Read Ebook: Through the Yukon Gold Diggings: A Narrative of Personal Travel by Spurr Josiah Edward

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 366 lines and 54016 words, and 8 pages

The author wishes to express his indebtedness to Messrs. A. H. Brooks, F. C. Schrader, A. Beverly Smith, and the United States Geological Survey, for the use of photographs.

Through The Yukon Gold Diggings.

Before the Klondike Discovery.

It was in 1896, before the Klondike boom. We were seated at the table of an excursion steamer, which plied from Seattle northward among the thousand wonderful mountain islands of the Inland Passage. It was a journey replete with brilliant spectacles, through many picturesque fjords from whose unfathomable depths the bare steep cliffs rise to dizzy heights, while over them tumble in disorderly loveliness cataracts pure as snow, leaping from cliff to cliff in very wildness, like embodiments of the untamed spirits of nature.

We had just passed Queen Charlotte Sound, where the swells from the open sea roll in during rough weather, and many passengers were appearing at the table with the pale face and defiant look which mark the unfortunate who has newly committed the crime of seasickness. It only enhanced the former stiffness, which we of the flannel shirt and the unblacked boot had striven in vain to break--for these were people who were gathered from the corners of the earth, and each individual, or each tiny group, seemed to have some invisible negative attraction for all the rest, like the little molecules which, scientists imagine, repel their neighbors to the very verge of explosion. They were all sight-seers of experience, come, some to do Alaska, some to rest from mysterious labors, some--but who shall fathom at a glance an apparently dull lot of apparent snobs? At any rate, one would have thought the everlasting hills would have shrunk back and the stolid glaciers blushed with vexation at the patronizing way with which they were treated in general. It was depressing--even European tourists' wordy enthusiasm over a mud puddle or a dunghill would have been preferable.

There are along this route all the benefits of a sea trip--the air, the rest--with none of its disadvantages. So steep are the shores that the steamer may often lie alongside of them when she stops and run her gang-plank out on the rocks. These stops show the traveller the little human life there is in this vast and desolate country. There are villages of the native tribes, with dwellings built in imitation of the common American fashion, in front of which rise great totem poles, carved and painted, representing grinning and grotesque animal-like, or human-like, or dragon-like figures, one piled on top of the other up to the very top of the column. A sort of ancestral tree, these are said to be,--only to be understood with a knowledge of the sign symbolism of these people--telling of their tribe and lineage, of their great-grandfather the bear, and their great-grandmother the wolf or such strange things.

The people themselves, with their heavy faces and their imitation of the European dress--for the tourist and the prospector have brought prosperity and the thin veneer of civilization to these southernmost tribes of Alaska--with their flaming neckerchief or head-kerchief of red and yellow silk that the silk-worm had no part in making, but only the cunning Yankee weaver, paddle out in boats dug from the great evergreen trees that cover the hills so thickly, and bring articles made of sealskin, or skilfully woven baskets made out of the fibres of spruce roots, to sell to the passengers. Or the steamer may stop at a little hamlet of white pioneers, where there is fishing for halibut, with perhaps some mining for gold on a small scale; then the practical men of the party, who have hitherto been bored, can inquire whether the industry pays, and contemplate in their suddenly awakened fancies the possibilities of a halibut syndicate, or another Treadwell gold mine. So the artist gets his colors and forms, the business man sees wonderful possibilities in this shockingly unrailroaded wilderness, the tired may rest body and mind in the perfect peace and freedom from the human element, old ladies may sleep and young ones may flirt meantimes.

All this would seem to prove that the passengers were neither professional nor business men, nor young nor old ladies--part of which appeared to me manifestly, and the rest probably untrue; or else that they were all enthusiastic and interested in the dumb British-American way, which sets down as vulgar any betrayal of one's self to one's neighbors.

Some one at the table wearily and warily inquired when we should get to the Muir glacier, on which point we of the flannel-shirted brotherhood were informed; and incidentally we remarked that we intended to leave the festivities before that time, in Juneau.

