Chapter XVI: Dawson, the Golden City

Rob's diary went on as he had promised, for during the time that they lay between boats at the once famous gold-camp there was abundant opportunity for them to get about and see pretty much everything there was worth seeing. Rob's record runs day by day as previously:

"_Thursday, August 14th._--Dawson at 4 A.M. Our boat does
not go any farther. We reserved passage on the _Norcom_ for
White Pass. She will sail the evening of next Saturday. On
British soil again.

"This place has had twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants in
boom times, but there are only about twelve hundred people
here now, I believe. A good many people are starting off for
Chisana district, up the White River, where they say there
is a gold strike. All this country has been crazy over gold
strikes for a good deal more than twenty years.

"We went to a hotel here and got baths and got barbered up,
which makes a change in our looks. We got a few things to
wear which the archdeacon could not give us.

"_Friday, August 15th._--Went up the famous Klondike River,
which comes in here. Half of it is clean and the other half
dirty. Saw no more pick-and-shovel work. Everything is run
by the big dredges owned by companies, which do the work of
hundreds of men. They thaw out the ground now with
steam-pipes which they drive down in, and then turn in
steam. Then they rip out the ground down twenty feet with
the big scoops of the dredges. They just have water enough
to float the dredges. Everything is worked and washed right
on the dredge. It beats placer mining a whole lot. But a few
men can work one of these dredges, and then a few men get
all the money they turn out.

"Walked on up to Bonanza and some of the famous creeks above
the dredges. They are using hydraulic mining up there,
another wholesale way. Saw no individual mining.

"We boys ate supper with a lot of French people who are
working 'lays' on some claims which are owned by other
people on the hillsides up toward Bonanza. The bed-rock,
where the rich gold is, is about the middle of the hill, and
runs straight through, and they are following through right
along the bed-rock three hundred feet below the surface.
They have 'drifted' in here, and they are using hydraulic
mining, too. They seemed a jolly lot. They have a woman
cooking for their crew, and asked us to eat with them--the
best they had. We could not talk much in their language, and
they did not understand very much of ours.

"We walked down from the mountains, four and a half miles,
in an hour and five minutes, and were not tired.

"_Saturday, August 16th._--The Commissioner of Yukon
Territory--who is about the same as a governor would be in a
Territory of the United States--asked us to luncheon to-day,
because he knew of Uncle Dick. So we all went and had a very
pleasant time. This is the Government House, and it has the
British flag over it, of course. Everybody was very nice to
us, and other ladies and gentlemen asked us a lot of
questions, and we did of them, too. We felt very much at
home here, and friendly. The Governor, or Commissioner, used
to be American himself. He came up here in the early gold
days.

"One gentleman at the luncheon told a good many stories of
the old times. He told how cold it got sometimes. He said
once they made some candles out of condensed milk. They sold
them to a saloon-keeper, for a joke, because every one wants
candles in the winter-time, but the saloon-keeper could not
light these candles at all! He said there used to be a young
man in Dawson they called 'The Evaporated Kid' because he
was so thin. He said, too, there was a runaway express agent
who had absconded from somewhere in America, and when he got
to Dawson he hadn't anything except one painting, a copy of
a celebrated picture in Europe. He sold it for a
half-interest in a claim, which proved to be worth $60,000.
He went back to the States and gave himself up, and got a
month in jail after he had paid what he had stolen. Then he
came back to Alaska and has made a good citizen! He has
always kept the old man who sold the interest in this claim.
Of course they wouldn't tell us the name of this man.

"They say the best place for hunting big game is to go up
the Pelly River and then up the MacMillan River. White Horse
is a good place to start from. There are sheep up in there,
of two kinds, and moose and grizzly bear and caribou.
September is the best time to go in there, but it would take
about a month, and a fellow would have to be careful not to
get caught in the snow. The Mount McKinley country is even
better as a big-game place, so they tell me. I wish we boys
could go in there some time.

"They used to get all kinds of money in here in the early
days. This same gentleman told me he once had an interest in
a claim where they took out $430,000 on a fraction of a
claim which was only eighty feet by four hundred. He says
the dredge people have found that they can work much poorer
dirt than eight dollars a yard, which would pay a
shovel-man. One man can only rock about two and a half yards
a day. He can sluice about twice that. A dredge, working
four men, works from 2,400 to 3,000 tons a day. So you see
why dredges are in here now. He said nearly all the men who
got rich easy lost their money. There was a lucky Swede who
married an extravagant woman, and she spent all his
money--several hundred thousand dollars--right away; but he
only laughed and said, 'I'll strike it again pretty soon.'
But he never has. He says there were a good many hundreds of
men who held on to their stakes and went out with 50,000 to
100,000 dollars each. It must have been exciting times in
this little old town! Very quiet now.

