Chapter XX: Along Iowa and Into Missouri to St. Louis 314 (3)

To-day H---- and I have been across the river to visit a characteristic establishment of these far northern lands--a summer "dog ranch"--a place where, during the summer months, the teams of "Huskies" and "Malamutes" may be boarded and cared for till the working-time of winter comes again. Here are some seventy-five dogs in large kennels of rough timber, each team of six dogs having its own private kennel, with a large central yard inside the tiers of pens, into which the whole pack are turned once a day for exercise. We hoped to find the proprietor at home and induce him to give his pets a scamper in the central yard, but he was away. The only visitors besides ourselves were two strange dogs which stood outside, running up and down the line and arousing the entire seventy-five to one great chorus of barks and howls. Some of the groups of dogs were superb. And two teams of Huskies--the true Esquimaux--must have been worth their weight in gold--six dogs--$1,000.00 at the very least. We tried to get some kodak shots, but a cloudy sky and pine log bars made the result doubtful.

We have just returned from an evening at the first annual show of the Dawson or Yukon "Horticultural Society." The name itself is a surprise; the display of vegetables particularly and flowers astonished me. The biggest beets I have ever seen, the meaty substance all clear, solid, firm and juicy. Potatoes, Early Rose and other varieties, some new kinds raised from seed in three years--large, a pound or more in size. And such cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce as you never saw before! Many kinds, full-headed and able to compete with any produced anywhere. All these raised in the open air on the rich, black bottom and bench land of the Yukon. Squashes and also tomatoes, but these latter, some of them, not fully ripened. Also a display of fine strawberries just now ripe. We bought strawberries in the markets of Cristiania and Stockholm upon the 12th and 13th of September, last year, and now we find a superior ripe fruit here at just about the same degree of north latitude. The wild currants, blueberries and raspberries with which these northern latitudes abound are notorious. And the show of oats, rye, barley, wheat and timothy and native grasses, as well as of red and white clover, was notable, proving beyond a doubt that this Yukon region is capable of raising varied and nutritious crops necessary for man's food and for the support of stock, horses and cattle. Already a good many thrifty mortals, instead of losing themselves in the hunt for gold, are quietly going into the raising of vegetables and hay and grain, and get fabulous prices for what grows spontaneously almost in a night. And the show of flowers grown in the open air would have delighted you. All of these products of the soil have been grown in sixty or seventy days from the planting of the seed, the almost perpetual sunlight of the summer season forcing plant life to most astonishing growth.

September 11th.

Day before yesterday I took the six-horse stage up Bonanza Creek of the Klondike and rode some thirteen miles over the fine government road to "Discovery" claim, where a Cleveland (O.) company is using a dredge and paying the Indian "Skookum Jim," whose house we saw at Caribou, a royalty that this year will place $90,000.00 to his credit, I am told.

The Klondike is a large stream, about like Elk River of West Virginia, rising two hundred miles eastward in the Rockies, where the summer's melting snow gives it a large flow of water. The valley is broad--a mile or more. The hills are rolling and rounded, black soil, broad flats of small firs and birches. Bonanza Creek, on which Skookum Jim and "Dawson Charlie" and the white man, discovered the first gold in 1897, has proved the richest placer mining patch of ground the world has ever known. For a length of some twenty miles it is occupied by the several claim-holders, who are working both in the creek bed and also ancient river beds high up on the rolling hill slopes, a thing never known before. Here the claims are larger than at Atlin, being 1,000 feet wide and 250 feet up and down the creek. The claim where a discovery is made is called "Discovery Claim," and the others are named "No. 1 above" and "No. 1 below," "No. 2 above" and "No. 2 below," etc., and so entered of record. I had seen the dredge being built on Gold Run at Atlin. I wished to see one working here. I found a young American named Elmer in charge, and he showed me everything. Then he insisted that I dine with him, and took me up to his snug cottage, where I was cordially greeted by his American wife, and taken to the mess tent, where a Japanese cook set a good dinner before us. Then Mrs. Elmer said that if I would like she would be delighted to drive me still further up Bonanza, and up the equally famous Eldorado Fork, and show me the more noted claims. Her horse was a good one, and for nearly three hours we spanked along. At "16 Eldorado below" I saw the yawning gravel pit from which $1,200,000 has already been taken out by the lucky owner. From "28 Eldorado above" I saw where the pay gravel yielded another enormous sum. And all along men were still digging, dumping, sluicing and getting gold. At "18 Bonanza above," yet another particularly rich strike was shown me, and at "28 Bonanza above," working in the mud and gravel, were men already enormously rich, who in 1897 owned nothing but their outfit. And up along the hillsides, too, near the tops, were other gashes in the gravel soil where gold in equally fabulous sums has been taken out and is still being got, for all these rich sands are yet far from being worked out or exhausted. The first mad rush is over. Men do not now merely pick out the big nuggets, but are putting in improved machinery and saving the finer dust. Along the roadside we also saw many men digging and "rocking" for gold, who have leased a few square yards or an acre or two on a royalty and who are said to be "working a lay." After our drive, I caught the returning stage and came home in the long twilight.