"Oh my!" said the sad-faced, middle-aged lady with circles about her eyes. "Stay in Juneau! How dreadful! Are you going as missionaries, or," here she wrestled for an idea, "or are you simply going."

"We are going to the Yukon," we answered, "from Juneau. You may have heard of the gold fields of the Yukon country." And strange and sweet to say, at this later day, no one had heard of the gold fields--that was before they had become the rage and the fashion.

But the whole table warmed with interest--they were as lively busybodies as other people and we were the first solution to the problems which they had been putting to themselves concerning each other since the beginning of the trip. There was a fire of small questions.

"They will ride horses, Jane," said the bluff old gentleman who was evidently her father, so authoritatively that I dared not dispute him--"everybody does in that country." Then, as some glanced out at the precipitous mountain-side and dense timber, he added, "Of course, not here. In the interior it is flat, like our plains, and one rides on little horses,--I think they call them kayaks--I have read it," he said, looking at me fiercely. Then, as we were silent, he continued, more condescendingly, "I have roughed it myself, when I was young. We used to go hunting every fall in Pennsylvania, when I was a boy, and once two of us went off together and were gone a week, just riding over the roughest country roads and into the mountains on horseback. If our coffee had not run out we would have stayed longer."

"But isn't it dreadfully cold up there?" said the sweet brown-eyed girl, with a look in her eyes that wakened in our hearts the first momentary rebellion against our exile. "And the wild animals! You will suffer so."

"Let's go on deck, Jane," said the old gentleman;--then to us, politely but firmly, "I have been much interested in your account, and shall be glad to hear more later." We had not said anything yet.

We disembarked at Juneau. We had watched the shore for nearly the whole trip without perceiving a rift in the mountains through which it looked feasible to pass, and at Juneau the outlook or uplook was no better. Those who have been to Juneau know how slight and almost insecure is its foothold; how it is situated on an irregular hilly area which looks like a great landslide from the mountains towering above, whose sides are so sheer that the wagon road which winds up the gulch into Silver Bow basin is for some distance in the nature of a bridge, resting on wooden supports and hugging close to the steep rock wall. The excursionists tarried a little here, buying furs at extortionate prices from the natives, fancy baskets, and little ornaments which are said to be made in Connecticut.

In the hotel the proprietor arrived at our business in the shortest possible time, by the method of direct questioning. He was from Colorado, I judged--all the men I have known that look like him come from Colorado. There was also a heavily bearded man dressed in ill-fitting store-clothes, and with a necktie which had the strangest air of being ill at ease, who was lounging near by, smoking and spitting on the floor contemplatively.

"Here, Pete," said the proprietor, "I want you to meet these gentlemen." He pronounced the last word with such a peculiar intonation that one felt sure he used it as synonymous with "tenderfeet" or "paperlegs" or other terms by which Alaskans designate greenhorns.

I had rather had him call me "this feller." "He says he's goin' over the Pass, an' maybe you can help each other." Pete smiled genially and crushed my hand, looking me full in the eye the while, doubtless to see how I stood the ordeal. "Pete's an old timer," continued the hotel-man, "one of the Yukon pioneers. Been over that Pass--how many times, Pete, three times, ain't it?"

"You bet, Pete," answered the other, "you painted the town; done your duty by us."

"Ja," said Pete, "blewed it in; mostly in 'Frisco. Was king dat winter till dust was all been spent. Saw tings dat was goot; saw udder tings was too bad, efen for Alaskan miner. One time enough. I tink dese cities kind of bad fer people. So I get out. Sez I,--'I jes' got time to get to Lake Bennett by time ice breaks,' so I light out." He smiled happily as he said this, as a man might talk of going home, then continued, "Den secon' dime I get a glaim Forty Mile, Miller Greek,--dat's really Sixty Mile, but feller gits dere f'm Forty Mile. Had a pardner, but he went down to Birch Greek, den I work my glaim alone."