"All the pictures of Dawson show the big white scar on a
mountain-side where a landslip took off the whole side of
the mountain many years ago. The Indians say it buried a
village at its foot. This big hole in the mountain is right
where you can see it down the street. You can't help seeing
it if you go to Dawson.

"I was much interested about the first man who discovered
this country. They don't all tell the same story about it.
The Yukon Territory and Alaska are so much alike, and the
people settling them have been so much alike, that it seems
they are about the same. We crossed the international
boundary between them away back at Rampart House. From
there to here, on both sides of that line, men have been
coming into this country, no one knows how long.

"Jack McQueston, so Mr. Ogilvie says in his book about the
Yukon country, established Fort Reliance, six miles below
where Dawson is, in 1871. Then Arthur Harper came in and
joined him in trading. One time some Indians got hold of
their rat poison, and two old women and one girl died. That
made the Indians sore, so the traders had to pay for the
women. They said the two old women were no good, but they
would pay ten skins for the young woman, about six dollars.
The Indians said that was all right! It's a funny country.

"After that a man by the name of Mayo came in with Harper
and McQueston, and in 1886, so this book says, they went
down to Forty-Mile River, where they found gold already
discovered. It was McQueston that founded Circle City, but
it is not really on the line--nearly a degree in latitude
south of it.

"Harper and McQueston seemed to move all around everywhere.
They said they found color on the Peace River and on the
Liard, but did not find anything on the Mackenzie. But on
the Peel River they found good prospects, and some on the
Porcupine also. They were all over that country, where we've
been.

"This Harper party came over the Rat Portage, too, the way
we did, and they describe it about the way we would. But
that was long before the Klondike rush, for they got to Fort
Yukon on July 15, 1873. The Klondike was not known then, nor
until more than twenty years later.

"I guess that the man who really ought to have the credit
for finding the gold in the Klondike country was Bob
Henderson. He was not trading so much as prospecting.
Besides, he got his start about the way most prospectors
do--an Indian showed him some pieces of gold, and showed him
the place where he found them. Anyhow, that is how Harper
found some gold in the Tanana country. But Harper, though he
was around in this country twenty-four years, never found
any big strike. He died in Arizona in 1897. Jack McQueston
stayed in later, and everybody remembered him as a generous
trader.

"They say that the first gold to come out of the Yukon came
from the Tanana River in 1880. A Mr. Holt of the Alaska
Commercial Company took the first party over the Dyea Pass
and down the Yukon, in 1875. They say a very little gold
came out in 1882 and 1883, but nobody had ever heard of the
Klondike then.

"McQueston liked the Stewart River better than any place for
a long while. They got gold in a great many streams running
into the Yukon, and found it on nine creeks as early as
1894. They sent out about $400,000 that year. There were a
good many miners all along the river even in
1894--seventy-five miners in one party of stampeders. But
still no one had heard of the Klondike, although they had
prospected between the Yukon and the Arctic Ocean and far
down to the mouth of the Yukon, and about everywhere else!

"Harper and McQueston had been on the Klondike, but did not
find anything at first. Bob Henderson had as much nerve as
anybody. They went up on Indian River, which runs parallel
to the Klondike, about fifteen miles away. Henderson worked
on Quartz Creek, they say, and he had to thaw out his
ground with log fires the way they used to do, so he did not
make much. Then he worked on Australia Creek. Of course
these men all moved around a good deal. He only got about
600 or 700 dollars on the creek where he was working, so he
moved over to a stream which he thought ran into the
Klondike, and he called this Gold Bottom. He got the color
here.

"Bob Henderson met George W. Carmac, and he offered to share
his new strikes up on Gold Bottom, but he drew the line at
the Indians Carmac was living with! So Carmac did not go out
at first. But Carmac and two Indians, Charley and George,
did go up the Klondike, and up Bonanza after a little, about
a mile above the mouth. They were looking after logs for
lumber. But they found color up in there. The Indians didn't
care much about it. But after Bob told them about strikes
higher up in the country, these Indians and Carmac went
farther up Bonanza. They all claim to have found the first
gold there. Henderson would not let them stake on Gold
Bottom because he didn't like the Indians, so they turned
back, because they had found ten cents to the pan on
Bonanza. They found more gold on Bonanza, and so Carmac
staked there on August 17, 1896, the Discovery claim and
Number One Below Discovery, each 500 feet long, up and down
the creek. They tell me that these claims ran the full width
of the valley bottom--that is, from base to base of the hill
on either side.

