ueraia.
68 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
American style, all the streets running one way and the avenues across.
' ' Now, as to these strikes made there since last fall, they have been rich in almost every instance. I have been offered $100,000 for my interests there just as they stand, but I would not sell for three times that amount. The offer has been made to me in coin, but I de- clined, because I know what I have got there, and I know how to hold on to it. Many of the men who have come down here with a few thousand won't have a dollar of it in six months. There is j^lenty of gold there for steady men who know how to take care of it and are willing to work. It will take about $500 to stake a man out for a year when he gets there, and he may strike it rich, or, again, he may scarcely make enough to pay his outlay. By the process of mining there a man does not know what he has in his dump, which he piles up during the winter, until spring. Then the ice breaks up, the water commences flowing, and he can sluice the gravel taken out during the winter.
"For a man who has never done any min- ing, the best thing is to hire out to a man who knows the business. It is a trade that has to be learned. The wages are good, and a man who is willing to work will learn enough in one year to start on his own account and do better than if he tries as a green hand."
HUMAN DOCUMENTS. 69
From the tremendous mass of testimony re- garding the real situation on the Klondike, the following private letter from Thomas Davies, of the Seattle Tirnes, to his sister, Mrs. G. W. Beardsley, of Binghamton, N. Y., is of em- phatic significance, as showing the extent of the gold fever on the Pacific Slope. He says :
"As you have doubtless noticed, we are having a genuine old-fashioned boom. Ad- vance agent of prosperity has arrived — confi- dence restored, and on a gold basis, too. Prob- ably one hundred of my friends who went to the Yukon have made from $10, 000 to $500, 000. Zilly got $70,000; Baker, who roomed at my house, $10,000; Lippy, myY. M. C. A. friend, brought out $65,000 on the year's work; left $150,000 on the 'dump.' Everything wild- gold everywhere. I saw $1:00, 000 in gold dust with my own eyes when the steamer landed — the most I ever beheld. Policemen are quit- ting. The Times has lost nearly its entire re- portorial force. Clerks jump their counters — doctors their patients, and even the preachers shy around the pulpit. Every steamer goes out loaded in spite of the prospective hardships. It resembles the Oklahoma boom which I wit- nessed. Nearly all the grocery and supply houses are running double sets of help (where they don't quit), and working day and night.
70 HUMAN DOCUMENTS.
Woolen mills and stores are out of blankets and heavy clothing. If any one thinks of coming from Binghamton this fall tell them not to, for all passages are taken on boats for next two weeks, and then it will be too late.
" Am thinking of going up myself in August, '97, — but don't know for certain — may not go until spring."
'A peculiar state of affairs exists in the Klon- dike, from the fact that its gold output is taken from property belonging chiefly to subjects of Uncle Sam and comes to this country. In order "to get even," as the phrase goes, the Canadian Government is establishing customs officers, levying a tariff on miners' supplies going into the territory, and finally putting an exorbitant tax on the output of mines. This energy on the part of Canada shows that she believes in her rights, and will enforce them. Whatever move she makes will not be in the interest of the people of the United States. Intending visitors to the Klondike should salt the above fact in their hats.\
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
" All that glisters is not gold, Often have you heard that told."
— Shakespeare.
It must be remembered that Klondike is not in the United States, nor in Alaska, but in that portion of Canada known as the North- west Territory.
Five hundred dollars is the least amount that any man should start to the Klondike with. The poor man's route to the mines is via Seattle. From this point the distance to Juneau is 96Y miles. At Juneau the traveler should provide himself with a proper outfit, provided he has not already done so at Seattle. This is the route from Juneau recommended by a former governor of Alaska in his last annual report, though since it was issued the most practicable and popular route has been by way of the Chilkoot Pass. Through this pass eight-tenths of the Argonauts of 1897 are making their way.
Haine's Mission, 80 miles; head of canoe navigation, 106; summit of Chilkat Pass, 115;
72 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
Lake Linderman, 124; head of Lake Bennett, 129; foot of Lake Bennett, 155; foot of Caribou Crossing, 159; foot of Takou Lake, 175; Takceli House, 179; head of Mud Lake, 180; foot of Lake Marsh, 200; head of White Horse Eapids, 228; Takaheena river, 240; head of Lake De- barge, 256; foot of Lake Debarge, 289; Hootalinqua, Lake Debarge, 289; Hoota- Hnqua, 320; Cassiar Bar, 3-17; Little Salmon river, 390; Five Fingers, 451; Pelly river, 510; Stewart river, 630; Forty Mile, 750 miles.
Governor Sheakley gives some hints to the prospector which are worth repeating. ' 'A large number of those who have gone to the Yukon region," says he, "will not realize their ex- pectations * * * The miners make the local laws which govern the people. They de- cide what the law is and execute the decrees and decisions of the miner's meeting, both as to persons and property, so long as these meet- ings are kept under control of actual miners and working men, the rights of persons and of property will be comparatively safe. Property rights will be decided without delay and crime properly punished. The Canadian government maintains a police force, the captain of which
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 73
is clothed with the powers of a trial magis- trate."
Prospectors should not think of starting for Klondike before the month of March. Of the two routes the- shortest or overland route is here first considered and is that taken by eighty per cent, of the prospectors. This route is by steamer to Juneau and thence inland. Here is a table showing the points of the journey and the distances, as given by another authority.
THE OCEAN ROUTE. MILES.
To St. Michael's 2,850
To Circle City 4,350
To Forty Mile 4,600
To Klondike 4,650
THE OVERf^ND ROUTE.
To Juneau by steamer 1,680
Juneau to Chilkat 80
Juneau to Dyea - . . . . 100
Juneau to head of navigation 106
Juneau to summit of Chilkat pass. ... 114
Juneau to head of Lake Lindeman. . . . 123
Juneau to foot of Lake Lindeman .... 127
Juneau to head of Lake Bennett 128
Juneau to foot of Tagish lake. ....... 173
Juneau to head of Lake Marsh 178
Jmieau to head of Canyon 223
74 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
Juneau to head of White Horse rapids . . 225
Juneau to Takaheena river 240
Juneau to head of Lake le Barge 256
Juneau to foot of Lake le Barge 284
Juneau to Hootalinqua river 816
Juneau to Big Salmon river 349
Juneau to Little Salmon river 385
Juneau to Five Finger rapids 444
Juneau to Rink rapids 450
Juneau to Pelly river 503
Juneau to White river 599
Juneau to Stuart river 609
Juneau to Sixty Mile post 629
Juneau to Dawson City 678
Jmieau to Forty Mile post 728
Juneau to Circle City 898
Forty Mile to diggings at Miller creek . . 70
Circle City to diggings at Birch creek . . 50
Klondike to diggings 5
Juneau is a seaport and mining town of about 2,000 inhabitants, or was before the Klondike rush set in. It has schools and churches, three newspapers, electric light plant, water-works, two good wharves, large mercantile establish- ments, good hotels, paved streets and fire and hose companies.
If the miner purchases his outfit at Juneau it will cost him about $150. The fare from Jimeau to Dyea, a distance of 100 miles, is $10,
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76 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
and the trip is made by steamer. At Dyea the prospector leaves civiHzation behind him.
Miners should travel in groups of four to six persons, as they are thus able to economize in the matter of food and labor. The Indian packers charge 15 cents a pound for packing provisions from Dyea to Lake Lindeman, which is the roughest and most difficult part of the journey. At Lake Lindeman a boat must be constinicted and it is well that one member of the party should have a practical knowledge of boat building. Between the waterways the boat must be dragged over the ground.
Lake Lindeman is four miles long. Whei^ the end is reached, the boat must be dragged for over a mile to Lake Bennett. When the foot of Lake Bennett has been reached, the boat is lifted on a sledge and dragged to the Caribou crossing, three miles away.
Leaving Caribou crossing the party travels an uneven, hard road to the foot of Lake Tagish, IT miles away. Lake Marsh is trav- ersed with little difficulty. It ends in a deep canyon.
Beyond the canyon are the White Horse rapids and the Tahkeena river, which opens
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 77
into Lake le Barge, 256 miles from Juneau. The Hootalinqua river, Cassiar bar, Big Sal- mon river and Little Salmon river, the Five Finger raj^ids and the Eink rapids are next passed. The Eink rapids are 450 miles from Juneau.
The Eink rapids extend for over 53 miles, and it is impossible for a boat to live in them. The craft must be dragged to the Pelly river, the most important point thus far reached. The prospector next travel down the Pelly river for 96 miles, until they reach the White river. At the confluence of the two streams the Yukon opens before them 2,044 miles from its mouth.
The route now leads down the Yukon ten miles and across the Stuart river. Twenty miles farther, is Sixty Mile post. For over 60 miles the stream flows through a bleak region. Then Fort Eeliance, a small post, is passed. There is nothing to eat there.
The river carries the miners on to Forty Mile post, 46 miles away. Nearly a mile from Forty Mile post is Fort Cudahy. For 170 miles more the way is barren, and then Circle City ap- pears.
A year ago Circle City had a population of
78 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
800 people, but now it has many more. It is 898 miles from Junean and is the first place where provisions may be obtained at anything but prohibitory prices.
After leaving Circle City 150 miles more must be traveled before the Klondike is reached. At the point where the Klondike river meets the Yukon the new city, Dawson, has sprung up with its thousands of inhabitants. Dawson is the metropolis of the Klondike.
A reliable and intelligent traveller thus de- scribes in plain language his journey from Juneau to the gold fields:
' ' Our party consisted of nine. Taking the mail, which was put into three knapsacks' pouches, we went on board the small steamer Rustler, and left Juneau the evening of June 11. The boat was built to carry twenty-five persons, but had on board eighty, and there was hardly room to move about. The way from Juneau is up the Lynn Canal, amidst scenery of great beauty. The run should take about twelve hours, but one of the storms for which the Lynn Canal is famous burst, and we had to anchor. The following day we reached Talya. The fare was $10 each. June 14 we
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80 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
set out for Sheep Camp, twelve miles distant. All our provisions were packed in oilskin bags, and the march into the interior began. As traveling was warm, we left Sheep Camp at night. There were twenty Indians carrying- packs. Some of the men carried as much as 175 pounds. Even the squaws assisted in the labor, one walking beside me with a cooking stove on her shouldei-s.
' ' Soon after midnight we reached the last and hardest climb of the pass, and at 2 a. m. the summit was reached. We rested a while and began to descent to Lake Linderman, which we reached soon after noon. Here our boats were made. The next day we set sail on the lake, about six miles in length. It connects with Lake Bennett, There is a dangerous place near the lower edge of the lake, and we made a portage and carried our provisions about fifty yards along the bank. We camped on the shore of Lake Bennett, and here our mosquito affliction began and no respite was had from it until cold weather.
' ' The next day we started down Lake Ben- nett, which is twenty-four miles in length. Sometimes the wind rushed with such fury
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 81
through the gaps in the mountains that the boat could not he moved. The gusts of wind delayed our trip on this small lake nearly four days, compelling us to camp on the shore to avoid being swamped.
"June 25 the wind ceased, after blowing a tornado, and at 2 a. m. we resumed the journey to the end of Lake Bennett. This point is Cariboo Crossing, a shallow stream two miles long. After breakfast we again set out, being anxious to get past a part of Tagisli Lake, known as ' Windy Arm, ' the most difficult and dangerous spot in the lake portion of the journey. Navigation in these waters, which are so remote and unknown on the maps, is very difficult. We rowed steadily for nine- teen hours to traverse the length of Tagish Lake, nineteen miles. We camped near the huts known as the ' Tagish Houses, ' the only human habitations in this desolate lake country. Our tent was infested by the most ferocious mosquitoes, and our misery can not be de- scribed.
' ' The next morning we started down Lake Marsh, rowing. Swarms of mosquitoes fol- lowed. This lake also is nineteen miles long,
82 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
and very shallow. We rowed all day, reach- ing the outlet at 6 o'clock. Here the current was swift, and we were able to ship our oars and fight mosquitoes as we drifted down stream. We camped at 10 o'clock.
' ' The next morning we continued our trip through steep banks. About noon we ap- proached the Grand Canyon, being warned of it by an increase in the current. About 2 o'clock we came to a bend, where some one had erected a sign marked ' Danger. ' This was the stopping place, and we went ashore. One of our boats narrowly escaped being washed into the rapids at this point.
"On shore we made preparations for run- ning the boats through. At this point other parties joined us, and there were now five boats in the group. We luiloaded and carried their contents to a quiet eddy below the rapids. One skiff, with a guide and with the aid of ropes, was then sent through the rapids. It shot into the canyon with the speed of an express train, and one after another the other boats followed in the same manner.
'-Below the canyon is a two-mile stretch of bad travel. The landing here must be made
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 83
in an eddy on the left bank, just above the great bend. White Horse Rapids are a half mile in length, and greatly dreaded by the guides. Every year a number of men are drowned at this jDoint. During the last two seasons more than twenty unfortunate men on their way to the gold fields have lost their lives in these wild waters, and their graves dot the desolate shores. Within three miles there is a fall of thirty- two feet, from which the cur- rent's force can be judged.
' ' The next morning we began carrying all our goods over the portage, a labor doubly arduous from the misery caused by the mos- quitoes, and the empty boats were guided down as before. Having reloaded our boats we again set out. From White Horse rapids the river is safe and we made a quick run to the junction of the Tahkeena river, sixteen miles below.
" The next day we started early and soon made the remaining fourteen miles of the river and reached Lake Debarge. This is the last and largest of the chain, being thirty-one miles long and about five miles wide. It is a stormy lake, and much dreaded by miners. We be-
84 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
gan rowing at 1 o'clock and pulled steadily on the oars till 11 o'clock at night. There is no darkness during summer, and night travel presents no extra hardships. We fired at a flock of ducks, and the gun made a wonderful echo. Immediately more shots answered, and it seemed as if peals of artillery were sounded up in the mountains.
' ' When nearing the end of the lake a violent storm suddenly arose. Our boats were in danger, and, although within five miles of the outlet, we had to camp until the next after- noon, when we resumed the journey, reaching the outlet at night. It was no small relief to reach the river and leave the lakes behind.
' ' The river from Lake Debarge is known as the Lewis. We continued down the Lewis thirty miles, and the next day, July 1, passed Big Salmon river. We passed on as far as Little Salmon, a distance of seventy-one miles, and then camped. The storm on Lake Debargo had scattered the party, but we came together at this point.
"The next day we traveled sixty- two miles, and arrived at Five Fingers. The landing must be made in an eddy above the rocks.
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86 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
Six miles below Five Fingers we came to the Eock Eapids, the noisest but least dangerous in the river. This is the last obstruction, and from here down to the sea the Yukon presents an unbroken stretch of navigation. Our tor- tures from mosquitoes could hardly be borne.
" The next day we traveled fourteen hours, and at 2 o'clock reached the mouth of Pelly river. The confluence of the Lewis and Pelly forms the Yukon, and is marked by the old post of Selkirk, which was i*aided by the coast Indians in 1852.