To-day I have staged again twenty miles on to the famous Hunker Creek, and then been driven further and home again by Mr. Orr, the owner of the stage line, behind a team of swift bays, over another fine government highway. I have looked at more machinery, steam shovels, hoist and labor-saving apparatus, and seen more millions already made and in the making. The present and potential wealth of this country almost stupifies one, and dollars fall into the insignificance of dimes. The traffic on these fine roads is also surprising. Substantial log "road houses," or inns, every mile or so, and frequently at even shorter intervals, very many foot-farers traveling from place to place. Young men with strong, resolute faces; bicycle riders trundling a pack strapped to their handle-bars, and many six and eight span teams of big mules and big horses hauling immense loads--sometimes two great broad-tired wagons chained together in a train. Ten or twelve four and six horse stages leave Dawson every day, and as many come in, carrying passengers and mails to and from the many mining camps. In my stage to-day behind me sat two Mormons, a man and a woman, who had never met before, from Utah, and a woman from South Africa, the wife of an expatriated Boer; a Swede who was getting rich and a French Canadian. My host at dinner was from Montreal, a black-eyed, bulldog-jawed "habitan," whose heart warmed to me when I told him that my great grandmother, too, was French from Quebec, and who thereupon walked me out to the barn to see his eleven Malamute pups, and afterward insisted that I take a free drink at his bar. I took a kodak of him with "_mes enfants_," and promised to send him a copy of the same.

To-night I ventured out to try again the restaurant of our first adventure. Sitting at a little table, I was soon joined by three bright-looking men--one a "barrister," one a mining engineer, one a reporter. Result (1), an interview; (2), a pass to the fair; (3), my dinner paid for, a 50-cent Havana cigar thrust upon me, and (4) myself carried off to the said fair by two of its directors, and again shown its fine display of fruits and grains and flowers and all its special attractions by the management itself. In fact, the Dawsonite can not do too much for the stranger sojourning in his midst.

Mercury 26 to 28 degrees every morning.

Before arriving in Dawson a big, rugged, government official had said to me, "Go to the hotel ---- and give my love to Mrs. ----. She has a red head and a rich heart. She has cheered more stricken men than any woman in the Yukon. She mushed through with her husband with the first 'sourdoughs' over the ice passes in '97. She was a streak of sunshine amidst the perils and heartaches of that terrible human treck. She runs the only hotel worth going to in Dawson. You will be lucky to get into it. Give her our love, the love of all of us. Tell her you're our friends, and maybe she will take you in." So we were curious about this woman who had dared so much, who had done so much, who was yet mistress of the hearts of the rough, strong men of the Yukon. We went to her hotel. We asked to see her. We were shown into a cosy, well-furnished parlor. We might just as well have been in a home in Kanawha or New York. We heard some orders given in a firm, low-pitched voice, a quick step, Mrs. ---- was before us. An agreeable presence, dignity, reserve, force. Tall, very tall, but so well poised and proportioned you didn't notice it. A head broad browed and finely set on neck and shoulders. Yes, the hair was red, Venetian red with a glimmer of sunshine in it. I delivered the message straight. She received it coolly. "The house was full, but she would have place for us before night. A party would leave on the 4 P. M. stage for Dominion Creek. We should have his room. Dinner would be served at seven." The chamber was given us in due time. Plainly furnished, but comfortable. The hotel is an immense log house, chinked with moss and plaster, and paper lined, and all the partitions between the rooms are also paper. But we are learning to talk in low voices, and, between a little French and German and Danish, H. and I manage to keep our secrets to ourselves, although of the private affairs of all the other guests we shall soon be apprised.

The dining-room is large, the whole width of the house, in the center a huge furnace stove from which radiate many large, hot pipes, where in the long winter night-time is kept up a furious fire, and a cord of wood is burned each day--and wood at $25 to $50 per cord! The guests sit at many little tables. The linen is spotless. The china good English ware. The fare is delicious. The cook is paid $300 per month, the maids $125, with board thrown in. Delicate bacon from Chicago. Fresh eggs from Iowa. Chickens from Oregon--no live chickens in Dawson. The first mushers brought in a few, but the hawks and owls, the foxes and minks and other varments devoured many of them, and the surviving ones, after waiting around a week or two for the sun to set, went cackling crazy for lack of sleep, and died of shattered nerves. Caribou steak and tenderloin of moose we have at every meal. And to-day wild duck and currant jelly. The ducks abound along the river, the currants grow wild all over the mountain slopes. And such celery and lettuce and radishes and cabbage! Potatoes, big and mealy, and turnips, and carrots, delicate and crisp, all grown in the local gardens round about. Cabbage here sells at a dollar a head and lettuce at almost as much. But you never ate the like. White and hard as celery, so quickly do they grow in the nightless days! Nowhere in all the world can you live so well as in Dawson, live if only you have the "stuff." Live if you can pay. We follow the habit of the land and pay up in full after each meal. It is dangerous to trust the stranger for his board. It is well for us we hold fast to this custom, else we might not be able to leave the town--a regulation of the government of the city--no man may leave with bills unpaid. So long as he owes even a single dollar, he must remain! And the N. W. M. P. watch the boats, the river and the mountain passes and enforce this law.