He put his hand down in his trousers pocket and brought up a large flat angular piece of gold, two inches long; it had particles of quartz scattered through, and was in places rusty with iron, but was mostly smooth and showed the wearing it must have had in his pocket. He shoved the yellow lump into my hand. "Dat nugget was de biggest in my glaim dat I found; anoder feller he washed over tailin's f'm my glaim efter, an' he got bigger nuggets, he says, but I tinks he's dam liar. Anyhow, I get little sack an' I went down 'Frisco, an' I blewed it in again. Now I go back once more."

We talked awhile and finally agreed to make the trip to Forty Mile together, since we were all bound to this place, and Pete, unlike most miners and prospectors, had no "pardner." We were soon engaged in making the rounds of the shops, laying in our supplies--beans, bacon, dried fruit, flour, sugar, cheese, and, most precious of all, a bucket of strawberry jam. We made up our minds to revel in jam just as long as we were able, even if we ended up on plain flour three times a day. For a drink we took tea, which is almost universally used in Alaska, instead of coffee, since a certain weight of it will last as long as many times the same weight of coffee: moreover, there is some quality in this beverage which makes it particularly adapted to the vigorous climate and conditions of this northern country. Men who have never used tea acquire a fondness for it in Alaska, and will drink vast quantities, especially in the winter. The Russians, themselves the greatest tea-drinkers of all European nations, long ago introduced "Tschai" to the Alaskan natives; and throughout the country they will beg for it from every white man they meet, or will travel hundreds of miles and barter their furs to obtain it.

Concerning the amount of supplies it is necessary to take on a trip like ours, it may be remarked that three pounds of solid food to each man per day, is liberal. As to the proportion, no constant estimate can be made, men's appetites varying with the nature of the articles in the rations and their temporary tastes. On this occasion Pete picked out the supplies, laying in what he judged to be enough of each article: but it appeared afterwards that a man may be an experienced pioneer, and yet never have solved the problem of reasonably accurate rations, for some articles were soon exhausted on our trip, while others lasted throughout the summer, after which we were obliged to bequeath the remainder to the natives. Camp kettles, and frying-pans, of course, were in the outfit, as well as axes, boat-building tools, whip-saw, draw-shave, chisels, hammers, nails, screws, oakum and pitch. It was our plan to build a boat on the lakes which are the source of the Yukon, felling the spruce trees, and then with a whip-saw slicing off boards, which when put together would carry us down the river to the gold diggings.

For our personal use we had a single small tent, A-shaped, but with half of one of the large slanting sides cut out, so that it could be elevated like a curtain, and, being secured at the corners by poles or tied by ropes to trees, made an additional shelter, while it opened up the interior of the tent to the fresh air or the warmth of the camp-fire outside. Blankets for sleeping, and rubber blankets to lay next to the ground to keep out the wet; the best mosquito-netting or "bobinet" of hexagonal mesh, and stout gauntleted cavalry gloves, as protection against the mosquitoes. For personal attire, anything. Dress on the frontier, above all in Alaska, is always varied, picturesque, and unconventional. Flannel or woollen shirts, of course, are universal; and for foot gear the heavy laced boot is the best.

As usual, we were led by the prospective terrors of cold water in the lakes and streams to invest in rubber boots reaching to the hip, which, however, did not prove of such use as anticipated. We had brought with us canvas bags designed for packing, or carrying loads on the back, of a model long used in the Lake Superior woods. They were provided with suitable straps for the shoulders, and a broad one for the top of the head, so that the toiler, bending over, might support a large part of the load by the aid of his rigid neck. These we utilized also as receptacles for our clothes and other personal articles.