"We are now in the vicinity of the gold mining camps. Starting down the Yukon the followmg day we made seventy-four miles and camped at Reliance. Formerly there was a trading post here, but not a vestige remains. On our way we passed Sixty Mile Creek, where the first great discoveries were made. The next stream we passed was the Klondike, a corruption of an Indian word — Tondatt — mean- ing salmon stream. The inhabitants were anxiously awaiting the coming of the salmon.
' ' The next day five hours' pulling brought us to the famous mining camp of Forty Mile Creek, which was our destination. From the
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 87
time of our departure from Juneau, June 11, to our landing at Forty Mile Creek, July 6, we accomplished in twenty-six days a journey of 750 miles through a desolate region."
The all water route to the gold fields is by way of St. Michael, and can only be made during the three months of summer. This route will not be used by prospectors on ac- coimt of its length, but is of vital interest in the matter of taking freight and provisions to the thousands of inhabitants of the new dig- gings.
Until the recent excitement drew all of the prospectors to Dawson, the objective point was Circle City. This town was the base of all mining operations in the northern region. Supplies were brought there from St. Michael and in winter the miners made it their head- quarters. This was due to two important causes. In the first place, Circle City is ac- cessible to the flat bottomed steamers that make their way up the Yukon river from St. Michael.
The distance from San Francisco to St. Michael is 2,850 miles. From St. Michael to Circle City the distance is 1,500 miles, and
MAP SHOWING THE TWO ROUTES TO DAWSON CITY.
TWO ROUTES TO KLONDIKTS
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 89
250 miles down the river toward the mines is Forty Mile Post. The Klondike appears at the end of fifty miles more. It is this route that the steamers take with their supplies for the prospectors.
Parties intending to go to the new gold fields should without doubt get the best map of Alaska that has been compiled. This map is prepared by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and is known as Chart T. It is a general majD embodying cartographic information avail- able in regard to Alaska, and is the best pub- lished at this wi-iting. The map is obtainable by all citizens on api)lication to the Secretary of the Treasury at Washington. A small charge is made for it bv the Government.
The extraordinary demand for information regarding Alaska has caused the Government to decide to issue another map of this territory, the preparation of which has already begun. The new map will be made under the super- vision of the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and will be much more comprehensive than any previous map of this region. Commissioner
90 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
Hermann will eoininence the preparation of the map at once.
The map will show not only Alaska, but the adjacent British possessions, with Washington and portions of Oregon and California. It will give the ports from which passengers desiring to reach Alaska can sail, and the routes, and will show all the tributaries of the Yukon.
Commissioner Hermann, in speaking of the map, said recently :
' ' The map being on a large scale will show in an intelligible manner surprising informa- tion regarding the vast size of the lower portion of the Yukon, which spreads out from GO to 100 miles. In this extent it is continuous for 300 miles inland.
' ' It will then be represented as more in the form of a river for 2,000 miles further inland, reaching into the Forty Mile River and the Sixty Mile River district, which embraces the site of the gold fields. What will be especially interesting will be the minute outlining of the land journey from the head of deep water navigation in the Lynn Channel across the Chilkoot Pass, and showing the various lake communications, together with the jjortages
^^
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 91
and lake passages. Some very valuable data are now in the possession of the office, obtained from various sources not opened to the public, which will be made public property for the first time in official form in this map."
The Secretary of the Interior and the Com- missioner of the General Land Office will unite in recommendations to the next session of Con- gress for national legislation on many matters affecting the welfare of Alaska. An additional land district will be designated meanwhile, with the site of a new United States land office at some point on the Yukon, probably Circle City. The President has appointed a resident receiver for the eastern land district, with offices at Sitka.
No man has any business to go into the Klondike region without an adequate equip- ment of money and supplies to carry him through for at least a year. At the outset it is necessary that he should beware of the thou- sand and one schemers and swindlers who will beset his path. The regular transportation companies of course are the safest to trust in the matter of carrying you into Alaska. At this writing the latest announcement is the
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sailing of the steamer "Portland," which leaves Seattle September 10th for Fort Get There, St. Michael's Island, Alaska, to make connections with the Yukon River steamers ' ' Weare, " ' ' Cudahy, " ' ' Hamilton, " ' 'Healy, " "Power" and "Klondike." It is promised that passengers will be landed at Circle City, Fort Cudahy and Klondike gold mines on or before June loth, 1898, the fare, including board, being one thousand dollars. The North American Transportation and Trading Com- pany, with offices in Old Colony Building, Chicago, which operates this line, issue letters of credit at its posts. Circle City, Alaska, Fort Cudahy, Dawson City, Klondike gold fields. Northwest Territory, at a charge of one per cent. They have also announced that employ- ment will be given at remunerative wages during the winter (of '97-98) along the Yukon River, chopping and banking steamboat wood. Large stocks of supplies will be found at Fort Get There and Hamilton, on the lower Yukon. It would be ill-advised for anyone to believe in the low rates for outfits and transportation quoted by some of the men who are planning to conduct expeditions. A man might better
94 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
be destitute at home, in a civilized land, than on the inhospitable Alaskan shore, with small chance of getting back. By the best estimates given by men of experience, it is evident that one thousand dollars is the least amount that a man should start with from San Francisco for Klondike.
As a somewhat pessimistic view of the ad- venturer's chances, it is opportune to quote a paragraph from the pen of Ambrose Bierce, in the San Francisco Examiner :
" The Calif ornian gold-hunter did good by accident and crowed to find it fame, but the blue-nosed mosquito-slapper of Greater Daw- son— what is he for ? Is he going to ' lay broad and deep the foundations of an empire ' (for Great Britain) in that villain country? Will he ' bear the banner of progress ' into that paleocrystic waste? Will he 'clear the way' for even a dog-sled civilization and a reindeer religion? Nothing will come of him. He is a word in the wind, a brother to the fog. At the scene of his activity no memory of him will remain. The gravel that he thaw- ed and sifted will freeze again. In the shanty that he builded the she-wolf will rear her poddy litter, and from its eaves the moose crop the esculent icicle unafraid. The snows will close over his trail and all be as before."
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 95
That the Canadian people realize they have a good thing in the Klondike is more than emphasized in the expressions of the Dominion press. \The Toronto Globe is one of a number of Canadian newspapers which has given edi- torial advice on the subject. Here is a con- densation of an article it published at the end of July ('97): "The Yukon district has been found to contain fabulous wealth. This wealth belongs to the people of the Dominion, and that fact must be kept in mind in considering plans for administration. * * * Here is wealth belonging to the Canadian people and apparently waiting to be picked up. If the experience of other nations is repeated, and people crowd in; scramble for the gold and carry it away, it might as well have been lo- cated on an island in the Pacific so far as any benefit to Canada is concerned. * * * There is no reason why a government should not make as much out of natural opportunities as would a private corporation./
In 18T0 the most exhaustive book on Alaska was published by William H. Dall, who visited the country as director of the scientific corps of the Western Union Telegraph expedition. The
96 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
purpose in view was to determine whether a route through that region was not possibly the best for telegraphic communication round the world. Exploration since this expedition has done little to inform the world about Alaska any further, for Dall had able assistants, as well as the co operation of specialists in various institutes of science and learning in the East- ern States, the resvdt being an exhaustive compendium of knowledge relating to Alaska down to that time.
A Western journal suggests to those who are going from the Pacific slope that they take a reserve suj^ply of food in the compressed form that the army has experimented with so successfully, and provide themselves with plenty of clothing and blankets. But above all, no one should start for the Klondike who is not amjDly provided with money. It is hardly necessary to call attention to the historical ex- perience of these rich gold discoveries that where there are a few who make fortunes there are many more who lose all they have, and often their lives. And there are bound to be disappointments in Alaska just as there were in California, Colorado and Dakota.
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 97
Samuel Perrin, who is familiar with Alaska, makes the following com.ments, which are per- tinent to the subject in hand:
"What causes the tremendous expense in the Klondike and other districts in that neigh- borhood is the fact that everything must be packed over the mountains by men. Mules and horses are not known there. The average weight that a man can carry is about sixty pounds, and everything eatable, excepting fish, must be carried in that way. Few people have a conception of the extent of Alaska. It is as big I as all of the United States east of the Mississippi, s! and if a line were drawn north and south the ?i center of the United States, that is including Alaska, would be 150 miles west of San Fran- cisco. In other words, the distance from that line to Maine would be 3,000 miles, as from the line to the western coast of Alaska.
"It may be that the wonderful inventive geniuses of the day may provide some plan by which prospecting may be conducted in Alaska during the winter, but I doubt it very much, judging from my experience. I am sure that the suffering among the people who go there will be awful, because of the crude methods of transit. There are no such things as stealing rides on freight trains, or trips over the coun- try in wagons, but it is plain tramp most of the distance, and but three months of the year
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to do it in. It was exceedingly hard to get familiar with the climate, and I doubt whether men of this section could ever do so. It is true I know very little about the Klondike gold country, but the temperature and the ground itself is the same all over Alaska, very wild, mountainous and volcanic. The Indians are short and inclined to be peaceful. The ground is frozen the year round, and the mountains over which they travel covered with continuous snow. All of the mining work must be done in three months, although there have been seasons when they could work in May."
Forty Mile Post, Fort Cudahy and Circle City are the principal settlements on the Yu- kon, The latter named city was established in 1894, and will become the distributing point for a large district. The town has several stores, restaurants and a good many cabins. The season of '97 has advanced too far to allow troops to be sent to the Yukon this year, and whether they will be assigned there next simi- mer will depend largely on the character of the reports made by Capt. Ray and Lieut. Robin- son, who sailed from Seattle August 6th, ('97), to determine whether it is advisable to estab- lish a permanent military post near Circle City.
In view of the great number of American citizens who have gone or contemplate going
100 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
to the Klondike gold fields in Alaska, the Post Office Department has made additional con- tracts for the carrying of mails to and from that region.
The Department has just been notified by the contractor's agent that a party will start regularly on the first of each month. The cost is about $600 for the round trip. The Chilkoot Pass is crossed with the mail by means of In- dian carriers. On the previous trips the car- riers, after finishing the pass, built their boats, but now they have their own to pass the lakes and the Lewis River.
In the winter transportation is carried on by means of dog-sleds, and it is hoped that under the present contracts there will be no stoppage, no matter how low the temperature may go.
Contracts have been made with two steam- boat companies for two trips from Seattle to St. Michael. When the steamers reach St. Michael the mail will be transferred to the flat- bottomed boats running up the Yukon as far as Circle City. It is believed the boats now run further up.
The contracts for the overland route call for only first-class matter, whereas the steamers in smnmer carry everything, up to five tons, each trip.
Secretary of Agriculture Wilson believes that Congress at its next session will authorize
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 101
the establishment of an agricultural experi- mental station in Alaska. He said recently that he had no doubt the people in some parts of Alaska would be able to produce their own vegetables and, to some extent, the cereals they will need.
The hardy classes of animals, he said, also could be gro^vn there. The cattle from the mountains of Scotland, he believed, could be raised successfully in Alaska, but so far as is known now the mining regions in the vicinity of the head waters of the Yukon River are about a thousand miles away from any part of Alaska in which agriculture could be success- fully pursued.
Recognizing the importance of the recent gold discoveries in Alaska and adjoining terri- tory, and in obedience to the widespread de- mand for authentic information in regard thereto, the Commissioner of Labor has detailed from his regular force an expert, thoroughly familiar with all the features of gold mining, to proceed immediately to the Klondike for the purpose of making a careful and exhaustive study of theconditions as they exist.
It is the intention of the commissioner to embody the facts in a special report or bulletin of the department, which will appear at as early a date as possible. Such a report as that contemplated, gi\dng the unbiased facts as to the opportiinities for the investment of
102 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
capital and the employment of labor, wages, cost of living, etc. , he believes, will be of great value to the people of this country.
Next year there will be telegraph communi- cation with the Klondike. Local capitalists have filed the articles of incorporation of the Alaska Telegraph and Telephone Company. The scheme is to run a telegraph line from Juneau to Dawson City over the trail by way of Chilcoot Pass and down along the shore of lakes and rivers. No poles will bo used. Both telegraph and telephone wires will be laid in- side of a big cable, which will rest on the sur- face of the ground. From Dawson branches will be built to Circle City and Forty Mile.
An outfit necessary for the long trip to the mines is a matter whose importance should not be underestimated. The following is a list of provisions for one man one month :
20 poimds flour.
1 pound baking ix)wder. 12 pounds bacon.
6 pounds beans.
5 poTiuds dried fruits.
3 pounds dessicated vege-
tables.
4 pounds butter.
5 pounds sugar.
4 cans condensed milk.
1 pound tea.
3 pounds coffee.
2 pounds salt.
3 pounds oatmeal. 2 pounds rice.
5 pounds corumeal. Pepper. Matches. Mustard.
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
103
COOKING UTENSILS AND DISHES.
1 frying pan.
1 water kettle.
2 pairs good blankets. 1 rubber blanket.
1 bean pot. Tent. Yukon stove.
2 plates. 1 drinking cup. 1 teapot. 1 knife and fork. 1 large and 1 small cooking pan.
TOOLS FOR BOAT BUILDING.
1 jack plane. 1 whip saw. 1 hand saw. 1 rip saw. 1 draw knife. 1 axe.
1 hatchet. 1 pocket rule. 6 pounds assorted nails. 3 pounds oakum. 5 pounds pitch. 50 feet I -rope.
CLOTHING.
2 pairs heaviest wool socks. 1 pair Canadian laragans or shoe packs.
1 pair German socks.
2 pairs heaviest woolen
blankets. 1 oil blanket or canvas. 1 Mackinaw suit.
2 pairs heavj^ overalls. 2 suits heavy woolen under- wear. 1 pair gum boots (crack- proof preferable). 1 pair snowshoes. Heavy cap. Fleece-lined mittens.
2 heavy flannel shirts.
Take along a supply of medicines and mos- quito netting. Also a rifle, gill nets and fish lines. Snow glasses are necessary to prevent snow blindness. One man should not attempt to make the trip alone, and where four or five go in one party, one tent, stove, and set of tools will do for all. The boats mostly in use are the long, double-end bateau, but for a party of five or six a scow of good depth will be found most convenient.
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Miners who remain over winter adopt the dress of the natives. Water boots are made of seal or walrus skins; dry weather, or winter boots, from various skins, fur trimmed. Trou- sers are made of fawn and marmot skins, while the upper garment, combined with a hood, called tarka, is made of marmot and trimmed with long fur, which helps to protect the face of the person wearing it. Flannels can be worn under these, and not be any heavier than clothing v\"orn in a country with zero weather. For bedding woolen blankets are used, combined with fur robes.