Our hostess takes good care of her guests. Very many young men working for the larger commercial companies board here, all, who are allowed, come for transient meals. And those who are homesick and down in spirit come just for the sake of neighborship to the tall, well-gowned woman whose invariable tact and sympathy, and often motherly tenderness, has given new heart to many a lonely "chechaqua" (tenderfoot), so far away from home!

In this dining-room, too, one sees a type not so often now met in our own great country, but inherent to English methods. The permanent Chief Clerk. The man whose career is to be forever a book-keeper or a clerk, whose highest ambition is to be a book-keeper or a clerk just all his life, and who will be trusted with the highest subordinate positions, but will never be made a partner, however much he may merit it. London is filled with such. The offices of the great British Commercial companies are full of such the world round. Men who know their business and attend to it faithfully, and whose lives are a round of precise routine. Such men sit at tables all about us. In London every morning the _Times_ or _Daily Telegraph_ is laid at their plates. Here the Yukon _Sun_ or Dawson _Times_ is laid before them just the same, and they gravely read the news of the world, while they sip their tea and munch their cold toast, just as though they were "at home." And they walk in and out with the same stoop-shouldered shuffle gait one sees along the Strand or Bishopsgate Street within, or Mansionhouse Square.

Our hostess greets each guest as he enters, and walks about among them and says a cheery word to every one. One, on her left, has just now been reading to her from a letter which tells of his mother in England, and, I surmise, hints of a waiting sweetheart; and another, an Australian, who is just going away on a prospecting trip far up the Stuart River, is telling her what to write home for him in case he shall never come back.

The two other chief objects of interest in this dining-room, besides Mrs. ----, are--her small boy of six, who is being greatly praised this morning by all the company--he has just licked the big boy across the street, who for a week or two has tried to bully him, on account of which feat his mother is immensely proud--and a wonderful grey and white cat that sits up and begs just like a prairie dog or a gopher. When a kitten, pussy must have gone out and played with some of the millions of gophers that inhabit every hillside, and learned from them how to properly sit up. She visits each guest every morning and sits up and folds her paws across her breast and mews so plaintively that no hand can forbear giving her a tidbit.

"We were among the first. We came up from San Francisco in a waterlogged schooner through the wash of ice and winter gales to Dyea, and then mushed over Chilkoot Pass on snowshoes with the dogs. I shouldered my pack like the men. And John--John would have backed out or died of weariness, if I hadn't told him that if he quit, I should come on in just all the same. Yes! I carried my gun--I didn't have to use it but once or twice. Yes! We've done very well in Dawson, very well in the Klondike, very well!" And a big diamond glinted as though to reenforce the remark. She spoke rapidly, though easily, in crisp, curt sentences, and you felt she had indeed "mushed" in, that frightful winter, over those perilous snow and ice passes, just sure enough! As I looked into her wide-open, brown eyes, I felt that I beheld there that spirit which I have everywhere noted in the keen faces of the men and women of the Yukon, the yet living spirit of the great West, of the West of half a century ago; of Virginia and New England two hundred years ago; the spirit which drove Drake and Frobisher and Captain Cook and their daring mariners out from the little islands of our motherland to possess and dominate the earth's mysterious and unchartered seas; the spirit which still makes the name American stand for energy and power and accomplishment in all the world; the spirit, shall I say, which gives the future of the earth to the yet virile Anglo-Saxon race.

NINTH LETTER.

MEN OF THE KLONDIKE.

YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA, September 18, 1903.

We lingered in Dawson a week waiting for the steamers "Sarah" or "Louise" or "Cudahy" to come up from the lower river, and though always "coming," they never came. Meantime the days had begun to visibly shorten, the frosts left thicker rime on roof and road each morning. "Three weeks till the freeze-up," men said, and we concluded that so late was now the season that we had best not chance a winter on a sand-bar in the wide and shallow lower Yukon, and a nasty time with fogs and floe ice in Behring Sea. So on Wednesday, the 16th, we again took the fine steamer "White Horse," and are now two days up the river on our way. We will reach White Horse Sunday morning, stay there till Monday morning, when we will take the little railway to Skagway, then the ocean coaster to Seattle and the land of dimes and nickels. We regret not having been able to go down to St. Michael and Nome, and to see the whole great Yukon. My heart was quite set on it, and the expense was about the same as the route we now take, but to do so we should have had to take too great risks at this late season.