Other men were in Juneau also, bound for the Yukon,--not like the hordes that the Klondike brought up later from the States, many of whom turned back before even crossing the passes, but small parties of determined men. We ran upon them here and there. In the hotel we sat down at the table with a self-contained man with a suggestion of recklessness or carelessness in his face, and soon found that he was bound over the same route as ourselves, on a newspaper mission. Danlon, as we may call him, had brought his manservant with him, like the Englishman he was. He was a great traveller, and full of interesting anecdotes of Afghanistan, or Borneo, or some other of the earth's corners. He had engaged to go with him a friend of Pete's, another pioneer, Cooper by name, short, blonde and powerfully built. Between us, we arranged for a tug to take us the hundred miles of water which still lay between us and Dyea, where the land journey begins; after which transaction, we sat down to eat our last dinner in civilization. How tearfully, almost, we remarked that this was the last plum-pudding we should have for many a moon!

We sailed, or rather steamed away, from Juneau in the evening. Our tug had been designed for freight, and had not been altered in the slightest degree for the accommodation of passengers. Her floor space, too, was limited, so that while ten or twelve men might have made themselves very comfortable, the fifty or sixty who finally appeared on board found hard work to dispose of themselves in any fashion. She had been originally engaged for our two parties, but new passengers continually applied, who, from the nature of things, could hardly be refused. So the motley crowd of strangers huddled together, the engines began clanking, and the lights of Juneau soon dropped out of sight, as we steamed up Lynn Canal under the shadow of the giant mountains.

Our fellow-passengers were mostly prospectors; nearly all newcomers, as we could see by the light of the lantern which hung up in the bare apartment where we were. They had their luggage and outfit with them, which they piled up and sat or slept on, to make sure they would not lose it. There were men with grey beards and strapping boys with down on their chins; white handed men and those whose huge horny palms showed a life of toil; all strange, uneasy, and quiet at first, but soon they began to talk confidentially, as men will whom chance throws together in strange places.

There was a Catholic priest bound to his mission among the Eskimos on the lower Yukon,--calm, patient, sweet-tempered, and cheerful of speech; and near him was a noted Alaskan pioneer and trader, bound on some wild trip or other alone. There was another Alaskan--one of those who settle down and take native women as mates and are therefore somewhat scornfully called "squaw-men"; he had been to Juneau as the countryman visits the metropolis, and had brought back with him abundant evidence of the worthlessness of the no-liquor laws of Alaska, in the shape of a lordly drunk, and the material for many more, in a large demijohn, which he guarded carefully. The conversation among this crowd was of the directest sort, as it is always on the frontier.

Then inquiries as to what each could tell the other concerning the conditions of the land we were to explore, mostly unknown to all: and straightway Pete and Cooper were constituted authorities, by virtue of their previous experience, and were listened to with great deference by the rest. The night was not calm, and the little craft swashed monotonously into the waves. One by one the travellers lay down on the bare dusty floor and slept; and so limited was the room that the last found it difficult to find a place.

Glancing around to find a vacant nook I was struck with the picturesqueness of the scene. Under the lantern the last talkers--the Catholic priest in a red sweater, smoking a bent pipe, the professional traveller and book-maker, and another Englishman with smooth face and oily manners,--were discussing matters with as much reserve and decorum as they would in a drawing-room. Around them lay stretched out, over the floor, under the table, and even on it, motley-clad men, breathing heavily or staring with wide fixed eyes overhead. The pioneer had gone to sleep lying on his back and was snoring at intervals, but by a physical feat hard to understand, retained his quid of tobacco, which he chewed languidly through it all. The only space I could find was in a narrow passageway leading to the pilot-house. Here I coiled myself, hugging closely to the wall, but it was dark and throughout the night I was awakened by heavy boots accidentally placed on my body or head; yet I was too sleepy to hear the apologies and straightway slept again.

It was natural, under the circumstances, that all should be early risers, and we were ravenously hungry for the breakfast which was tardily prepared. The only table was covered with oilcloth, and was calculated for four, but about eight managed to crowd around it: yet with all possible haste the last had breakfast about noon. We sat down where a momentary opening was offered at the third or fourth sitting. A moment later a couple of prospectors appeared who apparently had counted on places, and the hungry stomach of one of them prompted some very audible mutterings to the effect that all men were born free and equal, and he was as good as any one. The priest immediately got up, and with sincere kindness offered his seat, which so overcame the man with shame that he politely refused and retired; but the rest of us insisted on crowding together and making room for him. And for the remainder of the trip a more punctiliously polite individual than this same prospector could not be found.