Those who go in should be prepared to stay a couple of years; the long journey in and out takes too much of the good weather. The climate is healthful, the summers are j^leasant, and the winters, while cold, can be made agreeable by a plentiful suf)ply of clothing and fuel, both of which can be provided. The sun shines for twenty hours a day during the sum- mer, and during the depth of winter it is dark for that many hours, except for the wonderful display of the aurora borealis.
There is sharj) business competition at Ju- neau and Sitka, and no snaps in commercial affairs are in sight. Professional people and clerks are not in demand, and mechanics will find close competitors in the natives, who are very ingenious workmen. Mining men with capital, and prospectors who bring a two years'
106
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
stake and who can aid in the development of the country, are about the only classes to whom the field is wide open, and to them Alaska offers splendid inducements.
The rovite from Seattle, Wash., to Juneau, Alaska, is now covered by the vessels of the Pacific Coast Steamshiji Company. From Ju- neau the Yukon Transportation Company is arranging two separate routes to Circle City, the objective point. The freight route, by way of the Bering Sea and mouth of the Yu- kon is 4,780 miles; the passenger route, by way of the Chilkoot Pass and the sources of the Yukon is 2,093 — the distances computed from Seattle.
Subjoined is another list for the equipment of miners :
PKOVISIONS.
200 jiouiuls })acon.
800 pounds flour.
150 pounds assorted dried
fruits. 200 pounds cornmeal.
50 pounds rice.
75 pounds coffee, parched.
40 pounds tea. 75 pounds sugar. 150 ])Ounds beans.
1 case condensed milk. Assortment of evaporated vegetables and meats.
CLOTHING.
2 suits of corduroy.
3 pairs rubber boots. 3 pairs heavy shoes.
2 dozen heavy \v o o.l e n
socks. ^ dozen woolen mitts.
3 pairs woolen gloves.
3 suits heavy underwear. 2 suits Mackinaw.
2 hats.
4 lieavy woolen shirts. 1 heavy coat.
3 pairs of heavy woolen
blankets.
The outfit will cost about $175. Transpor-
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 107
tation, via steamer to Klondike, $150, or via Juneau and Dyea, $40. If by the latter route, the carriage from salt water to Lake Linder- man, a distance of thirty-one miles, say one and one-half tons, at 15 cents per pound, $450. Boat at Lake Linderman, $60; miscellaneous, $25; total, $750.
Conservatively, that is a fair estimate of the requirements of a man who expects to re- main in the Yukon for eighteen months. There are several incidental expenses which might be incurred, or the amount of supplies might be curtailed to a slight extent.
These estimates were given by experienced miners, who have wintered in the north and know what they are talking about. In mak- ing purchases, it is well to observe the sugges- tion that the very best articles that can be purchased are none too good, and will more than repay the purchaser in the long run.
The following list is recommended by Thos. Cook, an exiDerienced California miner :
SUPPLIES.
500pounds flour $12 50
100 " oatmeal 6 00
100 " beans 3 35
24 " coffee, at 30 cents 7 20
100 " bacon, at 14 cents 14 00
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A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
24 pounds tea, at 50 cents $12
dried potatoes, at 5 cents 5
dried vegetables, at 5 cents 2
dried fruits, at 6 cents 6
(2 cases) condensed milk 2
baking powder 2
salt and pepper 1
canned butter, at 25 cents 12
100
50
100
25
5
5
50
30
25
20
50
2
lard, at 10 cents.
rice, at 5 cents
tools ■ . .
stove and cooking utensils matches and miscellanv. . .
3
1
15
10
1
00 00 50 00 50 50 00 50 00 25 00 00 50
1,310 pounds. Total supplies $116 80
OUTFIT.
Three suits woolen underclotlics $12 00
Three woolen overshirts
Two pairs overalls
Six pairs woolen stockings
Two pairs blankets
One f oxskin robe
One reindeer "parkee," covering head and reaching
to the knees
Three Paris Caribou mittens
Two fur cai)S
Two pairs rubber boots
Three pairs mocassins
One pair " mucklucks "
One woolen "Mackinaw," a sort of woolen sweater.
Two sweaters (extra thick) 8 00
Weight, 120 pounds. Total outfit $157 00
1,810 pounds of supplies 116 80
|
6 00 |
|
2 00 |
|
6 00 |
|
16 00 |
|
50 00 |
|
12 00 |
|
6 00 |
|
8 00 |
|
7 00 |
|
9 00 |
|
5 00 |
|
10 00 |
Grand total, 1,430 pounds $273 80
A Woman^s Outfit To Take North. Here is what a woman who has roughed it on the Klondike says a woman actually needs
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 109
in the way of an outfit — presupposing, of course, that she goes the only way a woman should go with a man who takes the necessary camp- ing, housekeeping and food outfit. This is what she requires for her personal comfort :
TO TAKE WITH HEK.
One medicine case filled on the advice of a good physician.
Two pairs of extra heavy all-wool blankets.
One small pillow.
One fur robe.
One warm shawl.
One fur coat, easy fitting.
Three warm woolen dresses, with comfortable bodices and skirts knee length — flannel lined preferable.
Three pairs of knickers or bloomers to match the dresses.
Three suits of heavy all-wool underwear.
Three warm flannel night dresses.
Four pairs of knitted woolen stockings.
One pair of rubber boots.
Three gingham aprons that reach from neck to knees.
Small roll of flannel for insoles, wrapping the feet, and Dandages.
A sewing kit.
Such toilet articles as are absolutely necessary, including some skin unguent to protect the face from the icj^ cold.
Two light blouses or shirt-waists for summer wear.
One oilskin blanket to wrap her effects in.
TO BE SECURED AT JUNEAU OR ST. MICHAEL.
One fur cap.
Two pairs of fur gloves.
Two pairs of fur seal mocassins.
Two pairs of muclucs — wet weather mocassins.
She wears what she pleases en route to Juneau or St. Michael, and when she makes her start for the diggings she lays aside her civilized traveling garb, including shoes and stays, until she comes out. Instead of carrying the fur robe, fur coat and rubber boots along she can get them on entering Alaska, but the experienced ones say take them
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110 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
along. The natives make a fur coat with hood attached called a " parki," bat it is clumsy for a white woman to wear who has been accustomt d to fitted garments. Leggings and shoes are not so safe nor desirable as the mocassins.^
A trunk is not the thing to transport baggage in. It is much better in a pack, with the oilskin cover well tied on.
The things to add that are useful but not absolutely nec- essary are choice tea, coffee, cocoa and the smaller, lighter luxuries of civilization that purse permits and appetite craves. It costs just as much for portage on reading matter as on the other necessities of life, and consequently after making out u list of what j'ou'd like to have, it is wise to cut "t down to what you can't possibly struggle along without.
It's astonishing how little people can comfortably get along with when they try.
These nuggets of information are commend- ed to all intending visits to the Klondike :
The only way to live is to imitate the Indians in dress and habit.
It is useless to wear leather or gum boots. Good mocas- sins are absolutely necessary.
The colder it is the better the traveling. When it is very cold there is no wind, and the wind is hard to bear.
Indian guides are necessary to go ahead of the dogs and prepare the camp for the night.
In the summer the sun rises early and sets late, and there are only few hours when it is not shining directly on Alaska.
In the winter the sun shines for a short time only each day.
It is 2,500 miles from San Francisco to St. Michael.
It is 1,895 miles from St. Michael to Dawson City.
In summer the weather is warm and teixt life is comfort- able.
The winter lasts nine months.
There are two routes by which to reach Dawson Chy. One by St. Michael Island and the other via Juneau.
By steamer it costs !$150to go from here to Dawson City.
Dogs are worth their weight in gold. A good long-haired dog sells from $150 to $200.
Skates might be used to good advantage at times.
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. IH
The Yukon River is closed by ice from November to the .atter part of May .
On the Klondike the thermometer goes as low as 60 de- grees below zero.
There is a great variety of berries to be found all through the country in summer.
Game is very scarce.
Vegetables of the hardier sort can be raised.
Stock can be kept by using care in providing abundantly with feed by ensilage, or curing natural grass hay, and by housing them in the winter.
In summer abundance of fine grass can be found near the rivers.
In appearance the natives are like the North American Indians, only more lithe and active, with very small feet and hands.
They live in temporary camps both winter and summer, either in the mountains or on the river, according to the habits of the game they are hunting.
Gold was first discovered in the vicinity of Sitka by Frank Mahoney, Edward Doyle and William Dunlay in 1873.
Of the seven trading stations in the Yukon district five are located upon the river bank.
The first American traders to engage in the Yukon trade were members of the Western Union Telegraph expedition.
With the first breath of spring the up-river people prepare for their annual meeting with their friends from the outside world.
Supplies are purchased chiefly in California, and carried from here to St. Michael.
The Yukon is navigable for a 250-ton steamer for a dis- tance of 1,600 miles.
At a distance of 600 miles from the ocean the Yukon River is more than a mile wide .
The Klondike mining region is in the latitude of Iceland and lower Greenland.
The longitude of St . Michael is farther west than that of Honolulu.
It should be stated here that the different departments of the United States and Cana- dian Governments have prepared a large mass
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of valuable material, including maps, etc., of the Klondike. This information is to be had on ajjplication, either free or at a nominal cost. The remarkable spread of the gold fever throughout the country has created such a demand for information that both Govern- ments have been obliged to order a new supply of such of the printed matter and maps as has been exhausted by the fierce demand. It may, therefore, be some time before the various officials will be able to supply the matter called for by eager citizens. The Canadian Depart- ment has issued a valuable book of information regarding the Yukon District from the reports of William Ogilvie, the Dominion Land Sur- veyor, and from other sources. A few ex- cerpts of a practical character from Mr. Ogil- vie's report will be useful to those who have not his book at hand. Concerning the facili- ties for trans])ortation, Mr. Ogilvie says :
"The Alaska Commercial Company and the^N'orth Ameri- can Transportation and Trading Company have steamers jilying between San Francisco, Seattle and St. Michael. At the last named i)lace the passengers and freight are trans- ferred to stern Avhcel river boats, and Cudahy is reached after ascending the swift current of the Yukon for 1,600 miles.
The Alaska Commercial Company's steamer Excelsior is advertised to leave San Francisco for St. Michael on or about June 5th, August 5th and September 5th, connecting with tlie river steamers Alice, Bella and Arctic for all points on the Yukon River.
The North American Transportation and Trading Com- pany's steameis leave San Francisco on June 1st and Aucust 1st;" Seattle on Jimc 10th and Auxust 10th. Fare ir ^i'lSO from Seattle."
116 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
With reference to some of the settlements the report says :
" Sixty Mile Creek is about oue hundred miles long, very crooked, with a swift current and many rapids, and is there- fore not easy to ascend.
Miller, Glacier, Gold, Little Gold and Bedrock Creeks are all tributaries of Sixty Mile. Some of the richest discoveries in gold so far made in the interior since 1894 have been made upon these creeks, especially has this been the case upon the two first mentioned. Tliere is a claim upon Miller Creek owned by Joseph Boudreau from which over $^100, 000 worth of gold is said to have been taken out.
Freight for the mines is taken up Fortj'^ Mile Creek in summer for a distance of thirty miles, then portaged across to the heads of Miller and Glacier Creeks. In the winter it is hauled in by dogs.
The trip from Cudahy to the post at the mouth of Sixty Mile River is made by ascending Forty Mile River a small distance, making a short i)ortage to Sixty Mile River and running down with ils swift current. Coming back on the Yukon, nearly the whole of the round trip is made down stream.
Indian Creek enters the Yukon from the east, about thirty miles below Sixty Mile. It is reported to be rich in gold, but owing to the scarcity of supplies its development has been retarded .
At the mouth of Sixty Mile Creek a townsite of that name is located, it is the headquarters for upwards of 100 miners, and where they more or less assemble in the winter mor^ths.
Messrs. Harper & Co. have a trading post and a sawmill on an island at the mouth of the creek, both of which are in charge of Mr. J. Ladue, one of the partners of the fizm, and who was at one time in the employ of the Alaska Commer- cial Company.
Dawson City is situated at the mouth of the Thron-Diuck, and although it was located only a few months ago, it is the scene of great activity. Very rich deposits of gold have been lately found on Bonanza Creek and other affluents of the Thron-Diuck.
Forty Mile townsite is situated on the south side of the Forty Mile River, at its junction with the Yukon. The
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. llT
Alaska Commercial Company has a station here, which was for some years in charge of L. N. McQuestion; there are also several blacksmith shops, restaurants, billiard halls, bakeries, an opera house, and so on. Rather more than half a mile below Forty Mile townsite the town of Cudahy was founded on the north side of Forty Mile River in the summer of 1892. It is named after a well-known member of the North American Transportation and Trading Company. In population and extent of business the town bears comparison with its neighbor across the river. The opposition in trade has been the means of very materially reducing the cost of supplies and living. The North American Transportation and Trading Company has erected a sawmill and some large warehouses. Fort Constantine was established here imme- diately upon the arrival of the Mounted Police detachment in the" latter part of July, 1895."
Mr. Ogilvie states that the Indians are per- fectly heartless. They will not render the smallest aid to each other without payment, much less to a white man.
In the absence of thermometers in the winter time, miners leave their mercury out all night. When they find it frozen solid in the morning they conclude that it is too cold to work, and stay at home.
With reference to the general character of
the climate and health conditions, Surgeon E.
A. Wills, a Canadian official, says in his
report :
"The climate is wet. The rainfall last summer was heavy. Although there is almost a continuous sun in sum- mer time evaporation is very slow owing to the thick moss, which will not conduct the heat, in consequence the ground is always swampy. It is only after several years of draining that ground wiirbecome sufflciently dry to allow the frost to go out, and then only for a few feet. During the winter months the cold is intense, with usually considerable wind.
118 A PRACTICAL CHAPTER.
A heavy mist rising from opeu places in the river settles down in the valley in calm extreme weather. This damp- ness makes the cold to be felt much more, and is conducive to rheumatic pains, colds, etc.
Miners are a very mixed class of people. They represent many nationalities, and come from all climates. Their lives are certainly not enviable. The regulation ' miner's cabin ' is 12 feet by 14 feet, with walls 6 ifeet and gables 8 feet in height. Tlie roof is heavily earthed and the cabin is gener- ally very warm. Two, and some times three or four men, will occupy a house of this size. Tlie ventilation is usually bad. Those miners who do not work their claims dur- ing the winter confine themselves in these small huts most of the time.
Very often they become indolent and careless, only eating those things which are most easily cooked or ])repared. During the busy time in summer, when they are 'shovelling in,' they work hard and for long hours, sparing little time for eating and much less for cooking.
This manner of living is quite common amongst beginners, and soon leads to debility and sometimes to scurvy. Old miners have learned from experience to value health more than gold, and they therefore spare no expense in procuring the best and most varied outfit of food that can be obtained.
In a cold climate such as tliis, where it is impossible to get fresh vegetables and fruits, it is most important that the best substitutes for these should be provided. Nnturc lu-lps to supply these wants by growing cranberries and other wild fruits in abundance, but men in summer are usually too busy to avail themselves of these.
The diseases met with in this country are dyspepsia, anaemia, scurvy, caused by improi)erly cooked food, same- ness of diet, overwork, want of fresh vegetables, overheated and badly ventilated houses; rheumatism, pneumonia, bron- chitis, enteritis, cj-stitis, and other acute diseases, from ex- posure to wet and cold; debility and chronic diseases, due to excesses. Venereal diseases are not luicommon. One case of typhoid fever occurred in Forty Mile last fall, probably due to drinking water polluted with decayed vegetable matter.
In selecting men to relieve in this country, I beg to submit
A PRACTICAL CHAPTER. 119
a lew remarks, some of which will be of assistance to the medical examiners in making their recommendations.
Men should be sober, strong and health3^ They should be practical men, able to adapt themselves quickly to their surroundings. Special care should be taken to see that their lungs are sound, that they are free from rheumatism and rheumatic tendency, and that their joints, especially knee joints, are strong, and have never been weakened by injury, synovitis, or other disease. It is also very important to con- sider their temperaments. Men should be of cheerful, hope- ful dispositions and willing workers. Those of sullen, morose natures, although they may be good workers, are very apt, as soon as the novelty of the country wears off, to become ilissatislied, pessimistic and melancholy."
Those readers who are desirous of going ex- haustively into the subject of Alaska and its history cannot do better than to consult, among others, the following works on the subject :
Shores aud Alps of Alaska H. "W. Seton Karr,
Guide to Yukon Gold Field V. Wilson.
Papers aud Correspondence Relat- ing to Russian America Government Publication.
Report of Military Reconnaissance in Alaska, made in 1883 Schwatka.
Reconnaissance in Alaska, 1885. . . .Allen.
Population aud Resources of Alas- ka, 1880 Petroff.
Report of the Population, Industries and Resources of Alaska, 1884. .Petroff.
Report of the Governors of Alaska, 1884-'8o-'86
Facts about Alaska (pamphlet) Sheldon Jackson.
Alaska and Its Resources Wm. H. Dall.
History of Alaska, 1730-1883 Bancroft.
THE LAW OF MINING. United States and Canada.
A Synopsis of all Laws Gcvei-ning the r.lining of Precious Metak
Within the United Slates and the Regulations
Governirg Placer Miiiing Within
the Northwest Territories.
Complied by a Member of the New York Bar.
" I stand here for justice and the law."
— Shakespeare.
It is one of the purposes of this book to give in as succinct a form as possible a resume of the mining laws of the United States which govern the gold fields of Alaska, and also the laws of the Dominion of Canada and the North- west Territories.
A perusal of the Canadian regulations shows that no restrictions are put upon American citi- zens, but that they may take up claims and operate them with the same freedom enjoyed by subjects of the Queen. There are certain forms that must be observed before ownership in claims may be established, which are clearly set forth, and the Gold Commissioner, it will noted, is invested with extraordinary powers.
There is no certainty that these regulations
THE LAW OF MINING. 121
will not be changed so far as aliens are con- cerned. It does not appear at present writing that any ditference \\ill arise over the boun- dary question, as the same seems to be in a fair way of settlement, but should any complica- tions arise in adjustment of the boundary dis- pute it may result in the discrimination of the Canadian Government against aliens without the violation of any treaty now existing.
The principle acted upon by most nations is that mines are public property and a part of the natural domain worked by the state on its own account or gi-anted by the state to individuals to be worked by them imder certain conditions. The principle was founded upon the divine right of kings to the best. Gold and silver have always belonged to the king by virtue of the royal prerogative. The territories have no title to the unappropriated minerals in the public lands. Prior to the Act of Congress of July li6th, 1866, the United States had not done anything which amounted to a dedication to the public of the minerals in the public lands.
Congress prior to 1866 passed some acts re- serving mineral lands from sale, but did noth- ing else in regard to mineral lands. Until July, 1866, it was a trespass to dig or remove minerals on the pubHc lands.
In July, 1866, the general act throwing open to exploration and purchase by any citizen of the United States or any one who has declared
122 THE LAW OF MTNINO.
his intention to become such, all the mineral lands lying in the public domain. The pro- visions governing this subject are now all con- tained in the United States Revised Statutes. This article being a synopsis of the aforesaid sections as interpreted by the governmental departments and courts. Copies of these sec- tions of the statutes can be had by sending to the Interior Department at Washington.
These acts created three distinct classes of titles described as follows by the Secretary of the Interior: "A title by right of possession is the lowest grade of title known to the min- ing laws ; the next is the equitable title which accrues upon purchase and entry ; while the third and final grade is the fee simple which is acquired by patent."
The original act provided that the mineral lands should be open to exploration and pur- chase by all citizens of the United States and those who have declared their intention to be- come such. In this point of citizenship being requisite to the exercise of their right there has been no change in the law.
The reasons for thus limiting mining rights are very forcibly set forth in the repoi-t of the select committee to the provisional legislature of California in 1850, Also in the debates in the United States Senate, 1850.
There is no distinction made in the mining law on account of age or sex, and the female
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who comes within the terms of the law has capacity to make a valid location, as has also a minor.
The right to mine can he given whether hy State or federal laws, only in public lands. When the lands have become the property of an individual the government's right over them is gone.
The Act of 1866 does not designate the char- acter of mineral lands which are open to ex- ploration; but the Act of 1872 provides that they must contain "valuable mineral deposits," but non- mineral lands may be located as mill sites either in connection with a lode location or separate therefrom. Mineral lands are not subject to entry and settlement under the homestead acts, nor can title to land known at the time to be valuable for its minerals be ob- tained under any law except those specially pertaining to mineral lands, and locations for mining purposes made upon reserved lands are void.
The statute defines a placer to be any form of deposit except veins of quartz or other rock in place. No placer location can exceed 160 acres and no one individual can locate more than twenty acres. Where a person is in pos- session of a placer claim which includes one or more lodes or veins he must in his appHcation for a patent state that fact, or the lodes will be excluded from his patent, provided that they
124 THE LAW OF MININQ.
are known to exist at the time of such appli- cation. If they are not known to exist at the time, then the patent for the placer ground will convey all the mineral and other deposits within the boundaries thereof. If made on surveyed lands the location must conform to the United States surveys as near as practicable ; but, where they cannot be so made, a survey and plat may be made as on unsurveyed lands.
Under the Act of 1 S6Q, no single locator could claim more than two hundred feet on the same vein, except that an additional two hundred feet was allowed to the discoverer of the vein, nor should a patent issue for more than one vein or lode. No association of persons, how- ever large, could take up more than three thousand feet on any one ledge.
The Act of May 10th, 18T2, changed this by providing that no claim located after that date should exceed fifteen hundred feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the surface. It further provided that no mining regulation should ever limit the width of the location to less than twenty-five feet on each side of the middle of the vein.
The last-mentioned act further provided that locators should have the exclusive right of all the surface included within the lines of the lo- cation, together with all veins throughout their entire depth, the top or apex of which should
I
THE LAW OF MINING. 125
lie inside of such surface lines extended verti- cally downward.
The purpose of these acts is not alone to fix a certain quantity of surface ground to be al- lowed the locator for working purposes, but also to protect him in the exclusive possession and enjoyment of all veins or ledges which have their apexes within his surface lines.
A valid location of a mining claim can be made only when the ground is open to explor- ation and appropriation. Discovery and appro- priation are the sources of right, and develop- ment the condition of continued possession. The Act of 1866 allowed the location of any vein or lode of quartz or other rock in place bearing gold, silver, cinnabar or copper. The language of the Act of 18T2, as contained in the Revised Statutes, is "veins or lodes of quartz or other rock in place bearing gold, sil- ver, cinnabar, lead, tin, copper or other valu- able deposits."
The certificates of location are presumptive evidence of discovery, and every reasonable presumption should be indulged in in favor of the integrity of the locations.
It is not necessary that the locator shall actually be present on the ground. One may locate as agent for another, and one may locate for himself and others.
The several states have power to provide by law for the location, development and working
126 THE LAW OF MINING.
of miues subject only to the paramount effect of the federal laws; and the miners themselves may make rules and regulations for such pur- poses which have the effect of laws so far as they are not inconsistent with the laws of the United States.
All that is required by the acts of congress is that the location shall be along the vein or lode ; that it shall be distinctly marked on the ground so that its boundaries can be readily traced; that the record shall contain such description by reference to some natural object or perma- nent monument as will identify the claim, and that all the lines shall be parallel. All other details are left to be governed by the rules and regulations of the miners in each district, which are valid and effectual if not inconsist- ent with the act of congress or any state law.
The acts of congress do not require that any notice shall be jDOsted on the claim, only that one shall be recorded. But all rules and regu- lations of miners and the statutes of most states and territories do require the posting of such notice on the ground as well as its record in the proper office. The verification of the lo- cation notice must state the date of the location of the mine.
While the acts of congress do not expressly require a record of a mining location, they pro- vide that all records, if such exist or are re- quired by any mining regulation, shall contain
THE LAW OF MINING. 127
the name or names of the locators, the date of the location, and such description of the claim lo- cated by reference to some natural object or per- manent monument as will identify the claim. As has been stated, the mines in each district may enact additional requirements. In all mining districts they usually do by a meeting called by at least six miners, following about the same rules as were originally adopted by the CaH- fornia miners. The federal laws do not make any definite amount of work essential to the validity of a location, but under the statutes of some of the states and under the mining regu- lations of many mining districts a certain amount of work must be done before the location is complete.
The statute provides that any one running a tunnel for the development of a vein or for the discovery of mines shall have the same right of possession of all veins or lodes on the line of such tunnel within three thousand feet of the face thereof which shall be discovered on such tunnel, and which were not previously known to exist, as if the discovery was made from the surface. If other parties shall, while such tunnel is being prosec^uted with reasonable diligence, locate on the line of such tunnel, any vein not appearing on the surface, such location shall be invalid. A failure for six months to prosecute work on the tunnel con-
128 THE LAW OF MINING.
stitutes an abandonment of all undiscovered veins on the line thereof.
The question of abandonment is principally one of intention, whether the ground was left by the locator without any intention of return- ing and making a future use of it. Forfeiture mean the loss of a previously acquired right to mine certain ground, by a failure to perform certain acts or observe certain rules, and differs from abandonment in that it involves no ques- tion of intent.
A failure to perform the annual work re- quired by statute works a forfeiture of the mining claim and the same becomes open to re-location, unless the original locators, their heirs, assigns or legal representatives, resume work upon such claim before a re-location has been made.
A failure to comply with local rules or cus- toms works a forfeiture, if the local rules so provide.
To suffer tailings to run away, without any effort to retain or confine them, constitutes an abandonment of them.
Where the owner of a mining claim has failed to comply with the statutory require- ments, or the claim is forfeited by reason of non-observance of any local rule or custom, the same is subject to re-location.
Any person may then enter peacably upon the claim for the purpose of making a location
THE LAW OF MINING. 129
thereof, unless the original claimant has re- sumed work thereon.
A re-location is made in the same manner as an original location. And the re-locator of an abandoned mining claim has the same time to perform the acts required by law or custom as the original locator had. A re-location is an admission of the validity of the original claim, and also a claim of forfeiture, as to the original locator.
A party may under proper circiunstances re- locate his own claim, or that which he holds in common with others.
The statute provides that during each year, until a patent issues, not less than one hundred dollars of labor shall be performed, or improve- ments made, on every claim. But where claims are held in common, such expenditure may be made on any one claim. If a tunnel is run for the purpose of developing a lode or lodes, the running of such tunnel shall dispense with the necessity of performing work on the surface.
The period within which the annual work is required to be done shall commence on the first day of January succeeding the date of the location.
Priority of location confers the better title, where both parties rely on possession alone, priority of possession gives the better right.
Where veins intersect or cross each other, the prior locator shall be entitled to all ore or
130 THE LAW OF MIMNG.
mineral contained within the space of inter- section, the subsequent locator being entitled to a right of way through said space where two or more veins unite, the oldest location takes the vein below the point of union, in- cluding all the space of intersection.
Before the adoption of the Act of 1866, min- ing claims upon the public lands were held under regulations adopted by the miners themselves in different localities. And though since 1886, Congress has to some extent legis- lated on the subject prescribing the limits of location and appropriation and the extent of mining ground which one may thus acquire, miners are still permitted in their respective districts to make rules and regulations not in conflict with the laws of the United States, or of the state or territory in which the districts are situate, governing the location, manner of recording, and amount of work necessary to acquire and hold possession of a claim.
That act declared the public lands to be open to exploration and occupation, subject to such regulations as may be prescribed by law, and subject also to the local customs or rules of miners in the several mining districts, so far as the same may not be in conflict with the laws of the United States.
Section 9, of the same act, also recognizes the force of these customs and laws as applied to water rights.
THE LAW OF TUNING. 131
These provisions are continued in force by the Act of 1872 and the Revised Statutes; and the latter act contains an additional provision, expressly granting to the miners of the re- spective mining districts the right to make any regulations not in conflict with the laws of the United States or the laws of the state or terri- tory in which the district is situated, governing the location, manner of recording and amount of work necessary to hold possession of a mining claim.
Those who have created a mining district may change its size or boundaries, if vested rights are not affected thereby.
A mining corporation may be represented at meetings in mining districts by any of its officers or by any agent.
One who has made a location in compliance with law is entitled, so long as he complies v/ith the laws of the United States, and with state, territorial and local regulations not in conflict therewith, to the exclusive right of possession and enjoyment of all the surface included within the lines of his location, and all veins, lodes and ledges throughout their entire depth, the top or apex of which lies inside of such sur- face lines extended downward vertically, al- though such veins, lodes or ledges may bo far depart from a perpendicular in their downward course as to extend outside the side lines of the location ; but such right shall not extend beyond
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132 THE LAW OF MINING.
the end lines of the location projected in their own direction till they intersect the veins or ledges. This is the apex rule.
Until a patent issues, the fee to mineral lands in the public domains rcjuains in th(3 United States, But any person coming vritbiu the provision of the acts of Congress acfiuires h right to purchase them from the go\ cnimeiit; by complying with those acts.
The applicant for a patent must file an ap- plication under oath in the proper land office, showing a compliance with the law, togethci- with a plat and field notes, made by or under direction of the United States surveyor-gen- eral, of the claim or claims, and shall post a copy of the plat, together A\ith a notice of the application, on the land ; he must file an .affi- davit of the posting of such notice and a copy of the notice itself in the land office. The reg- ister of the land office shall post the notice in his office for sixty days, and shall publish it for the same period in the newspaper nearest to the claim.
The claimant must also file with the register the surveyor-general's certificate tliat $500 worth of labor has been expended or improve- ments made upon the claim by the applicant or his grantors.
At the end of sixty days the a}>])licant shall be entitled to a patent upon payment of $5 an acre, if the claim is for a lode location, and
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THE LAW OF MINING. 133
$2.50 an acre if for a placer location, unless during said sixty days an adverse claim shall have been filed with the register and receiver of the land office in which the application is filed ; after which time no objection to the issuance of the patent made by third parties shall be heard.
Any adverse claim must be filed within the sixty days, and must be under oath of the ad- verse claimant . Thereupon proceedings shall be stayed until the controvei^y shall have been settled or decided by a court of competent jurisdiction.
The adverse claimant must within thirty days after filing his adverse claim commence proceedings in a court of competent juris- diction to determine his rights and prosecute the same with reasonable diligence to find judgment, or his claim will be deemed waived. The party in whose favor judgment is render- ed shall, upon tiling a copy of the judgment roll with the register, and complying with the other provisions for obtaining a patent, be en- titled to a patent for the claim or such portion thereof as the decision of the court shows him entitled to. These sections do not apply where a person before the required publication has gone through all the regular proceedings re- quired to obtain a patent for mineral land and has received his patent .
The transferable character of mining loca-
134 THE LAW OF MINING.
tions has been ab^ays recognized by the courts and the title of the grantee enforced. It is not necessary that the transfer should be in writ- ing, as a transfer of the possession is sufficient except in those States that have statutes re- quiring that the conveyance must have the same form and solemnity as the conveyance of any other real estate. The patent is also as- signable. There is no implied warranty in the sale of a mining claim.
Interpretation.
Ore — Minerals in natural condition.
Lode or Vein — A flattened mass of metallic or earthy matter diifering materially in its nature from the rocks or strata in which it occurs, a fissure in the earth's crust filled with mineral matter, or aggregations of mineral matter, containing ores in fissures. The term as used in the acts of Congress is applicable to any zone or belt of mineralized rock lying within boundaries clearly separating it from the neighboring rock. The words vein, lode, and ledge are nearly synonymous.
A Mine is a way or passage underground, a subterranean duct course or passage, and is distinguished from a " quarry," which is a pit wrought from the surface.
Face of Tunnel — This term, as used in sec- tion 2323 of the Eevised Statutes, is held to be the first working face formed in the tunnel,
THE LAW OF MINING. 135
and to signify the point at which the tunnel actually enters cover.
Location and Mining Claim — These terms do not always mean the same thing. A min- ing claim is a parcel of land containing prec- ious metal in its soil or rock . A location is the act of appropriating such parcel according to certain established rules. But in time the location came to be considered among miners as synonymous with the mining claim origi- nally appropriated . A mining claim may in- clude one or several locations.
Apex — The end or edge of a vein nearest the surface.
Level — The word as used in mining means a working and is not necessarily a plane.
Dip — The direction or inclination towards the depth.
Along the Vein — Along the longitudinal course or strike.
Placer Claim — Ground within defined boundaries which contains mineral in its earth, sand or gravel; ground that includes valuable deposits not in place — that is, not fixed in rock, but which are in a loose state, and may in most cases be collected by washing or amal- gamation without milling.
136 THE LAW OF MINING.
Regulations Governing Placer Mining along
the Yukon River and its Tributaries
in the Northwest Territories,
In force August, 1897.
Interpretation.
*' Bar diggings" shall mean any part of a river over which the water extends when the water is in its flooded state, and which is not covered at low water.
Mines on benches shall be known as " bench diggings " and shall for the purpose of defining the size of such claims be excepted from dry diggings.
" Dry diggings" shall mean any mine over which a river never extends.
"Miner" shall mean a male or female over the age of eighteen, but not under that age.
"Claim" shall mean the personal right of property in a placer mine or diggings during the time for which the grant of such mine or diggings is made.
" Legal post " shall mean a stake standing not less than four feet above the ground and squared on four sides for at least one foot from the top. Both sides so squared shall measure at least four inches across the face. It shall also mean any stump or tree cut off and squared or faced to the above height and size.
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" Close season " shall mean the period of the year during which placer mining is generally suspended. The period to be fixed by the Gold Commissioner in whose district the claim is situated.
" Locality " shall mean the territory along a river (tributary of the Yukon River) and its affluents.
"Mineral" shall include all minerals what- soever other than coal.
Nature and Size of Qaims.
1. " Bar diggings,-' a strip of land 100 feet wide at high-water mark, and thence extend- ing into the river to its lowest water level.
2. The sides of a claim for bar digging shall be two parallel lines run as nearly as possible at right angles to the stream and shall be
narked by four legal posts, one at each end of the claim at or about high-water mark, also one at each end of the claim at or about the edge of the water. One of the posts at high- water mark shall be legibly marked with the name of the miner and the date upon which the claim was staked.
3. Dry diggings shall be 100 feet square and shall have placed at each of its four corners a legal post upon one of which shall be legibly marked the name of the miner and the date upon which the claim was staked.
4. Creek and river claina» shall be 500 fe«t
THE LAW OP MINING. 13 f
long, measured in the direction of the general coulee of the stream, and shall extend in width from base to base of the hill or bench on each side, but when the hills or benches are less than 100 feet apart, the claim may be 100 feet in depth. The sides of a claim shall be two parallel lines run as nearly as possible at right angles to the stream. The sides shall be marked with legal posts at or about the edge of the water and at the rear boundaries of the claim. One of the legal posts at the stream shall be legibly marked with the name of the miner and the date upon which the claim was staked.
5. A Bench claim shall be 100 feet square, and shall have placed at each of its four cor- ners a legal post, upon which shall be legibly marked the name of the miner, and the date upon which the claim was staked.
6. Entry shall only be granted for alternate claims, the other alternate claims being re- served for the Crown, to be disposed of at public auction, or in such manner as may be decided by the Minister of the Interior.
The penalty for trespassing upon a claim re- served for the Crown shall be immediate can- cellation by the Gold Commissioner of any entry or entries which the person trespassing may have obtained, whether by original entry or purchase for a mining claim, and the refusal by the Oold Commissioner of the acceptance of
140 THE LAW OF MINING.
any application which the person trespassing may at any time make for a claim. In addi- tion to such jDenalty, the mounted police, upon H requisition from the Gold Commissioner to that effect, shall take the necessary steps to eject the trespasser.
Y. In defining the size of claims they shall be measured horizontally, irrespective of in- equalities on the surface of the ground.
8. If any person or persons shall discover a new mine, and such discovery shall be estab- lished to the satisfaction of the Gold Commis- sioner, a creek and river claim 750 feet in length may be granted.
A new stratum of auriferous earth or gravel situated in a locality where the claims are abandoned shall for this purpose be deemed a new mine, although the same locality shall have been previously worked at a different level.
9. The forms of application for a grant for placer mining and the grant of the same shall be those contained in forms "H" and "I," in the schedule hereto.
10. A claim shall be recorded with the Gold Commissioner in whose district it is situated within three days after the location thereof if it is located within ten miles of the Commis- sioner's office. One extra day shall be allowed for making such record for every additional ten miles or fraction thereof,
THE LAW OF MINING. 141
11. In the event of the absence of the Gold Commissioner from his office, entry for a claim may be granted by any person whom he may appoint to perform his duties in his absence.
12. Entry shall not be granted for a claim which has not been staked by the applicant in person in the manner specified in these regula- tions. An affidavit that the claim was staked out by the applicant shall be embodied in form " H " of the schedule hereto.
13. An entry fee of $15 shall be charged the first year, and an annual fee of $100 for each of the following years. This provision shall apply to locations for which entries have already been granted.
14. A royalty of ten per cent, on the gold mined shall be levied and collected by officers to be appointed for the purpose, provided the amount so mined and taken from a single claim does not exceed five hundred dollars per week. In case the amount mined and taken from any single claim exceeds five hundred dollars per week, there shall be levied and col- lected a royalty of ten per cent, upon the amount so taken out up to five hundred dollars, and upon the excess, or amount taken from any single claim over five hundred dollars per week, there shall be levied and collected a royalty of twenty per cent., such royalty to form part of the consolidated Ke venue, and to be accounted for by the officers who collect the
14:2 THE LAW OF MINING.
same in due course. The time and manner in which such royalty shall be collected, and the persons who shall collect the same, shall be provided for by regulations to be made by the 1-
Gold Commissioner. • |
Default in payment of such royalty, if con- tinued for ten days, after notice has been posted upon the claim in respect of which it is |
demanded, or in the vicinity of such claim, by |
the Gold Commissioner or his agent, shall be \
followed by cancellation of the claim. Any at- tempt to defraud the Crown by withholding any part of the revenue thus provided for, by making false statements of the amount taken out, shall be punished by cancellation of the claim in respect of which fraud or false state- ments have been committed or made. In re- spect of the facts as to such fraud or false statements or non-payment of royalty, the de- cision of the Gold Commissioner shall be final.
15. After the recording of a claim the re- moval of any post by the holder thereof or by any person acting in his behalf for the purpose of changing the boundaries of his claim shall act as a forfeiture of the claim.
16. The entry of every holder of a grant for placer mining must be renewed and his receipt relinquished and replaced every year, the entry fee being paid each time.
17. No miner shall receive a grant of more than one mining claim in the same locality,
THE LAW OF TUNING. 143
but the same miner may hold any number of claims by purchase, and any number of miners may unite to work their claims in common upon such terms as they may arrange, provided such agreement be registered with the Gold Commissioner and a fee of five dollars paid for each registration.
18. Any miner or miners may sell, mort- gage, or dispose of his or their claims, provided such disposal be registered with, and a fee of two dollars paid to the Gold Commissioner, who shall thereupon give the assignee a certifi- cate in form J in the schedule hereto.
19. Every miner shall, during the continu- ance of his grant have the exclusive right of entry upon his own claim, for the miner-Hke working thereof, and the construction of a residence thereon, and shall be entitled exclu- sively to all the proceeds realized therefrom, upon which, however, the royalty prescribed by clause 14 of these Regulations shall be payable; but he shall have no surface rights therein; and the Gold Commissioner may grant to the holders of adjacent claims such right of entry thereon as may be absolutely necessary for the working of their claims, upon such terms as may to him seem reasonable. He may also grant pennits to miners to cut timber thereon for their own use, upon payment of the dues prescribed by the regulations in that behalf.
20. Every miner shall be entitled to the us©
144 THE LAW OF MINING.
of SO much of the water naturally flowing through or past his claim, and not already law- fully appropriated, as shall, in the opinion of the Gold Commissioner be necessary for the due working thereof; and shall be entitled to drain his own claim free of charge.
21. A claim shall be deemed to be abandoned and open to occupation and entry by any per- son when the same shall have remained un- worked on working days by the grantee thereof or by some person on his behalf foi the space of *seventy-two hours, unless sickness or other reasonable cause be shown to the satisfaction of the Gold Commissioner or unless the grantee is absent on leave given by the Commissioner, and the Gold Commissioner upon obtaining evidence satisfactory to himself, that this pro- vision is not being complied with may cancel the entry given for a claim.
22. If the land upon which a claim has been located is not the property of the Crown it will be necessary for the person who applied for entry to furnish proof that he has acquired from the owner of the land the surface rights before entry can be granted.
23. If the occupier of the lands has not re- ceived a patent therefor, the purchase money of the surface rights must be paid to the Crown, and a patent of the surface rights will issue to
*73 hours means 3 consecutive days of 24 hours each.
THE LAW OF MINING. 146
the party who acquired the mining rights. The money so collected will either be refunded to the occupier of the land, when he is entitled to a patent therefor, or will be credited to him on account of payment for land.
24. When the party obtaining the mining rights to lands cannot make an arrangement with the owner or his agent or the occupant thereof for the acquisition of the surface rights, it shall bo lawful for him to give notice to the owner or his agent or the occupier to appoint an arbitrator to act with another arbitrator named by him, in order to award the amount of compensation to which the owner or occu- pant shall be entitled. The notice mentioned in this section shall be according to a form to be obtained upon application from the Gold Commissioner for the district in which the lands in which the lands in question lie, and shall, when practicable, be personally served on such owner, or his agent if known, or occu- pant; and after reasonable efforts have been made to effect personal service, without suc- cess, then such notice shall be served by leaving it at, or sending by registered letter to, the last place of abode of the owner, agent or occu- pant. Such notice shall be served upon the owner, or agent within a period to be fixed by the Gold Commissioner before the expiration of the time limited in such notice. If the pix)- prietor refuses or declines to appoint an arbi-
146 THE LAW OF MININQ.
trator, or when, for any other reason, no arbi- trator is appointed by the proprietor in the time hmited therefor in the notice provided for by this section, the Gold Commissioner for the district in which the lands in question lie, shall, on being satisfied by affidavit that such notice has come to the knowledge of such owner, agent or occupant, or that such owner, agent or occupant wilfully evades the service of such notice, or cannot be found, and that reasonable efforts have been made to effect such service, and that the notice was left at the last place of abode of such owner, agent or occupant, ap- point an arbitrator on his behalf.
25. (a.) All the arbitrators appointed under the authority of these regulations shall be sworn before a Justice of the Peace to the impartial discharge of the duties assigned to them, and they shall forthwith proceed to esti- mate the reasonable damages wnich the owner or occupants of such lands, according to their several interests therein, shall sustain by reason of such prospecting and mining operations.
(6.) In estimating such damages, the arbi- tratoi^ shall determine the value of the land irrespectively of any enhancement thereof from the existence of minerals therein.
(c.) In case such arbitrators cannot agree, they may select a third arbitrator, and when the two arbitrators cannot agree upon a third arbitrator the Gold Commissioner for the dis-
THE LAW OF MUTEWQ. 147
trict in which the lands in question He shall select such third arbitrator.
(d.) The award of any two such arbitrators made in writing shall be final, and shall be filed ^^ath the Gold Commissioner for the dis- trict in which the lands lie.
If any cases arise for which no provision is made in these regulations, the provisions of the regulations governing the disposal of mineral lands other than coal lands approved by His Excellency the Governor in Council on the 9th of November, 1889, shall apply.
FORM H.
ArPLICATION FOR GRANT FOR PLACBR MINING AND AFFIDAVIT OF APPLICANT.
I (or we) of
hereby apply, under the Dominiou Mining Reeulations, for a grant of a claim for placer mining as defined in the said regulations, in (here describe locality) and I (or we) solemnly swear :
1. That I (or we) have discovered therein a deposit of (here name the metal or mineral).
2. That I (or we) am (or are) to the best of my (or our) knowledge and belief, the first discoverer (or discoverers) of the said deposit; or:
3. That the said claim was previously granted to (here name the last grantee) but has remained imworked by the said tz;rantee for not less than
4. That I (or we) am (or are) unaware that the land is other than vacant Dominion land.
5. That I (or we) did, on the day of
mark out on the ground, in accordance in every particular with the provisions of the mining regulations, for the Yukon River and its tributaries, the claim for which I (or we) make
148 THE LAW OF MINTNG.
this application, and that in so doing I (or we) did not en- croach on any other claim or mining location previously laid out by any other person.
6. That thr" said claim contains, as nearly as I (or we) could measure or estimate, an area of
square feet, and that the description (and sketch, if any) of this date hereto attached, signed by me (or us), sets (or set) forth in detail, to the best of my (or our) knowledge and ability, its position, form and dimensions.
7. That I (or we) make this application in good faith, to acquire the claim for the sole purpose of mining, to be prose- cuted by myself (or us) or by myself and associates, or by my (or our)" assigns.
Sworn before me af
this day
of 18
(Signature)
No.,..
FORM I. grant for placer mining.
Department of tue Interior,
Agency, 18
In consideration of the payment of the fee prescribed by Clause 13 of the Mining Kegulatious for the Yukon River and its tributaries, by (A.B.) of , accom-
panying his (or their) application No. , dated
, 18 , for a mining claim in (here insert description of locality).
The Minister of the Interior hereby grants to the said (A.B.) , for the term
of one year from the date hereof, the exclusive right of en- try upon the claim (here describe in detail the claim granted) for the miner-like working thereof and the construction of a residence thereon, and the exclusive right to all the pro- ceeds realized therefrom, upon which, however, the royalty prescribed by Clause 14 of the Regulations shall be paid.
THE LAW OF MINING. 149
The said (A.B.) shall
be eutiiled to the use of so much of the water naturally flowiug through or past his Tor their) claim, and not already lawfully appropriated, as shall be necessary for the due working thereof, and to drain his (or their) claim free of charge.
This grant does not convey to the said (A.B.) any surface rights in the said claim,
or any right of ownership in the soil covered by the sail claim ; and the said grant shall lapse and be forfeited unless the claim is continuously and in good faith worked by the said I A.B.) or his (or
their) associates.
The rights hereby granted are those laid down in the aforesaid mining regulations, and no more, and are subject to all the provisions of the said regulations, whether the same are expressed herein or not.
Oold Commissioner.
FORM J.
CERTIFICATE OK THE ASSIGNMENT OF A PLACER MINING
CLAIM. No
Department of the Interior,
Agency, 18 .
This is to certify that (B.C.) of
has (or have) filed an assignment in due form dated
18 , and accompanied by a registration fee of two dollars, of the grant to (A.B.)
of of the right to mine in [insert description
f)/ctom) for one year from the 18 .
This certificate entitles the said (B.C.)
to all the rights and privileges of the said (A.B.) in respect of
the claim assigned, that is to say, to the exclusive right of entry upon the said claim for the miner-like working thereof and the construction of a residence thereon, and the exclu- sive right to all the proceeds realized therefrom (upon which, however, the royally prescribed by Clause 14 of the Regula- tionB shall be paid), for the remaining portion of the year for
160 THE LAW OF MINING.
which the said claim was granted, to the said (A.B.) , that is to sav, uutil the
day of , 18 .
The said (B.C.) shall
be entitled to the use of so much of the water naturally flow- ing through or past his (or their) claim and not already law- fully appropriated, as shall be necessary for the due work- ing thereof, and to drain the claim free of charge.
This grant does not convey to the said (B.C.) any surface rights in the said claim,
or any right of ownership in the soil covered by the said claim ; and the said grant shall lapse and be forfeited unless the claim is continuously, and in good faith, worked by the said "(B.C.) or his (or
their) associates.
The rights hereby granted are those laid down in the Dominion Mining Regulations, and no more, and are subject to all the provisions of the said regulations, whether the same are expressed herein or not.
Oold Commissioner.
N.B. — The provisions of thesf Regulation k are liable to he changed at any time. Copies of the latent Regulations may be obtained by applying to the Department of tJie Interior, Ottawa, Ontario ; or to the Oold Commissioner at Cudahy, Yukon Dis- trict, North- West Territories.
Concerning Corporations,
The following will be of interest to mining corporations desiring to operate in the Klondike region in the Northwest Territory, and persons contemplating forming corporation to so operate.
The Northwest Territories now virtually form one of tlie provinces of the Dominion of Canada. It has a legislative assembly, whose powers are
THE LAW OF MINING. 151
defined by the Dominion Act, R. S. C, Cap. 50 and amendnKnits tiiereto.
By the amendments the assembly is em- powered to incorporate companies with purely territorial objects, except railways, steamship, canal, transportation, telegraph, insurance and irrigation companies, but including tramway and street railway companies. Application for the incorporation of companies coming within any of the classes thus excepted will therefore require to be made to the Dominion govern- ment.
The territorial government incorporates such companies as are within the powers of the assem- bly by the issue of Letters Patent by the lieu- tenant-governor under a general enactment known as "The Companies' Ordinance, " which is identical with " The Companies' Act " of the Canadian Parliament, except in the following particulars, viz. :
1. The number of apphcants must be at least three.
2. One month's notice must be given in the "Territorial Gazette" and in the local news- papers published nearest to the chief place of business of the company in the territories.
3. The petition may be presented at any time within two months from the last publication of the notice.
4. The number of directors shall not be less than three nor more than nine.
152 THE LAW OF MINING.
Fees. — The fees payable to the government upon grant of Letters Patent, or upon the filing of a foreign corporation of a copy of its charter as above mentioned are as follows:
When capital stock 8400,000 and upwards, $200; when capital stock §200,000 and under $400,000, $150; when capital $100,000 and under $200,000, $100; when capital stock $50,000 and under $100,000, $50; when capital stock $40,000 and imder $50,000, $40; when capital stock $10,000 and under $40,000, $30; when capital stock under $10,000, $20 — in ad- dition to advertising charges.
Foreign Corporations. — The ordinance re- ferred to provides that all joint stock companies and coi^iorations other than those incorporated under it or by the Parliament of Canada, or insurance companies licensed thereby, shall, before proceeding to do business in the terri- tories, file in the office of the lieutenant- governor a certified copy of its cliarter of incorporation authenticated as such by its president and secretary. Failing in which said company shall incur a penalty of $500, to be recovered at l,he suit of the lieutenant-governor in any civil court in the territories.
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
" Crystal snow the landscape coTers, over all the twiligiit hovers, Like a mourner o'er a bier."
— Leon Mead.
Prior to the year 1741 the peninsula of Alaska — the name being an English correction of the native Indian word Al-ak-shak, which means a great countiy or continent— was a terra incognita to the civilized world. In that year, in the month of July, it first burst upon the view of the Russian explorer and naviga- tor, Chirikof.
This pioneer in his somewhat ci-ude journal describes the natives of Alaska as ' ' well-built men resembling the Tartars in feature, not coi*pulent, but healthy, with hardly any beard." Of the Chirikof ex|jedition a number of sailors who landed on Alaskan teiTitory disappeared, and their fate has never definitely been deter- mined. Chirikof describes the inhabitants of Alaska as he then found them as exceedingly timid, and he could by no means induce them to board the vessels of his fleet. On his land- ing they deserted their settlements and fled on the approach of the Russians. News of the Chirikof discoveries in Alaska having reacheci the earsof the Spanish authorities, the govern-
li
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA. 155
ment of Spain took alarm at the apparently important nature of the Eussian explorations. In order to neutralize what she evidently con- sidered an encroachment on her claimed rights to all territory not charted, Spain, through h'-r Cabinet, ordered an exploring expedition to proceed along the coast to the northward of California.
This expedition, which was under Perez, added somewhat to the then slight knowledge regarding the Alaskan peninsular. Perez sighted and mapped two capes, to which he gave the names of Santa Margarita and Santa Magdalena. The Perez expedition did not land at Santa Margarita, and the observations of the Alaskan territory recorded by the leader of the expedition were based upon his experi- ence at Santa Magdalena.
Unquestionably the mapping of the coast by Perez was crude and faidty, and it would scarcely call forth comment but for the fact that some of the members of his expedition rescued from the hands of the natives an old bayonet and other implements of a civilization of which the Alaskans were not supposed to have cognizance. The conjecture of the pilot of the expedition that these relics were but grewsome mementoes of the lost sailors of the Chirikof expedition was doubtless well founded. The suggestion of cannibalism, which here intrudes itself, has no other basis than conjecture.
156 A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
The Spanish government in 1775 dispatched a second expedition for the purpose of strength- ening her interests there. This important ex- pedition was captained by Bruno Hecela. Perez sailed with Hecela as pilot, and was second in command. The Spanish explorers, on the 24th of August, 1775, for the second time landed on Alaskan territory and again claimed possession under the standard of Spain.
Three years later the ubiquitous English ex- plorer, who stands unique among the navigat- ors of the world, Capt. James Cook, passed along the coast of Alaska, and signalized the event by changing the nomenclature adopted by the Spaniards who preceded him. Cook gave to Mt. Edgecumbe the name which it bears.
In the following year the English expedition returned to Kamchatka under the command of Captain Clarke, who had served under Cook's command. Clarke proceeded to explore Bering Strait with a view to discovering the north- east passage to the Atlantic Ocean. The ex- pedition reached a point at latitude 70° 33' when it was obliged to turn back because of the ice encountered.
In 1783 an association of Siberian merchants founded in Alaska the first colonies of Russians on this continent. At the head of this associ- tion were Shellikof and Trangolikof, two of the principal shareholders. It encountered
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A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
much hostility from the natives and introduced many changes in the methods followed in the acquisition of furs, then the only industry known to that portion of America. The cus- tom of trading with the natives for furs gave way to harsher and more eiiective methods on the part of the new colonists. The Indians w^ere empressed into the service of the Russians, who furnished them with hunting parapher- nalia and lived in luxurious idleness while the subjected race hunted and trapped for them.
During the year 1786 great progress was made in the exploration of Alaskan territory. In this year Alaska was visited by Portlach.
The cupidity of Spain being again aroused by reports of the continual spread of Russian settlement in the far North, the Spanish gov- erirment, in 1787, instructed the Viceroy of Mex- ico to dispatch an expedition w^th a view to ex- ploring the northwestern coast for the purpose of finding if possible desirable locations for settle- ment. An expedition w^as sent from Mexico and anchored at Pueilo des Flores, where they took possession and remained for a time in friendly intercourse with the natives. From this point they proceeded to Kachch, where the chief of the colony impressed upon the Spanish commander the fact that the Czar had firmly established his title to this domain as far south as 52° of latitude. At this time the Russians in Alaska were represented by six
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA. 169
settlements colonized by about 400 men, who were in control of six vessels.
Shortly thereafter the Russian empress or- dered Jacobi to report on the best means of firmly establishing Russian dominion over the islands of the Eastern ocean and the northwest coast of America, and the best system of gov- ernment for the same. In an exhaustive report Jacobi, among other things, recommended the dispatch of a fleet from the Baltic to protect navigation in the Pacific.
Though constant quarrels between rival trading companies constituted a drawback to the colonization of the new region, it had thus far been attended by a fair amount of success.
In the year 1783 the Siberian merchants in- creased their facilities for operating on a larger scale in the new country. They sent to Alaska a company of 192 men, which was the largest force that had been sent from the Siberian coast at any one time. Another party sent to the new colony at this time encountered forces of hostile natives, and after severe fighting a number of them were killed.
The acquisition of Alaska by the United States at the time that it was accomplished was not looked upon with favor by the majority of our citizens. $7,000,000 seemed to the prac- tical American mind a pretty steep sum to pay for a group of stationary icebergs in the Arctic circle, and Wm. H. Seward, the Secretary of
160
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
State, who was mainly responsible for the purchase, came in for a large share of abuse and ridicule. The experience of after years has more than justified the wisdom and fore- thought of Seward, for in the light of contem- poraneous history, as Bancroft remarks, "with money easy Alaska was not a bad bargain at two cents an acre."
Long prior to its annexation to this country Russia had evinced a willingness to part with her possessions in Alaska. Tlie territory was regarded as too remote, being separated from Eussia proper by a tempestuous ocean and the vast area of Siberia. Exactly when negotia- tions for its purchase were first begun is not determinable, but it was regarded as a fore- gone conclusion at Kadiak in 1861, and the question is known to have been mooted at Washington in 1859. It was during Buchanan's Administration in that year that Senator Gwin of California intimated to the Russian Minister that the United States would be willing to pay $5,000,000 for the territory. This offer was not official, nor did the Russians consider the sum sufficient.
The Russian Archduke Constantine in Feb- ruary, 1867, conferred upon the Russian Min- ister at Washington power to treat for the sale of Alaska, and on March 23 of that year Mr. Seward made the offer of $7,000,000, subject to the approval of the President, with the proviso
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163 Jl short history of ALASKA.
that the cession of the territoiy be "free and unencumbered by any reservations, privileges, franchises, grants or possessions by any asso- ciated companies, whether corporate or incor- porate." The terms proposed were accepted by the Eussian Minister and on March 29, final instructions were cabled from St. Peters- burg. On Friday, October 18, 1867, Captain Pestchourof hauled down the Russia flag in Alaska and briefly and simply transferred the territory to the United States, in compliance with the terms of the treaty made March 30, 1867.
It is well to state here that as is the case in all international negotiations there is a secret history attached to the purchase of Alaska by Seward. It is well known that the presence of the Russian fleet in American waters at a critical period of our civil war had a wholesome effect upon the activities of England who v/as at that time not averse to the aismemberment of the American Republic, and it is assumed that Seward in payment for the obligations con- ferred upon the United States by Russia at a time when friends were scarce, made the purchase of Alaska, which Russia was anxious to sell, at a price which Russia was willing to take. Even if Seward did not foresee the glorious possibilities of the newly acquired ter- ritory— which Russia certainly did not — the negotiations leading up to and final absorption
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA. 163
of Alaska by the United States will redound to his lasting credit as a statesman of the first class.
During ten years succeeding the purchase of Alaska but little was done to improve the spiritual welfare of the natives, but in 1877 a Presbyterian mission was established at Sitka and two years later a mission under Catholic control made Fort Wrangell its place of settle- ment. These missions met with little encour- agement or success at first, but formed the beginning of the excellent system of educa- tion, religious and otherwise, that now obtains throughout Alaska. For an exhaustive de- scription of the Indians of Alaska the reader is referred to the report of Lieut. George F. Wilson, U. S. A., who accompanied Schwatka in his exploration in 1883. In that year Lieut. Wilson give the number and tribes of Alaskan Indians as follows:
After a careful arrangement of the data on the topography of the country passed throusih, with special reference to the boundary line between the Territory of Alaska and British America, it has been determined tha the main village of one tribe, Klat-ol-klin, supposed to be in Alaska, is situated within the English possessions ; consequently that tribe will not be included in the following summary of the names and members of the tribes met with in this portion of the United States :
Tongas, about 600
Cape Fox, about 250
Stickeens, about 800
Sitkas, about 1,000
Hootznahoo, about 700
164 A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
Hoonahs, about 700
Auks, about 700
Chilkats, about 980
Tadoosh, about 60
Fort Yukons, about 100
Tananahs, about 500
Ingalik tribes, about 1,350
Innuit tribes, about 1,900
Aleuts, about 1,890
11,520
Only those Innuits living along the Yukon River v^itliin the delta and northward along the coast to near the Oonala- kleet River are included in this list, and about 400 half breeds (Aleut and Russian living on the Aleutian group are also excluded.)
The whole number of natives met with is, therefore, about 11,520. The tribes met with along the river east of the boundary are :
Tahkeesh 50
Ayans 200
Takons 100
Klatolklins 100
Concerning the last named tribe it may be stated that their village is but a short distance from the boundary line as determined, and that the trading station about a mile further down the river, and now abandoned, is within the Territory of Alaska.
When Alaska was annexed the population was stated by the Russian missionaries at 33,426, of whom but 430 were whites. The mixed race — termed Creoles — counted 1,756 and were the practical leaders, using the In- dian tribes for hunting and fishing. Fur trade and the fisheries were at that time the only known resources. As early as 1880, however, the sea otters shipped represented a value of
A SHOUT HISTORY OF ALASKA. 165
$600,000, the fur seals over $1,000,000, the land furs 180,000, and the fisheries from $12,- 000 to $15,000.
Mineral riches were hinted at by the early explorers. In 1885 the Director of the Mint credited Alaska with $300,000 in gold and $2,000 in silver, the chief contributor being the Alaska mill at Douglass City. In 1896 the gold product reached $1,948,900, showing a gain over 1895 equal to $386,100. For 1897 the gold output is placed by good judges at not less than $10,000,000.
Prior to the discovery of gold in large quan- tities, Alaska was important principally on ac- count of the seal fisheries, concerning which im- portant and interesting industry hundreds of volumes have been written both in the way or diplomatic correspondence and otherwise.
The Alaskan fur seal fishing is the most ex- tensive in the world. Since Alaska became the property of the United States this fishery has afforded a very considerable revenue to the Government by the lease of its privileges and engaged a large amount of American capital and the industry of many American people. For sixty years prior to 1862 these fisheries had been leased by the Russian Government to the Russian American Company, a corporation composed mainly of Siberian merchants. In 1870 the the Alaska Commercial Company ob- tained its lease, expiring May 1, 1890. At the
i
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA. 16T
expiration of its term, the North American Commercial Company succeeded in obtaining the lease from the government for the ensuing twenty years.
Next in importance to the fur industry of Alaska comes that of the fisheries. The In- dians of that country subsist principally upon seal meat and fish. The Alaskan rivers and streams produce a variety of edible fish of which the salmon is king, and after the exhaus- tion of the Columbia Kiver the canning of this noble fish in Alaska received a great impetus.
In 1883 the salmon of Alaska were first canned and in that year 6,000 cases were marketed. In 1890 the enormous total was 610,717 cases. In the seven years from 1883 to 1890 this would have meant a consumption of 27,706,958 salmon.
Eegarding the boundary line between Alaska and the North-west Territory the New York Sun holds that any statement that there are grounds for a dispute is untenable. In an able editorial on the subject it says in part:
"The treaty of Februarj^ 28, 183 j, between Russia and Great Britain, under which our rights to Alaska are derived by purchHse from the former, says that the boundary line, be- ginning at the soulliernmost point of Prince of Wales Island, ascends to the north along Portland Channel as far as the point of the continent where it strikes the lifty-sixth degree of north latitude. Thence it is to "follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast as far as the po/nt of intersection of the 141st degree of west longitude," thence proceeding along that meridian to the Frozen Oceaa. It U
168 A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
further provided that ■whenever the summit of these moun- tains proves to be more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the line "shall be formed by a line parallel to the winding of the coast, -which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom."
It turned out that the continuous range of mountains parallel to the coast, depicted on Vancouver's map, w^hich was used by the framers of the treaty, was imaginary. Hence the alternative provision of a distance of thirty marine miles from the coast necessarily was adopted for determining the boundary; and the line thus drawn, the line we still have for Alaska, is found on British maps as Avell as ours for a period of nearly or quite sixty years after the signing of the treaty."
The introduction of reindeer into Alaska, for which credit is due to Dr. Sheldon Jackson, bids fair to prove invaluable in view of the enormous influx of miners to the Yukon region. In 1893 Congress made an appropriation for the purpose and a small herd was introduced into the territory from Siberia. In 1894 the herd was increased by new importations, since which time the natural increase has been satis- factory. The herd now numbers 1000 and the future of this useful animal is assured. The value of the reindeer to the Alaskan miner is sure to prove as great as it is to the Laplander, to whom it is invaluable, being, in fact, his horse, his ox, and his sheep in one animal. As a draught animal its speed, endurance, and par- ticular adaptation to travelling on snow render it most valuable to people dwelling in the frozen latitudes. It has been known to run at the rate of nearly nineteen miles an hour, and it is not
A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA. 169
unusual for it to travel 150 miles in nineteen hours. The weight ordinarily drawn by it in Lapland is 240 pounds, but it can draw 300. Its meat forms delicious food for man; its skin is valuable, and the milk of the herds is often the principal support of the owner and his family. Millions of them could exist in Alaska upon the reindeer moss which exists there in tlie greatest abundance.
Alaska is a country which embraces a vast territory. The main land is estimated to con- tain an area of 580,000 square miles, while the island of the Alexandrian archipelago contain 31,200 square miles and the Aleutian island 6,400 square miles, a grand total of 617,600 square miles. The main land has an extent, north and south, of over 1,000 miles, while Altii, the last island of the Aleutian group, is 2,000 miles west of Sitka.
A range of high mountains covered with snow and seamed with glaciers which push, their feet into salt water, runs parallel with the coast, and divides the country into two unequal parts — the narrow coast strip, with islands and a moist climate, where zero weather is rare, and the vast interior, where the thermometer has a range of 180 degrees.
The coast region is accessible at all seasons by ocean vessels.
Alaska has already paid for itself by royalities from the fur sealing company, not to speak of
A SHORT HISTORY OP ALASKA. 171
the salmon industry which has yielded more than the purchase price, while the Treadwell gold mill on Douglass island has given to the world in gold more than the original cost of the country.
Juneau, the metropolis of Alaska, was founded in 1880, and named in honor of Joseph Juneau, who first found gold on Douglass Island, two miles away, where the famous Treadwell quartz mill, the largest in the world, is located. Sitka is the capital.
The great interior of Alaska is accessible less than half of the year, and then with much difficulty and hardship. The mighty basin of the Yukon, which comprises two-thirds of the entire territory, is one of the most remarkable regions in the world. Were it not for this great artery the world would know nothing of the wealth of the interior. Tlie Yukon is formed by the junction of the Pelly and Lewis rivei's, the former 600 miles long and the latter 360. From Fort Selkirk, at the confluence of the rivers, to the mouth of the Yukon, the distance is 2, 044 miles, and the way is navigable for flat-bottom steamers of 400 or 500 tons.
From Fort Selkirk the Yukon flows 400 miles northwest, touching the Arctic circle, and then southwest for 1,600 miles, toBehring sea. It is sixty miles wide at its mouth, and
172 A SHORT HISTORY OF ALASKA.
SO shallow that ocean vessels cannot enter. Along its banks flowers bloom in the summer and birds sing in the trees, but in September the frost comes, and soon the whole country is covered with snow, the rivers become ice, and the thermometer drops to sixty and eighty below zero. Fossils of the mammoth and other gigantic animals are found along the Yukon. The navigable tributaries of the Yukon are the Lewis, Pelly, Stewart, Tahkenna, Hoota- linqua, Porcupine, Tannana, Anvik, White, Birch, Salmon and otliers, to the extent of several thousand miles.
FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES,
"They told us of the heaps of dust,
And the lumps so mighty big ; But they never said a single word
How hard it was to dig."
— Ballads of California.
The finding of gold dust or nuggets, or quartz in the bowels of the earth or in the i3eds of streams is of little direct benefit to the world at large. Iron or copper or tin are metals more useful and add a great deal more to the comfort of man. The possession of gold is valuable in that it gives to individuals the power to command a larger share of the world's goods, and the finding of gold in the earth has a tendency to equalize the conditions of rich and poor. The benefits conferred upon a coin- munity by a gold rush are purely local. It tends to produce a demand for those things that a community produces and hence creates local prosperity. The real addition to the wealth of the world comes later when in the wake of a gold rush the natural industries of a country are developed, such as its agriculture and hor- ticulture, which add materially to the real comfort of mankind. The development of coal seams and of copper mines and chose of other useful metals is also a useful outcome, gener-
1Y4 FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES.
ally, of a gold rush. Perhaps the most re- markable outgrowth of such a rush is its in- fluence on human character. Men who are tried in the crucible of hardship generally make good citizens and form excellent material for the building up of new communities. Alaska and the great basin of the Yukon cannot fail to be benefited by the influx of good men of brawn and brain who, as has always been the case, will far outnumber the vicious and worth- less.
The Argonauts of '49.
Nearly half a century has elapsed since the world was startled by the rej)ort of the discov- eries of fabulous wealth in the then remote land of California. The existence of gold in Lower California had, three hundred years be- fore, been known to Cortez in Mexico, who, in 1537, fitted out an expedition which returned from the peninsula with a small quantity of the precious metal. The experience of Cortez, however, had no effect upon the eager "49er," as historical research is rarely a concomitant of gold rushes. Many California pioneers are still alive and every one of them will maintain that with energy the difficulties confront- ing the miner on the Yukon are mere child's play compared to what they had to undergo in wresting fortune from the El Dorado of fifty years ago. The argonauts of '49 had to croiBS
FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES. lT5
severe ranges of mountains covered with snow and ice; they had to endure the blazing heat of the tropics and the horrors of chagres fever; they had to confront deserts and alkali plains. Savage beasts and more savage meu beset their steps as they wended their way across a trackless country or the then deadly isthmus of Panama. Mule trains or prairie schooners were the means of locomotion for their necessaries, while they trudged wearily on foot. They had in those days no tinned meats, condensed milks or preserved fruits, no neatly compounded medicines in portable form. In order to have a letter delivered to their dear ones at home it was necessary to pay in some cases as high as $5, with the certainty that it would be many months before a reply was pos- sible. An old miner thus describes a part of the journey to California:
" Our trail was littered with the remains of other cara- vans of pioneers who had proceded us across the deadly waste. The skeletons of men and animals dotted both sides of the trail, and wagon wheels, old arms, rusty swords, broken rifles and other relics of the victims of that terrible summer were lying around in profusion. The value of the material that lay there decaying on the desert would, I be- lieve, if fairly computed, run up into the hundreds of thou- sands of dollars."
The gold rush to California has often been told in song and story, but the proposition that the State shall celebrate in January, 1898, the fiftieth anniversary of the finding of gold in the flume of General Sutter's saw mill at Co-
'.
176 FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES.
loma, in El Dorado County, has brought to light a mass of material concerning the days of forty-nine, among which is the true story of the great discovery.
James W. Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California, died at Coloma in 1885. Those who were associated with him in the great find, including General Sutter, are nearly all dead. There is one survivor, however, of those who were on the ground — Adam Wicks, of Santa Barbara. Wick's story, much condensed, is herewith given:
"I reached the Sutter's Tort or stockade in the fall of 1847. There were about forty white men in Sacramento at that time, most of whom were employed by Sutter, then a man of forty -tive years, with a wonderful belief in the possibili- ties of California soil for raising fruits and grains. Sutter employed me to oversee a squad of half-breed Indians who were employed in rounding up cattle. At that time Sutter was improvmg his saw mill, believing that the government would need a large supply of lumber. At meal times at the camp cook house I often met and became friendly with Mar- shall. He was a carpenter from New Jersey and had been a rover for many years. At the time that I knew him he had been with Sutter four years, and was anxious to again wander forth and try his fortunes elsewhere. Three weeks later he picked up the first golden nugget, and the future of California was assured. I was away on the day that the find was made and on returning to the ranch asked Marshall about it. Mar- shall went into the kitchen of the building and came back with a tin matchbox. He lit the candle and slowly and silently opened the box. I watched him intently. He produced from the box four bits of gold.
" 'Now, by , what do you call that? ' said he, as he
laid them on the redwood table before me. The largest nugget was the size of a hickory nut ; the others were the size of black beans. All had been hammered and were very
\.
FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES. 177
bright from boiling and acid tests. Those were the first evi- dences of the gold.
"Two weeks later Mrs. Wimmer, the cook, went to Sacra- mento, where she showed some nuggets found along the American River, and thus the news was spread, Marshall and the rest of us were extremely mad at the time with the cook, and I have heard that Marshall never forgave her. Then the rush began. Sutter lost a magnificent estate by the finding of gold on his property and lived for years on a pension allowed h'm by the State.
'By July, 1848, the excitement over Marshall's discovery became widespread. Every vessel that toucned at San Fran- cisco was deserted almost to a man by the crew, who went up the river to Sacramento, and then came pell mell seventy miles across the country to the American River. Clergy- men, merchants, lawyers and laborers started for the dig- gings. Prices of everthing had gone up fabulously. Cattle were worth $12 a head in 1847, $150 in the summer of 1848. and over $400 in 1849 and 18j0. Shovels, hoes, dishpans (used for washing the gold) were sold for almost their weight in gold at times between the arrival of steamers bringing a fresh supply of these things, I bought a pair of boots in 1847 for $13, and, after I had worn them well, I sold them ill July, 1848, at the diggings for four ounces of gold, worth then $14 an ounce. Why, there were no men left to keep stores. Every one went to mining.
" Along in March and April, 1849, the stampede of gold- hungry men began from the E;ist. You see it had taken two months for the news to get down to San Francisco ; then two months more for it to get to New York, and six months for the Easterners to put much faith in the rosy stories of how easy one could dig and hoe up gold in California. The stor- ies never lost anything in traveling to the Eastern States, and when they continued to come from the coast by every mail across the Isthmus, the whole East became excited. One of the conservative newspapers in New York estimated the earnings of a miner who employed Indians to shake the pan or handle the rocker for him at a dollar a minute. These stories were half confirmed by the numerous army officers stationed in California. Horace Greeley indorsed them in the Tribune, predicting an addition of a thousand millions of gold to the world's stock in four years, and adding that in
178 FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES.
New York * bakers cannot supply the demand for ship bread nor hardware men the demand for rifles, pistols, bowie knives and shovels.' During that winter of 1848-49 whole fleets of sailing ships set out from New York, Boston, Phil- adelphia, Norfolk, Baltimore, New Orleans and Charleston for the land of gold. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was established in November, 1848, and three steamers were built forthwith. In the spring of 1849 20,000 persons — men, women and children — were preparing at Independence, Mo., for the overland journey of 3,000 miles across the plains, and 10,000 p>eople were waiting at San Francisco for transportation to the mines.
■'All that you have ever read about the excitement that attended the influx of tens of thousands of Americans into California in 1849 and 1850 was not exaggerated. No one has any idea, until he has seen it, what privations and suffer- in» men will endure where they are vnld to get earliest in a gold field. I often wonder now if my recollections of those days are real or merely dreams. It all seems so unreal now.
"Marshall's troubles beean with the very first stampedeof gold seekers. He cursed Mrs. Wimmer and he declared he would have the law protect his rights. While the rest of us joined in digging and washing gold, Marshall swore and growled. For a few months he made every man on the scene pay him a dollar for his discovery. But when the throngs increased he seldom ^ot a dollar, and then only from a good-natured man. He claimed that he and Sutter owned the land on which the miners came and got their gold. Of course there was justice in the assertion that the miners had trespassed upon Sutter's and Marshall's acres, but the law- less, wild gold seekers cared precious little for legal ris^hts in those days, and there was neither United States nor Mexican law in California from some time in 1847 until the summer of 1850, when the Territory began to get ready for admission as a State. Marshall became disliked for his belligerency, and he was in continual disputes and quarrelling, Several times he barely escaped serious physical punishment from a camp of reckless, intoxicated miners whom he had threat- ened with legal processes because of their encroachments on his land. He never did any mining himself, for he claimed he owned all the gold that had been taken out at Coloma,
FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES. 179
and he would some day have the courts give him back all the riches that had been stolen from him.
"He was a spiritualist, and had visions and messages from the spirit land that told him what to do. He went often to 'Frisco and Sacramento. By 1851 he became recon- ciled to his fate, and abandoned all claims to the mining property on his lauds. In 1857, he bought a plot of land at Coloma, near the site of his saw mill. There he planted a vineyard. He did odd jobs about the town and made wine. He became a hard drinker and everyone knew him as a chronic growler. In 1869 he started out to lecture on ' How I Found Gold in California.' He was very poor, and for a few nights he did a good business. Then he went to Stock- ton, and there his love for whiskey overcame him, and he fell by the way. In 1872 the Legislature of California granted him a pension of $200 a month for two years. It was subsequently renewed for seven years at sfilOO a month. He spent almost every dollar of it all in saloons, and on a lot of parasites. That was why the first pension was cut down one-half. He died alone in a ramshackle, desolate cabin in the little hamlet of Kelsey, in El Dorado county, on August 9, 1885. He had been dead a day before hia remains were found."
The Rush to Australia.
The frantic pilgrimage of gold seekers to Australia in 1851 constituted a "rush" second in importance in the history of such events. The remarkable scenes and incidents of the days of '49 in California were repeated, and thousands of eager adventurers fell by the wayside, leaving their bones to whiten, mingled with those of the Dingo and kangaroo, upon the forbidding deserts of inland Australia.
The first discovery of the precious metal is attributed to a Mr. Hargraves, at Bathurst, in April, 1851, In August of the same year
180 FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES.
the rich finds at Balarat were unearthed and before the year was out the phenomenal treas- ure bed concealed in Mount Alexander revealed its wonders to the world.
As was the case in California all other indus- tries were neglected. Stockwhips and shep- ards crooks were thrown aside for the pickaxe and the shovel. Eanches were neglected and fell to ruin. During the excitment in Victoria the rush to the diggings became a stampede and the young and handsome cities of Mel- bourne and Geelong were practically deserted.
From that time to the present new and phe- nomenal finds of gold have been unearthed in the various colonies of Australia, Nev/ Zealand and Tasmania, and " rushes" similar in char- acter, though smaller in degree, have been again and again repeated.
The rush to the Coolgardie district in West Australia, with its terrible record of hardship and death, is fresh in the public mind.
Notwithstanding the enormous amount of gold yielded by Australia since its discovery in 1851, an enormous area of mineral country is still unprospected and new discoveries in the near future are not improbable.
Other Rushes*
In the history of gold production, California and Australia stand preeminent, but man has scoured the earth to quench his lust for gold,
FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES. 181
and history is rich with the record of his efforts.
The gold fields of Africa have at various times created a furore of excitement which has spread itself over the world. From the rush to Leydenberg in 1872, the great discov- eries in the Transvaal in 1886, and those of Witwaterand in the same year down to the famous "Kaffirs" of Barney Barnato, which set Europe on fire, there is seen the great impor- tance of the gold fields of Africa. Through them the Transvaal has been transformed and the prosperous town of Johannesburg, started in 1887, has become a thriving and important city.
The rush to Caribou and the Frazer river, of British Columbia, where gold was discovered in 1858, was characterized by the same feat- ures as those of its predecessors.
In the United States the stampede of gold seekers to Nevada, to Leadville, Cripple Creek and Crede in Colorado; to Deadwood and the mines of Idaho with all its picturesque and re- markable features, is fresh in the public mind. There are but few states in the Union where gold does not exist in some degree, and each one of them has experienced its miniature rush.
In addition to the gold fields enumerated im- portant discoveries of gold accompanied by the usual stampede have occurred in Brazil, Mex-
182 FAMOUS GOLD RUSHES.
ico, Peru, Russia, Austria- Hungary, Germany, a
Chili and even in England, where the recent discovery of gold on Mr, Morgan's estate in Wales has given use to parlimentary en- ^
quiry and the establishment of new laws.
Of all the gold discoveries that have occurred in recent years, that in the basin of the Yukon river, within the fastnesses of Alaska and the North- West Territory has apparently taken the strongest hold upon the public mind and at the present writing there seems to be little probability of any abatement of the feverish excitement attending it. i
KLONDIKE, "BRIDE OF THE "BOLD.
Steep mountain, deep ravine Erst hailed me, the wild Ice-Queen; The avalanche was my minister ; (My courtiers grim and sinister The wolves and the grt:(^:{lies were ; tAnd the winds howled chorus, keen e^i- their fangs, through my fierce demesne.
z/Jges here have I lain
In my yellow enchantment , fain Of pursuers and wooers bold. In a shape divine, controlled By the sacred thirst for gold.
Whose worship would make my reign
[More wide in the human brain.
iAnd their gain shall be thousand fold —
IMy Lovers who grow not cold, ^ut embrace me with might and main. Our nuptials may start in pain, "But the strain shall not be vain;
For Klondike, Goddess of Goldf
Is a loyal "Bride of the 'Bold.
—Hbnry Austin.
..#^
GOLD AND ITS VICTIMS.
"Judges and Senates have been bought for gold."
— Pope.
Gold, says the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, is a pre- cious metal remarkable on account of its unique and beauti- ful yellow color, luster, high specific gravity, and freedom from liability to rust or tarnish when exposed to the air. The specific gravity of pure gold is 19.3. Gold stands first among the metals in point of ductility and malleability. Its tenacity is almost equal to that of silver, two-thirds that of copper, and twelve times that of lead. It may be beaten into leaves thin enough to transmit a greenish light. It stands next to silver and copper as a conductor of heat and electricity; its melting point is about l.tUO^C. (or 2,000°F.) ; it is not attacked by any of the ordinary acids, but combines readily with chlorine ; and it is dissolved by a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids. The crystalline form of gold is isometric, but crystallized gold is a rarity, and it is ex- tremely uncommon to finds crystals with smooth faces and sharp edges. Neither have any very large crystals ever been noticed, nor one so much as an inch in diameter. Arbor- escent masses, showing irregularly developed crystalline planes, are occasionally found, and such forms are some- times aggregated into large masses; but much the larger part of the native gold found is entirely destitute of any appearance of crystallization, being usually in the form of small scales, which are often so minute as to be almost invi- sible to the naked eye. Larger rounded masses, called nuggets, are occasionally met with, and these are sometimes many pounds in weight. A specimen from the Ural pre- served in the collection of the mining school at St. Peters- burg weighs nearly a hundred pounds. The largest nugget of which there is any record was found in Australia, and was called the "Welcome." It weighed over 184 pounds, contained by assay 99.2 per cent, of gold, and netted a value when melted of $46,625. Gold is a widely dissem-
GOLD AND ITS VICTIMS. 185
inated metal, but does not occur anywherfe in large quanti- ties, as compared witli the ordinary useful metals. There is no proper ore of gold, this metal being never, so far as is known, mineralized by sulphur or oxygen. Although gold is disseminated in fine and usually invisible particles through various ores of the other metals, and in many cases in quan- tity great enough to be separated with profit, most of the gold of the world is obtained either in the form of native gold, from washing the superficial detritus (sand and gravel), or by separating it from quartz, with which mineral it is almost invariably associated when occurring in veins or segregations in the solid rocks. Native gold is, however, in fact, an alloy of gold with silver, and traces of copper and iron are often associated with it. No native gold entirely free from silver has ever been found. The amount of the latter metal present in gold varies greatly in different regions. The gold of California usually contains from ten to twelve per cent, of silver : that of Australia rather less than half as much. The native gold of Mount Morgan, Queensland, approaches more nearly to chemical purity than any hitherto discovered, since it contains 99 . 7 per cent, of gold, and only a minute trace of silver. Pure gold is very rarely used in the arts. All gold coin and gold ornaments in use are alloys of gold with copper, or with copper and silver. The alloy is used, in the case of coin, because pure gold is too soft to bear rough usage ; and for the same reason, as well as to diminish the cost, in the case of gold used for personal ornaments. The coin of England is composed of eleven parts of gold and one of copper ; that of France and the United States of nine of gold and one of copper. The so- called gold used for jewels and watch-cases varies from eight or nine to eighteen carats fine. The alloys of gold with copper and silver are given various shades of color by treatment with chemicals, according to fashion or fancy. Gold has been in use for ornamental purposes from the earliest times. The world's output of gold during recent years, according to the reports of the United States Mint, has been as follows : 1893, $118,840,000; 1891, ,$130,650,000; 1892, $146,297,000; 1893, $157,228,000; 18S4, $181,510,100. In the United States the output has increased from over $88,000,000 in 1890 to over $39,000,000 in 1894. The total
186 GOLD AND ITS VICTIMS.
amount of gold coin and bullion in the United States at the end of 1894 is estimated at about $600,000,000.
Waves of cupidity travel in cycles and have from earliest times blighted communities and sometimes continents. Of these recurring periods, in which all that is basest in man's nature has asserted itself, the most notable are those that afflicted both England and the Con- tinent from 1717 to 1720, when the great crash came.
John Law, known as the Projector, was born in Edinburgh, in 1671. He killed a rival claimant to a woman's favors in a duel, was tried at the Old Bailey for murder, condemned to death, and escaped to the Continent.
Law originated the "Mississippi System," as it was called, at Paris, and issued shares at 500 livres each. Over this scheme the entire Continent seemed to go insane, and shares soon rose to 10,000 livres each, or more than sixty times their nominal value. A rage for posses- sion of the shares pervaded all ranks of society. Clergy and laity, peers and plebians, princes and peasants, statesmen and magistrates, ladies, all in short, who could procure money, turned stock-jobbers, outbidding each other with great avidity. All classes of men deserted their work and devoted themselves exclusively to the stock market of the Mississippi System. The people were delirious with cupidity.
The imexampled rise in the prices of Law's
GOLD AND ITS VICTIMS. 18T
worthless securities enabled obscure and hum- ble individuals to suddenly acquire princely fortunes. A footman having become rich in a day provided himself with a carriage. When it drew up at his door, instead of entering it, he climbed up behind from force of habit. Law's coachman made a great fortune and re- tired. Cooks and maid-servants appeared at the opera ablaze with jewels. The son of a baker at Toulouse, taking a fancy to have a service of plate, bought the entire stock of a goldsmith for 400,000 livres and sent them to his wife to deck the supper table. All precon- ceived ideas of delicacy or decency were sup- planted in the public mind by cupidity and avarice. When the scheme collapsed in 1720, Law was stripped of his fortune and finally died in Venice in a condition of destitution.
At the time when Law's Mississippi System was on the verge of collapse, the people of England were in a frenzy of avarice over a similar scheme to get rich quickly, which after- wards came to be known as the South Sea Bub- ble. The scheme was based on the same finan- cial reasoning as Law's, having been originated by Harley, earl of Oxford. Frantic indecency marked the mad struggle for shares. The worthless stock rose to the fabulous sum of £1,000 a share and fortunes were made in an hour. When the bubble was pricked it was found that cupidity had besmirched a nation.
188 GOLD AND ITS VICTIMS.
Parliament had been corrupted and women of jiigli degree were parties to the crime. The widespread ruin which follov/ed was so great that the nation had to divide the loss with the deluded subjects. Contemporaneously with this great gambling scheme, England was afflicted with innumerable smaller "bubbles," equally mischievous and based on the projection of the most frlAT-olous and absurd ends. So wide- spread was the demoralization that this class of gambling had to be suppressed by act of Parliament.
During the past four or more years the de- pressing financial conditions of the times have had their effect not alone on the poor, who are always with us, nor on the usually thrifty wage-earners and those busy breadwinners, who may be denominated the middle classes, but on the capitalist, the retired gentlemen, and those people possessing vested interests, and what in normal times would be considered a competence. Proportionately, the people living on their means have suffered more per- haps than any other class, especially those holding mixed securities, which have so shrunk and depreciated as to have caused acute alarm in many a household thi'oughout the land. The man whose property mainly consists in mortgages has suffered from the continual de- faulting of interest payers, the farmers, who, In turn, have been unable to scratch out of
' 'i
GOLD AND ITS VICTIMS. 189
their farms a decent living, because of over- production and the consequent low prices of nearly all farm produce.
So that everyone has been in extremis, and for the first time in years, or perhaps in their lives, many men reputed to be wealthy have had to go to "banking." Men who were really worth $100, 000 half a dozen years ago are to-day wondering why with good management and the exercise of economy and good judg- ment in making investments, as a rule, their estates have dwindled at least one-half. Such inen, forced to resort to expedients and make- shifts to save their credit and keep up appear- ances are often the first to commit some act of monetary folly which pushes them to the wall and ruins them after a life-time on "Easy street,"
The present Klondike fever has spread like a contagion everyv/here, and in its wake there bid fair to follow another disease — mad specu- lation. All kinds of catch-penny schemes are being devised to trap the unwary man who still has a little money to invest ; all kinds of bogus companies are springing into existence willing to accept subscriptions for stock from twenty-five cents up to one hundred dollars or more. After a few weeks the unwise patrons of these swindling concerns will be unable to find out their business addresses ; they will have vanished into thin air with all the specious
190 GOLD AND ITS VICTBIS.
promises of gain which tempted the distracted investor.
Hundred of advertisements of meretricious corporations and green-goods projects have appeared in the newspapers, all relating to the gold craze in Alaska and the Klondike, and few of them are worth the instant's considera- tion of any rational man. They all bear the ear-marks of insincerity. If the implied warn- ing here expressed should deter suffering cap- italists or impressionable workingmen from rash investment in these chimerical enter- prises, the purpose of these remarks will l)e justified.
The better plan for investors is to wait pa- tiently until the summer of 'ISO 8 for the testi- mony of the thousands who have gone to Alaska this year. If the reports confirm all the as- sertions made of the amazing riches locked up in the basin and mountains of the Yukon country, there will be plenty of time for legiti- mate investment on the part of the public.
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