While lingering in Dawson we were able to see more of the interests of the community. One day we called on a quite notable figure, _a_, or rather _the_, Dr. Grant of St. Andrews Hospital, M. D., and of St. Andrews great church, D. D.! A Canadian Scotchman of, say, thirty-five years, who, although a man of independent fortune, chose the wild life of the border just from the very joy of buffet and conquest. He "mushed" it in 1897 over the Chilkoot Pass. He built little churches and hospitals all in one, and became the helper of thousands whom the perils and stresses of the great trek quite overcame. So now he is a power in Dawson. A large and perfectly equipped hospital, his creation, has been endowed by the government; a fine, modern church holding six hundred; a pretty manse and big mission school buildings of logs. All these standing in a green turfed enclosure of two or three acres. The church cost $60,000. He preaches Sundays to a packed house. He is chief surgeon of the hospital during the rest of the time. He gives away his salary, and the men of these mining camps, who know a real man when they see him, can't respond too liberally to the call of the preacher-surgeon who generally saves their bodies and sometimes their souls. I found him a most interesting man--a naturalist, a scientific man, a man of the world and who independently expounds a Presbyterian cult rather of the Lyman Abbott type. He showed us all through the hospitals; many surgical accident cases; very few fevers or sickness. The church, too, we inspected; all fittings within modern and up to date; a fine organ, the freight on which alone was $5,000, 40 per cent. of its cost; a furnace that warmed the building even at 80 below zero, and a congregation of 400 to 500 people, better dressed (the night we attended) than would be a similar number in New York. There are no old clothes among the well-to-do; gold buys the latest styles and disdains the cost. There are few old clothes among the poor, for the poor are very few. So as I looked upon the congregation before Dr. Grant, I might as well have been in New York but for a pew full of red coats of "N. W. M. P." (North West Mounted Police).

The succeeding day Dr. Grant called upon us, and escorted us through the military establishment that polices and also governs the Yukon territory as well as the whole Canadian Northwest. Barracks for 250 men, storerooms, armory, horse barn, dog kennel--150 dogs--jail, mad-house and courtrooms. The executive and judicial departments all under one hand and even the civil rule as well. Everywhere evidence of the cold and protection against it. A whole room full of splendid fur coats, parquets, with great fur hoods. Such garments as even an Esquimaux would rejoice in.

Later, we attended the fine public school, where are over 250 children in attendance; all equipment the latest and up to date; kindergarten department and grades to the top, the teachers carefully picked from eastern Canada. The positions are much sought for by reason of unusually high salaries paid. The new principal had just come from Toronto. He told us that these were the brightest, most alert children he had ever taught. Keen faces, good chins, inheriting the aggressive initiative of the parents who had dared to come so far. In the kindergarten a little colored boy sat among his white mates. In Canada, like Mexico, there is no color line.

It now takes us four days to creep up the river against the strong current and through the many shallows to White Horse. On the boat there are all sorts. I have met a number of quaint figures. One a French Canadian trapper, on his way to a winter camp on McMillan Creek of the Pelly River. He will have three or more cabins along a route where he will set his traps. About two hundred he keeps a-going, and sees as many of them as he can each day. Mink and marten and otter and beaver, as well as wolves and foxes, lynx and bears. For meat he prefers caribou to moose. For many years he trapped for the "H. B. C." (Hudson Bay Company) over east of the Rockies. But they paid him almost nothing and there were no other buyers. Now he sells to Dawson merchants and gets $6.00 for a marten skin "all through"--the whole lot. The fur merchant in Victoria asked $30.00 for just such, and said we might buy them as low as $10.00 in the Yukon country, so he had heard. Another man to-day has sat on the wood-pile with me and told me of the great North--a man with a well-shaped face, who used language of the educated sort, yet dressed in the roughest canvas, and who is raising hay here along the Yukon which he "sells at three cents a pound in Dawson, or one cent a pound in the stack," wild, native hay at that. And he had "mushed" and "voyaged" all through the far north. He had set out from Edmonton, he and his "pardner," and driven to "Athabasca landing" in their farm wagon, three or four hundred miles over the "Government road;" had passed through the beautiful, wide, gently sloping valley of the Peace River, and through the well-timbered regions north of the Peace. At Athabasca landing they had sold the wagon and built a stout flatboat, and in this had floated down some three hundred miles to Athabasca Lake, Indian pilots having taken them through the more dangerous rapids. The Athabasca River enters the lake among swamps and low, willowy spits of land, where grows wild hay and ducks abound, and the "Great Slave" River flows out of it into the body of water of that name. These two rivers enter and depart near together, and the voyager escapes the dangers of a journey on the great and shallow Athabasca, where the surf is most dangerous. Three or four hundred miles of a yet greater river, with many rapids through which you are guided by Indian pilots, who live near the dangerous waters, carry you into the Great Slave Lake, the largest body of fresh water in Canada. Steamboats of the Hudson Bay Company run upon it and ply upon the inflowing rivers, and even go up and down the McKenzie to Herschell Island at its mouth, and where the "N. W. M. P." have a post, chiefly to protect the natives from the whalers who gather there to trade and smuggle in dutiable goods. The McKenzie is greater than the Yukon, is wider and much deeper and carries a much greater volume of water. Great Slave Lake, while shallow and flat toward the eastern end, is deep and bounded by great cliffs and rocks on the west. Storms rage upon it, and at all times the voyagers count it dangerous water. Both it and Athabasca are full of fish, so, too, the adjacent rivers and the McKenzie. Floating down the McKenzie, passing the mouth of the Nelson River, they came at last to the Liard, and up this they canoed to within half a mile of the waters of the Pelly, down which they floated to the Yukon. The French trapper had also "come in" by this route. "Two seasons it takes," he said, "an easy trip," and you can winter quite comfortably in the mountains. East of the mountains there is much big game, "plenta big game;" musk ox are there, and moose and caribou. But the Indians and wolves kill too many of them. The Indians catch the caribou on the ice and kill them for their tongues. "Smoked caribou tongue mighta nice." They leave the carcasses where they fall, and then come the foxes for the feast. "Thousands of fox, red fox, silver fox, black fox, white fox. Mr. Fox he eat caribou, he forget Indian--Indian set the trap and fox he caught. The wolf, too, he creep up upon the caribou, even upon the moose when he alone, when he lying down; the wolf he bites the hamstring. He kill many moose. That a grand country for to trap, but the Hudson Bay Company it pay nothing for the fur. A sack of flour I see them give one Indian for a black fox. Now since Hudson Bay lose his exclusive right, no man trade with him or sell him fur except he must for food."