After each round of eaters, the tin plates and cups and the dingy black knives and forks were seized by a busy dishwasher, who performed a rapid hocus-pocus over them, in which a tiny dishpan filled with hot water that came finally to have the appearance and consistency of a hodge-podge, played an important part; then they were skillfully shyed on to the table again. I looked at my plate. Swimming in the shallow film of dish-water, were flakes of beans, shreds of corned-beef and streaks of apple-sauce, which took me back in fancy to all the different tables that had eaten before: the boat was swaying heavily and I gulped down my stomach before I passed the plate to the dishwasher and suggested wiping. He was a very young man, remarkably dashing, like the hero of a dime novel. He was especially proficient in profanity and kept up a running fire of insults on the cook. He took the plate and eyed me scornfully, witheringly.

"Seems to me some tenderfeet is mighty pertickler," said he, with a very evident personal application, then swabbed out the plate with a towel, the sight of which made me turn and stare at the spruce-clad mountain-sides, in a desperate effort to elevate my mind and my stomach above trifles.

"This is no place for a white man," said a prospector who had been staring out of the door all day. "Good enough for bears and--and--Siwash, maybe." Most, I think shared more or less openly his depression, for the shores of Lynn Canal are no more attractive to the adventurer than the rest of the bleak Alaskan mountain coast.

It was a chilly, drizzling day. The clouds ordinarily hid the tops of the great steep mountains, so that these looked as if they might be walls that reached clear up to the heavens, or, when they broke away, exposed lofty snowy peaks, magnificent and gigantic in the mist. We caught glimpses of wrinkled glaciers, crawling down the valleys like huge jointed living things, in whose fronts the pure blue ice showed faintly and coldly. Here and there waterfalls appeared, leaping hundreds of feet from crag to crag, and all along was the rugged brown shore, with the surf lashing the cliffs, and no place where even a boat might land. All men, whether they clearly perceive it or not, find in the phenomena of Nature some figurative meanings, and are depressed or elevated by them.

However, all this was only the froth and excitement of the moment. The captain hauled his boat out of the breakers, skillfully launched it again, and came on board, shivering but calm, a strapping, reckless Cape Breton Scotch-Canadian. In due course of time afterwards the scow was also got out, and we transferred our outfits to it and sat on top of them, while we were slowly propelled ashore by long oars.

At this time there was only one building at Dyea--a log house used as a store for trading with the natives, and known by the name of Healy's Post. We pitched our tents near the shore that night, spreading our blankets on the ground.

In the morning all were bustling around, following out their separate plans for getting over the Pass as soon as possible. Of the different notches in the mountain wall by which one may cross the coast range and arrive at the head waters of the Yukon, the Chilkoot, which is reached from Dyea, was at that time the only one practicable. It was known that Jack Dalton, a pioneer trader of the country, was wont to go over the Chilkat Pass, a little further south, while Schwatka, Hayes, and Russell, in an expedition of which few people ever heard, had crossed by the way of the Taku River and the Taku Pass to the Hootalinqua or Teslin River, which is one of the important streams that unite to make up the upper Yukon. But the White Pass, which afterwards became the most popular, and which lies just east of the Chilkoot, was at that time entirely unused, being a rough long trail that required clearing to make it serviceable.