"Then some Indians staked above and below, Tagish Charley on
Number Two below, and Skookum Jim on Number One above. They
had about a cartridgeful of gold when they got down to the
mouth of the Klondike, and they still thought there was more
money in lumber than in mining.

"Everybody got wind of it now, and there were a lot of
people in this country already, before the Klondike news got
out. There were twenty-five men looking for Henderson's
Creek, and about that many looking for the Carmac claims.

"So Henderson didn't get any of the rich strike on Bonanza,
although he had told Carmac about it. He always said Carmac
ought to have told him, so he could have got in there, too.
Henderson couldn't get out to Forty-Mile in time to record
his claim on Gold Bottom, until Andrew Hunker got in on the
creek below him, and he recorded his Discovery claim and had
the creek named after him--Hunker Creek. But Henderson had
cut a blaze on a tree and marked this creek as Gold Bottom
Creek long before that.

"So they gave a discovery claim to Carmac on Bonanza Creek,
and another on Gold Bottom or Hunker Creek to this man
Hunker. So Henderson, who had been in here two years, and
who had told everybody about what he had found and wanted
everybody to share in it, got only a very bad claim, after
all. Hard luck.

"I wish I could talk with those old-timers and the Indians
who were first in this gold country; but Mr. Ogilvie did
talk with them all, and I think what he sets down is
perfectly true.

"What I was rather surprised to learn was that all this
country was known as a gold country so long before the
Klondike was heard of. Most people think that the Klondike
strike brought the first stampedes into the Yukon Valley,
but that is not the case at all. So I thought I would set
this down, to have it straight when we all got older. As
time goes by these things seem to get crooked, and sometimes
men get credit who do not deserve it.

"Well, I have heard a good many stories about wild times in
Dawson, but I have not any place to set that down here, nor
to tell stories about getting rich quick. We only wanted to
keep track of the early times in the wild country. So I
guess this will do.

"Well, here we go, off for home!--On board the steamer
_Norcom_, bound up the Yukon. Left at 9 P.M., after saying
good-by to all our friends in Dawson. We liked Dawson, but
found it pretty quiet.

"_Sunday, August 17th._--We are doing about five miles an
hour. Current very swift. At noon saw the Stewart valley.
Smith's store on the bank. Saw some boats stampeding for the
White River strikes. Passed the mouth of the White River.
Saw a new boat full of men turning up that river on the
stampede. It must be like old times. Well, all right--we're
going _out_.

"_Monday, August 18th._--Slow plugging up the current. Made
Selkirk, an old trading-post and mining hangout, at 2 P.M.
The scenery here is much finer than on the Mackenzie. I
don't know if tourists will ever come on any of these
rivers. It goes a little slow.

"A good many wood-yards along the banks of the river. Quite
a business selling wood to the steamboats, which burn a lot.
They showed us the line where the winter dog-stages carry
the mail to Dawson. Someone showed us the O'Brien cabin,
where four murders were committed. One white man and three
Indians were hanged for it.

"_Tuesday, August 19th._--We all got up pretty early,
although John was sleepy and Jesse a little cross. I told
them we ought to see the boat line up through the
Five-Finger Rapids. But, pshaw! there wasn't much about it.
We could run these rapids, I am sure, in our canoe, with no
danger at all. Of course, going up the current is stiff, so
at the bottom of the chute the steamboat takes on a wire
cable, and it winds around a drum with a donkey-engine, and
that pulls the boat up the rapids. They are not much like
some of the rapids we have seen.

"Well, it's twenty years since the Klondike rush, and we've
been over a good deal of the country that the old-timers
saw. Here we come to White Horse, and there we shall take
the railroad over the Skagway Pass, where so many men had
such awful times trying to get from the salt water into the
Yukon Valley.

"I don't think I'll write any more notes, because when you
get to a railroad everybody knows about it all anyhow. John
and Jesse and I feel pretty blue, after all. Our trip is the
same as done when we get to White Horse, and we are sorry.
When we once know we can get home all safe, we sort of feel
homesick for the rivers and mountains, too. You know how
that is.

"I don't know that we would want to do it all over again,
but we've had a fine time. I think John and Jesse are both a
little taller. Uncle Dick says I am, too.

"But it will be fine to get home again. Uncle Dick says he
is going to write and telegraph from White Horse once more.
So good-by to the Yukon. And good-by to the Rat and the
Mackenzie, too! Fine doings!"