We have just passed a little log cabin beneath great firs and amidst a cluster of golden aspen. Its door and solitary window are wide open. No one occupies it, or ever will. Wild things may live in it, but not man. Near the cabin, where the Yukon makes a great sweeping bend, and the swift water purls round into bubbling eddies, a narrow trail cut from the river bank leads up among the trees. The dweller in the cabin could see far up the great river; he could espy the raft or skiff or barge descending and mark its occupants; then he used to take his trusty rifle, step across to the opening in the trees at the point, and pick off his victims. Sometimes their bodies fell into the deep, cold, swift-running waters. The wolves and foxes picked their bones on the bars below. Sometimes he captured the body as well as the outfit, and sunk and buried them at leisure. The pictures of the three last men he murdered hang in the office of the chief of the Northwest Mounted Police, at Dawson, beside his own. It took three years to gather the complete chain of circumstantial evidence, but at last they hanged him, two years ago. In the beginning there were many other crimes quite as atrocious committed in this vast region of the unknown north, but soon the efficiency and systematic vigilance of the Northwest Mounted Police broke up forever the bandits and thugs who had crowded in here from all the earth, and Uncle Sam's dominion in particular. Many were hanged, many sent up for long terms, many run out. Life sentences were common for robbery. To-day the Yukon country is more free from crime than West Virginia, and Dawson more orderly than Charleston.

TENTH LETTER.

DOG LORE OF THE NORTH.

WHITE HORSE, Sunday, September 20, 1903.

We arrived about nine o'clock this morning. The voyage up the Yukon from Dawson has taken us since Wednesday at 2:30, when we cast off and stemmed the swift waters--twenty-four hours longer than going down. During the week of our stay at Dawson the days grew perceptibly shorter and the nights colder. There is no autumn in this land. Two weeks ago the foliage had just begun to turn; a week ago the aspens and birches were showing a golden yellow, but the willows and alders were yet green. Now every leaf is saffron and golden--gamboge--and red. In a week or more they will have mostly fallen. As yet the waters of the Yukon and affluent rivers show no ice. In three weeks they are expected to be frozen stiff, and so remain until the ice goes out next June. The seasons of this land are said to be "Winter and June, July and August." To me it seems inconceivable that the Arctic frosts should descend so precipitately. But on every hand there is evident preparation for the cold, the profound cold. Double windows and doors are being fastened on. Immense piles of sawed and cut firewood are being stored close at hand. Sleighs and especially sledges are being painted and put in order; the dogs which have run wild, and mostly foraged for themselves during the summer, are being discovered, captured and led off by strings and straps and wires about their necks. Men are buying new dogs, and the holiday of dogkind is evidently close at an end. Women are already wearing some of their furs. Ice half to a full inch forms every night, and yesterday we passed through our first snow storm, and all the mountains round about, and even the higher hills, are to-day glistening in mantles of new, fresh, soft-looking snow. The steamers of the White Pass and Yukon Railway Company will be laid up in three weeks now, they tell us, and already the sleighs and teams for the overland stage route are being gathered, the stage houses at twenty-four-mile intervals being set in order, and the "Government road" being prepared afresh for the transmission of mails and passengers.

We have just seen some of the magnificent Labrador dogs, with their keeper, passing along the street, owned by the Government post here--immense animals, as big as big calves, heifers, yearlings, I might say. They take the mails to outlying posts and even to Dawson when too cold for the horses--horses are not driven when the thermometer is more than 40 degrees below!

As I sat in the forward cabin the other night watching the motley crowd we were taking "out," two bright young fellows, who turned out to be "Government dog-drivers" going to the post here to report for winter duty, fell into animated discussion of their business, and told me much dog lore. The big, well-furred, long-legged "Labrador Huskies" are the most powerful as well as fiercest. A load of 150 pounds per dog is the usual burden, and seven to nine dogs attached each by a separate trace--the Labrador harness is used with them, so the dogs spread out fan-shaped from the sledge and do not interfere with each other. The great care of the driver is to maintain discipline, keep the dogs from shirking, from tangling up, and from attacking himself or each other. He carries a club and a seal-hide whip, and uses each unmercifully. If they think you afraid, the dogs will attack you instantly, and would easily kill you. And they incessantly attack each other, and the whole pack will always pounce on the under dog so as to surely be in at a killing, just for the fun of it, ripping up the unfortunate and lapping his blood eagerly, though they rarely eat him. And as these dogs are worth anywhere from $100 up, the driver has much ado to prevent the self-destruction of his team. And to club them till you stun them is the only way to stop their quarrels. Then, too, the dogs are clever and delight to spill the driver and gallop away from him, when he can rarely catch them until they draw up at the next post house, and it may be ten or twelve or thirty miles to that, unless it be that they get tangled among the trees or brush, when the driver will find them fast asleep, curled up in the snow, where each burrows out a cozy bed. The Malamutes, or native Indian dog, usually half wolf, are driven and harnessed differently--all in a line--and one before the other. They are shorter haired, faster, and infinitely meaner than the long-haired Huskie (of which sort the Labrador dogs are). Their delight is to get into a fight and become tangled, and the only way out is to club them into insensibility, and cut the leather harness, or they will cut the seal-hide thongs themselves at a single bite if they are quite sure your long plaited whip will not crack them before they can do it. These Malamutes are the usual dogs driven in this country, for few there are to afford or know how to handle the more powerful Labrador Huskie. And the Malamute is the king of all thieves. He will pull the leather boots off your feet while you sleep and eat them for a midnight supper; he delights to eat up his seal-hide harness; he has learned to open a wooden box and will devour canned food, opening any tin can made, with his sharp fangs, quicker than a steel can-opener. Canned tomatoes, fruit, vegetables, sardines, anything that man may put in, he will deftly take out. Even the tarpaulins and leather coverings of the goods he may be pulling, he will rip to pieces, and he will devour the load unless watched with incessant vigilance night and day. Yet, with all their wolfish greed and manners, these dogs perform astonishing feats of endurance, and never in all their lives receive a kindly word. "If you treat them kindly, they think you are afraid, and will at once attack you," the driver said; "the only way to govern them is through fear." Once a day only are they fed on raw fish, and while the Malamute prefers to pilfer and steal around the camp, the Huskie will go and fish for himself when off duty, if given the chance. Just like the bears and lynx of the salmon-running streams, he will stand along the shore and seize the fish that is shoved too far upon the shallows. Seventy miles a day is the rule with the Indians and their dog teams, and the white man does almost as much. Forty miles is it from here to Caribou Crossing, and the Northwest Mounted Police, with their Labrador teams, take the mails when the trains are snowbound and cover the distance in four to five hours. Great going this must be!

And then the conversation turned to the great cold of this far north land, when during the long nights the sun only shows for an hour or two above the horizon.

When the thermometer falls below fifty degrees (Fahr.), then are the horses put away, what few there may be, and the dogs transport the freight and mails along the Government road between White Horse and Dawson, as well as from Dawson to the mining camps to which the stage lines usually run. Indeed, throughout all of this north land, with the coming of the snow, the dogs are harnessed to the sledges and become the constant traveling companions of man.

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The air is dry in all this great interior basin of the continent, and, consequently, the great cold is not so keenly felt as in the damper airs nearer to the sea. The dogs can travel in all weathers which man can stand, and even when it becomes so cold that men dare not move. The lowest Government record of the thermometer yet obtained at Dawson City is eighty-three degrees below zero. These great falls of temperature only occasionally occur, but when the thermometer comes down to minus sixty degrees, then men stay fast indoors, and only venture out as the necessity demands; then the usually clear atmosphere becomes filled with a misty fog, often so thick that it is difficult to see a hundred yards away.

When traveling with a dog team, or, indeed, when "mushing" upon snow-shoes across streams and forests, men go rather lightly clad, discarding furs, and ordinarily wearing only thick clothes, with the long canvas parquet as protection against the wind rather than against the temperature; then motion becomes a necessity, and to tarry means to freeze. The danger of the traveler going by himself is that the frost may affect his eyesight, freezing the eyelids together, perhaps dazing his sight, unless snow-glasses are worn. And the ice forms in the nostrils so rapidly, as well as about the mouth, and upon the mustache and beard, that it is a constant effort to keep the face free from accumulating ice. In small parties, however, men travel long distances, watching each other as well as themselves to insure escape from the ravages of the frost. When the journey is long and the toil has become severe, the Arctic drowsiness is another of the enemies which must be prevented from overcoming the traveler, and the methods are often cruel which friends must exercise in order to prevent their companions from falling asleep.

During this long period of Arctic winter and Arctic night, there seems to be no great cessation in the struggle for gold; the diggings in the Klondike and remoter regions retain their companies of men toiling to find the gold. The frozen gravels are blasted out and piled up to be thawed the next summer by the heat of the sun and washed with the flowing waters.

While the Arctic night prevails for twenty-two or twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, yet so brilliant are the stars and so refulgent are the heavens with the lightening of the aurora borealis, that men work and travel and carry on the usual occupations, little hindered by the absence of the sun. Sometimes, in the very coldest days, is beheld the curious phenomenon of several suns appearing above the horizon, and these are called the "sun dogs," the sun itself being seemingly surrounded by lesser ones. I was fortunate enough to obtain a fine photograph taken on one of these days, which I am able to send you.

The freezing of the Yukon comes on very suddenly, the great river often becoming solid in a night. The curious thing of these northern lakes and rivers is, that the ice forms first upon the bottom, and, rising, fills the water with floating masses and ice particles, which then become congealed almost immediately.

Early in last October our steamer "White Horse," on which we are now traveling, became permanently frozen in when within one hundred miles of Dawson City, the apparently clear river freezing so quickly that the boat became fast for the winter, and the passengers were compelled to "mush" their way, as best they might, across the yet snowless country, a terrible and trying experience in the gathering cold.

You may be in a row-boat or a canoe upon ice-free waters, and, as you paddle, you may notice bubbles and particles of ice coming to the surface. Great, then, is the danger. The bottom has begun to freeze. You may be frozen in before you reach the shore in ice yet too thin to walk upon or permit escape.

For the greater part of the winter season the frozen streams become the natural highways of the traveler, and the dog teams usually prefer the snow-covered ice rather than attempt to go over the rougher surface of the land.

Another curious thing, friends tell me, affects them in this winter night-time, and that is the disposition of men to hibernate. Fifteen and sixteen hours of sleep are commonly required, while in the nightless summer-time three and four and five hours satisfy all the demands nature seems to make--thus the long sleeps of winter compensate for the lack of rest taken during the summer-time.

And yet these hardy men of the north tell me that they enjoy the winter, and that they perform their toils with deliberation and ease, and take full advantage of the long sleeping periods.

The Yukon freezes up about the 10th of October, the snow shortly follows, and there is no melting of the ice until early June. This year the ice went out from the river at Dawson upon June 10th; thus, there are seven to eight months of snow and ice-bound winter in this Arctic land.

ELEVENTH LETTER.

HOW THE GOVERNMENT SEARCHES FOR GOLD.

STEAMER DOLPHIN, September 22, 1903.

We left White Horse by the little narrow-gauge railway, White Pass & Yukon Railway, at 9:30--two passenger cars, one smoker, mail and express and baggage hung on behind a dozen freight cars. Our steamer brought up about one hundred passengers from Dawson and down-river points, and together with what got on board at White Horse, the train was packed. Many red-coated Northwest Mounted Police also boarded the train, and just as it pulled out, a strapping big, strong-chinned, muscular woman came in the rear door and sat down. She was elegantly gowned, dark, heavy serge, white shirt waist, embroidered cloth jacket, and much gold jewelry, high plumed hat. Presently a big man called out that all the men must go forward into the next car, and the big woman announced that she would proceed to examine all the ladies for gold dust. The paternal government of the Yukon Territory exacts a tax of 2-1/2 per cent. of all gold found, and examines all persons going out of the territory, and confiscates all dust found on the person. Women are said to be the most inveterate smugglers, and the big woman goes through them most unmercifully. She bade the lady next her to stand up and then proceeded to feel her from stockings to chemise top, and did the same by the others. Those who wore corsets had a tough time, and some had to undo their hair. As the first victim stood up and was unbuttoned and felt over, she was greeted with an audible smile by the other ladies, but silence fell as the next victim was taken in hand. Meanwhile, during this pleasant diversion, a big red-coat stood with his back to each door, and the men were being similarly though not so ruthlessly gone through in the other cars. This trip no dust was found, I believe, but last week one woman was relieved of $1,800 sewed into the margin of her skirts and tucked deep into the recesses of her bosom. Stockings and bosom are the two chief feminine caches for gold, and when a culprit is thus discovered and relieved, many are the protestations and unavailing the clamors raised. During the past year I am told that the examiners have seized in these searches some $60,000 in dust, so I presume the happy custom will for some time continue. Detectives are kept in Dawson, travel on the boats, and so watch and scrutinize every traveler that by the time the final round-up and search takes place, the probable smugglers are all pretty well spotted. As each is examined, his or her name is checked off in a little book.

We were close to Caribou Crossing when the ceremony was over, and I with others of my sex was permitted to re-enter the rear car and rejoin the company of the much beflustered ladies.

All along the advance of winter was apparent. The green of a fortnight ago had turned into the universal golden yellow, and the fresh snow lay in more extended covering upon all the mountain summits and even far down their slopes. So it is in this far north, each day the snow creeps down and down until it has caught and covered all the valleys as well as hills.

At Caribou we met old Bishop Bompas and his good little wife, who, with a big cane, came all the way into the car to see us and say good-by. A charming couple who have given their lives doing a noble work.

Lake Bennett was like a mirror, and Lake Lindemann above it, too, seemed all the greener in contrast to the encroaching snows. We were at the White Pass Summit by 3 P. M., and then for an hour came down the 3,200 feet of four per cent. grade, the twenty miles to Skagway. The increase of snows on all the mountains seemed to bring out more saliently than ever the sharp, jagged granite rock masses. It even seemed to us that we were traversing a wilder, bolder, harsher land than when three weeks ago we entered it. And the views and vistas down into the warmer valleys we were plunging into were at times magnificent. Snow around and above us, increasing greenness of foliage below us, and beyond recurring glimpses of the Lynn fiord, with Skagway nestling at its head. In every affluent valley a glacier and a roaring torrent.

One of the newest and best boats in the trade, "The Dolphin," was awaiting us. Our stateroom was already wired for and secured. We took our last Alaska meal at the "Pack Train Restaurant," where we snacked sumptuously on roast beef, baked potatoes and coffee for seventy cents (in Dawson it would have been an easy $3.00), and walked down the mile-long pier to the boat. The tides are some twenty feet here, and the sandy bars of Skagway require long piers to permit the ships to land when the tides are out.

We cast off about 10 P. M., with the tide almost at its height, and only awoke to-day just as we were steaming out of Juneau. Now we are approaching the beautiful and dangerous Wrangel Narrows, and see everywhere above us the fresh snows of the fortnight's making.

WILD SEAS AMONG THE FJORDS.

WEDNESDAY, September 23rd.

It is the middle of the afternoon and we are just safely through the--to-day--tempestuous passage of "Dixon's Entrance," the thirty-three-mile break in the coast's protecting chain of islands and the outlet for Port Simpson to the open sea. Yesterday we passed through the dangerous twenty miles of the Wrangel Narrows just before dark, and only the swift swirls of the fighting tides endangered us; they fall and rise seventeen feet in a few hours, and the waters entering the tortuous channels from each end meet in eddying struggle somewhere near the upper end. The boats try and pass through just before the flood tide or a little after it, or else tie up and wait for the high water. If we had been an hour later, we should have had to lie by for fifteen hours, the captain said. As we turned in from Frederick Sound, between two low-lying islands all densely wooded with impenetrable forests of fir, the waters were running out against us almost in fury, but in a mile or two they were flowing with us just as swiftly.

To-day we saw a good many ducks, chiefly mallard and teal, and small divers, and my first cormorant, black, long-necked and circling near us with much swifter flight than the gull. In the narrows we started a great blue heron and one or two smaller bitterns.

From the narrows we passed into Sumner Strait, and then turning to the right and avoiding Wrangel Bay and Fort Wrangel, where we stopped going up, passed into the great Clarence Strait that leads up direct from the sea. A sound or fiord one hundred miles or more long, ten or fifteen miles wide.

The day had been clear, but, before passing through the narrows, clouds had gathered, and a sort of fierce Scotch mist had blown our rain-coats wet. On coming out into wider waters, the storm had become a gale. The wildest night we have had since twelve months ago in the tempest of the year upon the Gulf of Finland. To-day, until now, the waters have been too boisterous to write. All down Clarence Strait, until we turned into Revilla and Gigedo Channels--named for and by the Spanish discoverers--and across the thirty-three miles of Dixon's Entrance, we have shuttlecocked about at the mercy of the gale and in the teeth of the running sea. The guests at table have been few, but now we are snug behind Porcher Island and passing into the smooth waters of Greenville Channel, so I am able to write again. The Swedish captain says the storm is our equinoctial, and that may be, and now that the sun is out and the blue sky appearing, we shall soon forget the stress, although to-night, as we pass from Fitzhugh Sound into Queen Charlotte Sound, we shall have a taste of the Pacific swell again, and probably yet have some thick weather in the Gulf of Georgia. Considering the lateness of the season, we are, all in all, satisfied that we rightly gave up the St. Michaels trip, though it has sorely disappointed us not to have seen the entire two thousand miles of the mighty Yukon.

Already we notice the moderation of the temperature and the greater altitude of the sun, for we are quite one thousand miles south of Dawson, while the air has lost its quickening, exhilarating, tonic quality.

We are becoming right well acquainted with our sundry shipmates, particularly those who have "come out" from the Yukon with us. Among them we have found out another interesting man. Across the table from us on the steamer "White Horse" sat a shock-headed man of about thirty years, tall, very tall, but muscularly built, with a strong, square jaw and firm, blue eyes. A fellow to have his own way; a bad man in a mix-up. A flannel shirt, no collar, rough clothes. Possibly a gentleman, perhaps a boss tough. We find him a graduate of the University of Michigan. He has lived in Mexico, and now for five straight years has been "mushing it," and prospecting in the far north; has tramped almost to the Arctic Sea, into the water-shed of the Mackenzie, and bossed fifty to one hundred men at the Klondike and Dominion diggings. His camera has always been his companion, and for an hour yesterday he sat in our cabin and read to us from the MSS. some of the verse and poems with which his valise is stacked. Some of the things are charming and some will bring the tears. This far north land of gold and frost has as yet sent out no poet to depict its hopes, its perils, its wrecks. It may be that he is the man. His name is Luther F. Campbell, and you may watch for the name. And so we meet all sorts.

FRIDAY, September 25th.