The Chilkoot, though the highest and steepest of the passes, was yet the shortest and the most free from obstructions; it had been, before the advent of the white adventurer in Alaska, the avenue of travel for the handful of half-starved interior natives who were wont to come down occasionally to the coast, for the purpose of trading. The coast Indians are, as they always have been, a more numerous, more prosperous, stronger and more quarrelsome class, for the sea yielded them, directly and indirectly, a varied and bountiful subsistence. The particular tribe who occupied the Dyea region,--the Chilkoots--were accustomed to stand guard over the Pass and to exact tribute from all the interior natives who came in; and when the first white men appeared, the natives tried in the same way to hinder them from crossing and so destroying their monopoly of petty traffic. For a short time this really prevented individuals and small parties from exploring, but in 1878 a party of nineteen prospectors, under the leadership of Edmund Bean, was organized, and to overcome the hostility of the Chilkoots, a sort of military "demonstration" was arranged by the officers in charge at Sitka. The little gunboat stationed there proceeded to Dyea, and, anchoring, fired a few blank shots from her heaviest guns; afterwards the officer in charge went on shore, and made a sort of unwritten treaty or agreement with the thoroughly frightened natives, by which the prospectors, and all others who came after, were allowed to proceed unmolested.

The fame of that "war-canoe" spread from Indian to Indian throughout the length and breadth of the vast territory of Alaska. One can hear it from the natives in many places a thousand miles from where the incident occurred, and each time the story is so changed and disguised, that it might be taken for a myth by an enthusiastic mythologist, and carefully preserved, with all its vagaries, and very likely proved to be an allegory of the seasons, or the travels of the sun, moon, and stars. In proportion as the story reached more and more remote regions, the statements of the proportions of the canoe became more and more exaggerated, and the thunder of the guns more terrible, and the number of warriors on board increased faster than Jacob's flock. The gunboat was the butt for many good-natured jokes from navy officers, on account of her small dimensions and frail construction. Yet the natives a little way into the interior will tell you of the wonderful snow-white war-canoe, half a mile long, armed with guns a hundred yards or so in length; and by the time one gets in the neighborhood of the Arctic Circle, he will hear of the "great ship" "as long as from here to the mountain"; how she vomited out smoke, fire and ashes like a volcano, and at the same time exploded her guns and killed many people, and how she ran forwards and backwards, with the wind or against it, at a terrific speed,--a formidable monster, truly!

At the time of our trip the immigration into the Yukon gold country had gone on, in a small way, for some years; several mining districts were well developed, and the natives had settled down into the habit of helping the white man, for a substantial remuneration. These natives were all camped or housed close to the shore. They were odd and interesting at first sight. The men were of fair size, strong, stolid, and sullen-looking; clothed in cheap civilized garb in this summer season,--it was in the early part of June--in overalls and jumpers, with now and then a woollen Guernsey jacket, and with straw hats on their heads. The women were neither beautiful nor attractive. Many of them had covered their faces with a mixture of soot and grease, which stuck well. Other women had their chins tattooed in stripes with the indelible ink of the cuttlefish--sometimes one, sometimes three, sometimes five or six stripes. This custom I found afterwards among the women of many tribes and peoples in different parts of Alaska, and it seems, in some regions at least, to be a mark of aristocracy, indicating the wealth of the parents at the time the girl-child was born. All the natives were living in tents or rude wooden huts, in the most primitive fashion, cooking by a smouldering fire outside, and sleeping packed close together, wrapped in skins and dirty blankets.

It had been the custom of the miners to engage these natives to carry their outfits for them, from Dyea, and some of the men who had come with us, immediately hired packers for the whole trip to Lake Lindeman, paying them, I think, eleven cents a pound for everything carried. The storekeeper, however, had been constructing a foot trail for about half the distance and had bought a few pack-horses, and we engaged these to transport our outfit as far as possible, trusting to Indians for the rest. We had brought with us from Juneau, on a last sudden idea, a lot of lumber with which to build our boat when we should get to Lake Lindeman, and here the transportation of this lumber became a great problem. To pack it on the horses was an impossibility, and the Indians refused absolutely to take the boards unless they were cut in two, which would destroy much of their value, and even if this were done, demanded an enormous price for the carrying; therefore it was concluded to leave them behind, and trust to good luck in the future.

In one way or another, everybody was furnished with some kind of transportation, and the whole visible population of Dyea, permanent or transient, began moving up the valley. Some of the natives put their loads in wooden dugout canoes, which they paddled, or pushed with poles, six or seven miles up the small stream which goes by the name of the Dyea River; others took their packs on their backs, and led the way along the trail. Not stronger, perhaps, than white men, the Chilkoots showed themselves remarkably patient and enduring, carrying heavy loads rapidly long distances without resting. Not only the men, but the women and children, made pack-animals of themselves. I remember a slight boy of thirteen or so, who could not have weighed over eighty pounds, carrying a load of one hundred. The dog belonging to the same family, a medium-sized animal, waddled along with a load of about forty pounds; he seemed to be imbued with the same spirit as the rest, and although the load nearly dragged him to the ground, he was patient and persevering.

The trail was a tiresome one, being mostly through loose sand and gravel alongside the stream: several times we had to wade across. As we went up, the valley became narrower, and we had views of the glacier above us, which reached long slender fingers down the little valleys from the great ice-mass on the mountain. It was evident that the glacier had once filled the entire valley. As soon as we were up a little we were obliged to clamber over the piled-up boulders in the strips of moraine which the ice had left; in places the rows were so regular that they had the appearance of stone walls.

We were seized with fatigue and a terrible hunger. "You haven't a sandwich about your clothes, have you?" I asked of some prospectors whom I overtook resting in the lee of a cliff. Here the stream becomes so rough and rapid that the natives can work their canoes no further, and so the place has been somewhat pompously named on some maps the "Head of Navigation," by which most people infer that a gunboat may steam up this far.

Crossing the stream for the last time, on the trunk of a fallen tree, which swayed alarmingly, the trail led up steeply among the bare rocks of the hillside. All the pedestrian groups had separated into singles by this time, every one going his "ain gait" according to his own ideas and strength, and in no mood for conversation. I overtook a young Irishman, who had started out with a pack of about seventy-five pounds; he was resting, and quite downcast with fatigue and hunger.

Just where we stopped some one had left a load of canned corn and tomatoes. We eyed them hungrily, and gravely discussed our rights to helping ourselves. We did not know the owners and could not find them--certainly they were none of those that had come with us. We could not take them and leave money, for although the natives respected "caches" of provisions, we could not expect them to do the same with money. "Again," said the Irishman, "the feller what lift them here may be dipinding on every blissed can of swate corn for some little schayme of his, while we have plenty grub of our own, if we can on'y get our flippers on it."

At this period, all through Alaska, provisions and other property was regarded with utmost respect. Old miners and prospectors have told me that they have left provisions exposed in a "cache" for a year, and on returning after having been hundreds of miles away, have found them untouched, although nearly starving natives had passed them almost daily all winter. In the mining camps the same custom prevailed. Locks were unknown on the doors. When a white man arrived at the hut of an absent prospector, he helped himself, taking enough provisions from the "cache" to keep him out of want, till he could make the next stage of his journey, and wrote on paper or on the wooden door, "I have taken twenty pounds of flour, ten pounds of bacon, five pounds of beans, and a little tea," signed his name, and departed. It was not a bill, but an acknowledgment; and to have left without making the acknowledgment constituted a theft, in the eyes of the miner population. This condition of primitive honesty did not last, however. Later, with the Klondike boom, came the ordinary light-fingeredness of civilization, and a state of affairs unique and instructive passed away.

We arrived finally at the end of the horse-trail, a spot named Sheep Camp by an early party of prospectors who killed some mountain sheep here. Steep, rocky and snowy mountains overhang the valley, with a vast glacier not far up; and here, since our visit, have occurred a number of fatal disasters, from snowslides and landslides. Pete had arrived before us: he had set up a Yukon camp stove of sheet iron, had kindled fire therein and was engaged in the preparation of slapjacks and fried bacon, a sight that affected us so that we had to go and sit back to, and out of reach of the smell, till Pete yelled out in vile Chinook "Muk-a-muk altay! Bean on the table!" There were no beans and no table, of course, but that was Pete's facetious way of putting it.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet