ONGOLD DIGGINGS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDD13t.mH3 Library of Congress. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Chap T^'V ^ I Shelf- -j^- /_^>*r-— - " We of the Flannel Shirt and the Unblacked Boot." Frontispiece. Through the Yukon Gold Diggings A Narrative of Personal Travel JOSIAH EDWARD SPURR Geologist, United States Geological Survey ^^=^^ r.OSTON EASTERN PUBLISHING COMPANY 1900 G2G36 OCT 18 1900 Coy^ngh* mtry SiTJ^sir COPY. 0«0t« b'VlSION, Copyright, 1900 by JOSIAH EDWARD SPURR r\ fK Preface. A S a geologist of the United States Geological ^"^ Survey, I had the good fortune to be placed in charge of the first expedition sent by that department into the interior of Alaska. The gold diggings of the Yukon region were not then known to the world in general, yet to those interested in mining their renown had come in a vague way, and the special problem w4th which I was charged was their investigation. The re- sults of my studies were embodied in a report entitled : " Geology of the Yukon Gold Dis- trict," published by the Government. It was during my travels through the mining regions that the Klondike discovery, which sub- sequently turned so many heads throughout all of the civilized nations, was made. General con- ditions of mining, travelling and prospecting are much the same to-day as they were at that time, except in the limited districts into which the flood of miners has poured. My travels in Alaska have been extensive since the journey of which this work is a record, and I have noted the same 3 4 PREFACE. scenes that are herein described, in many other parts of the vast untravelled Territory. It will take two or three decades or more, to make alterations in this region and change the condi- tion throughout. In recording, therefore, the scenes and hard- ships encountered in this northern country, I describe the experiences of one who to-day knocks about the Yukon region, the Copper River region, the Cook Inlet region, the Koyu- kuk, or the Kome District. My aim has been thi-oughout, to set down what I saw and en- countered as fully and simply as {)ossible, and I have endeavored to keep myself from sacrilicing accuracy to picturesqueness. That my duties led me to see more than would the ordinary travel- ler, I trust the following pages will bear witness. Let the reader, therefore, when he finds tedious or un])leasant passages, remember that they re- cord tedious or unpleasant incidents that one who travels this vast region cannot escape, as will be found should any of those who peruse these pages go through the Yukon Gold Diggings. Author. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. The Trip to Dyea 9 II. Over the Chilkoot Pass 35 III. The Lakes and the Yukon to Forty Mile . . 65 IV. The Forty Mile Diggings 109 V. The American Creek Diggings .... 156 VI. The Birch Creek Diggings 161 VII. The Mynook Creek Diggings . . . .207 Vlll. The Lower Yukon 229 IX. 8t. Michael's and San Franci.sco .... 264 ILLUSTRATIONS " We of the Flannel Shirt and the Unblacked Boot An Alaskan Genealogical Tree Bacon, Lord of Alaska Lynn Canal Alaskan Women and Children Alaskan Indians and House Shooting the White Horse Rapid Talking it Over Alaska Humpback Salmon, Male and Female Washing Gravel in Sluice-Boxes ' ' Tracking ' ' a Boat Upstream A "Cache" Native Dogs .... On the Tramp Again Hog'em Junction Road-House On Hog'em Gulch Custom House at Circle City The Break-up of the Ice on the Yukon A Yukon Canoe Indian Fish-traps In a Tent Beneath Spruce Trees Three-hatch Skin Boat, or Bidarka Eskimo Houses at St. Michael's A Native Doorway The Captured Whale Frontispiece i^ 12 '^ 21^ SI'-' 40 ^ 63 '^ 93^ 98 ' 107 131- 137 "- 140 "^ 153 '- 111'' 177- 190- 213^ 230'' 231 '^ 239^ 261 ^ 265" 266'' 271 ' 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. 7 Through The Yukon Gold Diggings. Before the Klondike Discovery. CHAPTER I. THE TRIP TO DYEA. IT was in 1896, before the Klondike boom. AVe were seated at the table of an excursion steamer, Avhich plied from Seattle northward among the thousand wonderful mountain islands of the Inland Passage. It was a journey replete with brilliant spectacles, through many pictur- esque 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, 10 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. where the swells from the open sea roll in dur- ing rough weather, and many passengers were ai)j)earing 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 Hannel shirt and the unblacked boot had striven in vain to break — for these were peo- ple who were gathered from the corners of the earth, and each individual, or each tiny group, seemed to have some invisible negative attrac- tion 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 ap- parently dull lot of a])parent 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 Avith Avhicli they were treated in general. It was depressing — even European tourists' wordy enthusiasm over a mud puddle or a dung- hill would have been preferable. TUE TRIP TO DYE A. 11 There are along this route all the benefits of a sea trip — the air, the rest — with none of its dis- advantages. 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 knowledo-e of the sie^n 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 An Alaskan Genealogical Tree. 12 THE TRIP TO DYE A. 13 Hauling neckerchief or head-kerchief of red and yellow silk that the silk-worm had no part in making, Ijut only the cunning Yankee weaver, paddle out in boats dug from the great ever- green 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 liave hitherto been bored, can inquire whetlier the industry pays, and comtemplate in their suddenly awak- ened fancies the possibilities of a halibut syndi- cate, or another Tread well 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 ])eace and freedom from the human element, old ladies may sleep and young ones may flirt meantimes. All this would seem to prove that the passen- gers were neither professional nor business men, nor young nor old ladies — part of which appeared 14 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. to me manifestly, and the rest probably untrue ; or else that they were all enthusiastic and inter- ested 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 wearily in- quired when we should get to the Muir glacier, on which point we of the fiannel-shirted brother- hood were informed ; and incidentally we re- marked that we intended to leave the festivities before that time, in Juneau. " Oh my ! " said the sad-faced, middle-aged lady Avith 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 be- come the rage and the fashion. But the whole table warmed Avith interest — they were as lively busy bodies as other people and we were the first solution to the problems THE Tliir TO BYE A. 15 Avliicli they had been putting to themselves con- cerning each other since the beginning of the trip. There was a fire of small questions. " How interesting ! " said an elderly 3^oung lady, who sat opposite. " I suppose you will have all kinds of experiences, just roughing it; and will you take your food with you on — er — wag- ons — or will you depend on the farmhouses along the way ? Only," she added hastily, detecting a certain gleam in the eye of her vis-a-vis, " I didn't think there were many farmhouses." " 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 kaj^aks — I have read it," he said, looking at me fiercely. Then, as we were silent, he continued, more condescendingly, " I have roughed it my- self, 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 l(i TlinuUGH THE YUKON COLD DKiGINaS. gone a week, just riding over the roughest coun- try roads and into the mountains on horseback. If our colfee 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 momen- tary rebellion against our exile. " And the wild animals ! You will suffer so." " I used to know an explorer," said the business man with the green necktie, who had been dragged to the shrine of Xature by his wife. He had brought along an entire copy of the New York Screamer, and buried himself all day long in its parti-colored mysteries. " lie told me many things that might be useful to you, if I could re- member them. About spearing whales — for food, you know — you will have to do a lot of that. I Avish I could have you meet him sometime ; he could tell you much more than I can. Somebod}^ said there was gold uj) there. Was it you? Well don't get frozen up and di'ift across the Pole, like Nansen, just to get where the gold is. But I suppose the nuggets " " Let's go on deck, Jane," said the old gentle- THE TRIP TO DYEA. 17 UKUi ; — then to us, politely but firmly, " I have been much interested in 3'Our account, and shall be glad to hear more later." "We had not said anything yei. We disembarked at Juneau. AYe had watched the shore for nearly the whole trip without per- ceiving 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 (and they are now many) 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 tower- ing 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 Connec- ticut. In the hotel the proprietor arrived at our busi- ness in the shortest possible time, by the method of direct questioning. He was from Colorado, I 18 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. 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 strang- est air of being ill at ease, who was lounging near by, smoking and spitting on the floor con- templatively. " 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 synonomous \\\i\\ " tender- feet " 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 or- deal. " 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 ? " "Dis makes dirt time," answered Pete, with a most unique dialect, which nevertheless was Scandinavian. " Virst time, me an' Frank Dens- THE TRIP TO DYE A. 19 more, Whisky Bill an' de odder boys. Dat was summer som we washed on Stewart River, on'y us — fetched out britty peek sack dat year — eh ? " He had a curious way of retaining the Scandi- navian relative pronoun som in his English, in- stead of ^vho or that. " 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 con- tinued, "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 20 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. scattered tlirough, and was in places rusty with iron, but was mostly smooth and showed the w^earing 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 saj^s, 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 finall}^ agreed to make the trip to Forty Mile together, since Ave 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 pre- cious 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 tlie same weight of coffee : moreover, there is some quality in this THE TRIP TO DYE A. 21 beverage which makes it particuhirly adapted to the vigorous climate and conditions of this north- ern country. Men who have never used tea ac- quire a fondness for it in Ahiska, and will drink BAroy, Lord of Alaska. vast quantities, especially in the winter. The Hussians, themselves the greatest tea-drinkers of all European nations, long ago introduced "Tschai"to the Alaskan natives ; and through- 22 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. out 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 neces- sary to take on a trip like ours, it may be re- marked 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 appe- tites 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 ex- perienced 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 remain- der to the natives. Camp kettles, and frying- })ans, 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 THE TRIP TO DYE A. 23 boards, which when put together woukl 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 in- terior 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 gaunt- leted 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 univer- sal ; and for foot gear the heavy laced boot is the best. As usual, we were led by the prospective ter- rors 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 antici- pated. We had brought with us canvas bags 24 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. designed for packing, or carrying loads on the back, of a model long used in the Lake Superior Avoods. 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 b}^ 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 bi'ought 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 \vith 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 brouglit his numservant with him, like the Englishman he was. He was a great traveller, and full of inter- esting anecdotes of Afghanistan, or Borneo, or some other of the earth's corners. He had en- gaged to go with him a friend of Pete's, another pioneer, Co(jper by name, short, blonde and THE TRIP TO DYE A. 25 powerfully built. Between us, we arranged for a tug to take us the hundred miles of water which still lay between us and Byea, 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 de- signed for freight, and had not been altered in the slio'htest decree 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 \vlio 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 re- fused. So the motley crowd of strangers hud- dled 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 o'iant mountains. 2G THllOUGH THE YUKON COLD DIGGINGS. Our fellow-passengers were mostly prospec- tors ; nearly all newcomers, as we could see by the light of the lantern which hung up in the bare apartment whei'e we were. They had their luggage and outfit with them, which they })iled up and sat or slept on, to make sure they would not lose it. There were men with grey beards and strapping boys Avith 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 conlidentiall}^ 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 s})eech ; and near him was a noted Alaskan pio- neer 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 TRIP TO DYE A. 27 the sliapo of a lordly drunk, and the material for many more, in a large demijohn, which he guarded carefull3\ Tlie conversation among this crowd was of the directest sort, as it is al- ways on the frontier. "Where are yoa goin', pardner? ProspecLin', I reckon ? " 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 experi- ence, 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 })icturesqueness 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 Avith smooth face and oily 28 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD VIGGINGS. manners, — were discussing matters with as much reserve and (k^corum as they would in a draw- ing-room. Around them hiy stretched out, over the floor, under the table, and even on it, mot- ley-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 ni}^- self, hugging closely to the Avail, 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 raven- ously hungry for the breakfast which was tardily prepared. The only table was covered with oil- cloth, and was calculated for four, but about eight managed to crowd around it : yet with all pos- sible haste the last had breakfast about noon. We sat down where a momentary opening was THE TIUF TO DYEA. 29 offered at the third or fourth sitting. A moment later a couple of })rospectors appeared who ap- parently had counted on })laces, 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 •Awy 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 punc- tiliously polite individual than this same pros- pector 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 fflled 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 a})ple-sauce, which 30 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. took me back in fancy to all the ditferent tables tbat had eaten before : the boat was swaying heavily and I gulped down ni}' 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 proticient in profanity and kept up a running fire of insults on the cook. lie took the plate and eyed me scornfully, witheringly. " Seems to me some tenderfeet is mighty per- tickler," 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 des- perate effort to elevate my mind and my stouiach 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 — Si- wash, 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 chilh", drizzling day. The clouds or- 32 THBOUGU THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. dinarily hid the tops of the great steep moun- tains, so that these lool^ed 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. AVe 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 Na- ture some figurative meanings, and are depressed or elevated by them. We anchored in the lee of a bare rounded mountain that night, it being too rough to attempt landing, and the next morning were off Dyea, where we were to go ashore. The surf was still heavy, but the captain ventured out in a small boat to get the scow in which passengers and goods were generally conveyed to the shore ; for the water was shallow, and the steamer had to keep a mile or so from the land. In the surf the boat THE TRIP TO DYE A. 33 capsized, and we could see the captain bobbing lip and down in the breakers, now on top, now un- der his boat, in the icy water. The dishwasher, who evidently knew the course of action in all such emergencies from dime-novel precedents, yelled out " Man the lifeboat ! " The captain had taken the only boat there was. The entire crew, it may be mentioned, consisted, besides the dishwasher and the captain, of the sailor, who Avas also the cook. The duty of manning the lifeboat — had there been one — would thus ap- parently have devolved on the sailor, but he grew pale and swore that he did not know how to row and that he had just come from driving a milk- wagon in San Francisco. A party of prospectors became engaged in a heated discus- sion as to whether, if there had been a boat on board, it would not have been foolish to venture out in it, even for the sake of trying to rescue the captain ; some urging the claims of heroism, and others loudl}' proclaiming that they would not risk their lives in any such d d foolish way as that. However, all this was only the froth and ex- citement of the moment. The captain hauled his 34 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. 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. CHAPTER II. OVER THE OHILKOOT PASS. 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. (Two years afterwards, on re- turning to the place, I found a mushroom, sawed- board town of several thousand people ; but that was after the Klondike boom.) We pitched our tents near the shore that night, spreading our blankets on the ground. In the morning all were bustling around, fol- lowing 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 Dal- ton, a pioneer trader of the country, was wont to go over the Chilkat Pass, a little further south, 35 :J(! through the YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. while Scliwatka, Hayes, and Russell, in an ex- pedition of which few people ever heard, had crossed by the way of the Taku lliver and the Taku Pass to the Ilootalinqua or Teslin River, which is one of the important streams that unite to make \\\) 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 recpiired clearing to make it servicea- ble. The Chilkoot, though the highest and steepest of the ])asses, 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 occu})ied the Dyea region, — the Chilkoots — were accustomed to stand guard over the Pass OVER THE CIIILKOOT PASS. 37 and to exact tribute from all the interior natives who came in ; and when the first white men ap- peared, 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 (or loud§gt) guns ; afterwards the officer in charge went on shore, and made a sort of unwritten treaty or agreement with the thoroughly frightened na- tives, by which the prospectors, and all others who came after, were allowed to proceed un- molested. 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 thou- sand miles from where the incident occurred, 3ft THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. and each time the story is so changed and dis- guised, 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 be- came more and more exaggerated, and the thunder of the guns more terrible, and the num- ber 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 con- struction. 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 Cir- cle, he will hear of the " great ship " (the native will perhaps point to some mountain eight or ten miles away) " as long as from here to the moun- tain " ; how she vomited out smoke, fire and ashes like a volcano, and at the same time ex- ploded her guns and killed many people, and OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 39 how she ran forwards and backwards, with the wind or against it, at a terrific speed, — a forniida- Ijle monster, truly ! At the time of our trip (in 1890) the immigra- tion 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. The}'^ were odd and interesting at first sight. The men were of fair size, strong, stolid, and sullen-looking; clothed in cheap civil- ized 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 differ- 40 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. ent parts of Alaska, and it seems, in some regions at least, to Ije 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 tire outside, Alaskan Women and Children. and sleeping packed close together, wra})})ed 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 (^f the men who had come with OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 41 US, immediately hired packers for the whole ti'ip to Lalve Lindeman, paying them, I think, eleven cents a pound for everything carried. The store- keeper, however, had been constructing a foot trail for about half the distance and had bought a few pack-horses, and we engaged these to trans- port our outfit as far as possible, trusting to In- dians 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 In- dians 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, de- manded 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 tran- sient, began moving up the valley. Some of the natives put their loads in wooden dugout canoes, which they paddled, or pushed with poles, six 42 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. or seven miles up tlie 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, j^erhaps, than white men, the Chilkoots showed themselves remarkably pa- tient and enduring, carrying heavy loads rapidly long distances without resting. Not only the men, but the women and children, made pack-ani- mals 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. Tlie dog belonging to the same family, a medium- sized animal, waddled along with a load of about forty pounds ; he seemed to Ije imbued with the same spirit as the rest, and although the load nearly dragged him to the ground, lie 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 val- leys from the great ice-mass on the mountain. It was evident that the glacier had once filled the OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 43 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. AVe were seized with fatigue and a terriljle 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. " No, by , pardner," was the answer, " if we had, we'd a' eaten it ourselves before now." 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 sep- arated 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 44 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. with a pack of about seventy-tive 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 help- ing 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 na- tives 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 re- spect. 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 OVEE THE CHILKOOT PASS. 45 mining camps the same custom prevailed. Locks were unknown on the doors. AYhen 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 w^ooden 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 with- out making the acknowledgment constituted a theft, in the eyes of the miner population. This condition of primitive honesty did not last, how- ever. 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 46 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. landslides. Pete had arrived before us : lie 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. Further than Sheep Camp the horse-trail was quite too rocky and steep for the animals ; so we tried to engage Indians to take our freight for the remaining part of the distance across the Pass. Up to the time of our arrival, the regular price for packing from Dyea to Lake Linderaan had been eleven cents a pound. For the trans- portation by horses over the first half of the dis- tance — thirteen miles — we had paid five cents a pound, and we had expected to pay the Indians six cents for the renuiinder of the trip. In the first place, however, it was difficult to gather the Indians together, for they were off in bands in different parts of the neighljoring country, on expeditions of their own; and when they arrived OVEli THE CHILKOOT PASS. 47 in Sheep Camp, Avith a bluster and a racket, they were so set up by the number of men that were waiting for their help that they took it into their heads to be in no hurry about working. Finally they sent a spokesman who, with an insolence rather natural than assumed for the occasion, de- manded nine cents per pound instead of six, for packing to Lake Lindeman. It was a genuine strike -the revolt of organized labor against helpless capital. Being in a hurry to get ahead and fulfill our mission, we should doubtless have yielded ; but there were many parties camped here besides ourselves — namely, all those who had been our fellow-sufferers on board the Scram- bler — and a general consultation l^eing held among the gold-hunters, it was decided that the proposed increase of pay for labor would prove ruinous to their business. A committee representing these gentlemen waited on us and begged us not to yield to the strikers, in the care- lessness of our hearts and our plethoric pocket- books, but to consider that in doing so the}^ — the prospectors — must follow suit, the precedent be- ing once established ; whereas they were poor 48 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. men, and could not afford the extra price. To this view of the case we agreed, considering our- selves as a part of the Sheep Camp community, rather than as an individual party ; and the English traveller (who was likewise suspected of being overburdened with funds, and therefore likely to be careless with them) was also waited upon and persuaded to resist the demands. So everybody camped and waited, and was ob- stinate, for several days : not only the white men, but the Siwash. By way of digression it may be mentioned that the word Siwash is indiscriminately applied by the white men to all the Alaskan natives, to whatever race — and there are many — they be- long. The word therefore has no definite mean- ing, but corresponds roughly to the popular name of " nigger " for all very dark-skinned races, or " Dago " for Spaniards, Portuguese, Ital- ians, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and a host of other black-haired, olive-skinned nations. The name has been said to be a corruption of the French word " sauvage," — savage, — and this seems very likely. Like the corresponding epithets cited, the word OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 49 Siwasli has a certain familiar, facetious, and con- temptuous value, and this may have been the idea which prompted its use just now, when speaking of the natives as strikers and opponents. At any rate, they took the situation in a careless, matter-of-fact way ; cooked, ate, slept, borrowed our kettles, begged our tea and stole our sugar with utmost cheerfulness, and were apparently contented and happy. We white men likewise tried to conceal our restlessness, and chatted in each others' tents, admired the scenery, or went rambling up the steep mountain-sides in search of experiences, exercise, and rocks. Some of us clambered over the huge boulders, each as big as a New England cottage, which had been brought here by glacial action, then up over the steep cliffs, Avrenched and crumbling from the crush- ing of the same mighty force, supporting our- selves, — when the rocks gave way beneath our feet and Avent rattling down the cliff, — by the tough saplings that had taken root in the crevices, and grew out horizontally, or even inclined down- wards, bent by continuous snowslides. So we reached the base of the glacier, where a sheer wall of clear blue ice rose to a height which we 50 THliOUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. estimated at three or four hundred feet, back of which stretched a great uneven white ice field, as far as the eye coukl see, clear up till the view Avas lost in the mists of the upper mountains ; an ice field seamed with great yawning crevasses, where the blue of the ice gleamed as streaks on the dead white. One morning we heard a yell from the Siwash, and soon they came running over the little knoll which separated our camp from theirs, and be- gan grabbing the articles that belonged to some of the miners. "We were at a loss to know the meaning of what seemed at first to be a very un- ceremonious proceeding, but when we saw the miners, with many shamefaced glances at us, help the natives in the distribution of the ma- terial, we realized that these men had forsaken us and their resolutions ; so greedy were they to reach the land of gold that they had gone to the natives and agreed to pay them the demanded rates on condition that they should have all the packers themselves, leaving none to us. We let these men and their natives go in peace, without even a reproach : less than a week afterwards we had the deep satisfaction of passing them on the OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 51 trail, and even in lending thein a band in a series of little difficulties for which, in their haste, they had come unprepared. The veteran miner in Alaska is a splendid, open-hearted, generous fellow ; the newcomer, or " chicharko," is a thing to be avoided. After this we had to wait till the natives had got back from carrying the miners' supplies, and then we agreed, with what grace we could, to pay the price that the others had. The Indians were quite a horde, capable of carrying in one trip all the supplies belonging to our party and that of the English traveller. Since they were paid by the pound they vied in taking enormous loads; the largest carried was 161 pounds, but all the men's packs ranged from 125 to 150 pounds. Women and half-grown boys carried packs of 10(» pounds. It was a " Stick " or in- terior Indian, named at the mission To//i, but originally possessed of a fearful and unpro- nounceable name, who carried the largest load. He was barely tolerated and was somewhat badgered by the Chilkoots, hence he fled much to the society of the whites, and would squat near for hours, always smiling horribly when 5-2 TlinOUGII THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. looked at; he claimed to be a cliief among his own wretched peo})le, and spent all his spare time in blackening his face, reserving rings around the eyes which he smeared with i-ed ochre — having done which, he grinned ghastly approval of himself ! Pete started over the Pass in advance of the part\% to })rocure for us if possible a boat at Lake Lindenuin. " Dis is dirt time I gross Pass," said Pete. " Yirst dime I dake leedle pack — den I vos blayed out ; nex' dime I dake leedle roll of clo'es — den I vos blayed out too, py chimney : dis dime I dake notting — den I vill be blayed out too ! " The natives, after much shouting and con- fusion and wrangling, made up their packs about noon, and started out, we following; just before getting to snowdine they stopped in a place where a chaotic mass of boulders form a trifling shelter, grateful to wild beasts or wild men like these. Here they deposited their loads, and with exasperating indifl'erence composed them- selves to sleep. We tried to persuade them to go f)n, but to no avail, and we discovered after- wards, as often liappened to us in our dealing OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. ^^ with the natives, that they were right. It was June, and yet the snow Lay deep on all the upper parts of the Pass ; and in the long, warm days it became soft and mushy, making travel very difficult, especially with heavy packs. As soon as the sun went down behind the hills, however, the air became cool, and a hard crust formed, so that walking was much better. We left the natives and followed a trail which led among the boulders and then higher up the mountain, where many moccasined feet had left a deep path through the icy snow. We tramped onward, sometimes on hard ice, sometimes through soft snow, strung out in Indian file, saying nothing, saving our breath for our lungs ; at times the crust rang hollow to our tread, and beneath us we could hear torrents raging. It was about eight o'clock at night when we started, and the sun in the narrow valley had al- ready gone down behind the high glaciers on the mountain-tops, even at this latitude and in the month of June ; so the long northern twi- light which is Alaska's substitute for night in the summer months soon began to settle down upon us. At the same time the moisture from 54 TIIROUail THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. the snow which all day long liad been lying in the sun, began cooling into mists, changeful and of different thicknesses ; and in the dim light gave to everything a weird and unnatural aspect. Even our fellow-travellers were distorted and magnified, now lengthwise, now sidewise, so that those above us were powerful-liniljed giants, striding up the hill, while those behind us were flattened and broadened, and seemed straddling along as grotesquely as spiders. When we drew near and looked at each other we Avere inclined to laugh, but there was some- tliing in the pale-blue, ghastly coloi' of the faces that made us stop, half-frightened. At twelve o'clock it was so dark that we could hardly fol- low the trail; then we saw a fire gleaming like a will-o'-the-wisp somewhere above us, and clam- bering up the steep rock which stuck out of the snow and overhung the trail, we saw a couple of figures crouching over a tiny blaze of twigs and smoking roots. It was a native and his " klutch- man " or squaw ; he turned out to be deaf-and- duml), but made signs to us, — as we squatted ourselves around the fire, — that the night was dark, the trail dangerous, and that it would be OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 55 better to wait till it grew a little lighter. So we kept ourselves warm for a half-hour or more by our exertions in tearing up roots for a fire : the fire itself being nothing more than a smoky, flary pile of wet fagots, hardly enough to warm our numbed lingers by. Then a dim figure came toiling up to us. It was one of our packers, and he explained in broken, profane, and obscene English, of which he was very proud, (the foun- dation of his knowledge had been laid in the mis- sion, and the trimmings, which were profuse and with the same idea many times repeated, like an art pattern, had been picked up from straggling whites) that the trail was good now. So we very gladly took up our march again. Two of us soon got ahead of the guide and all the rest of our party, following the beaten track in the snow ; after a while the ascent became very steep, as the last sheer declivity of the Pass was reached, and we began to sus})ect that we had strayed from the right path, for although here was a track, we could find no footprints on it, but only grooves as if from things which hatl slid down. Yet we decided not to go back, for we did not know how far we had strayed from the path. 50 THROUGH THE YUKON CWLD DIGGINGS. and the climbing was not so easy that we were anxious to do it twice. So we kept on upward, and the ascent soon became so steep that we were obliged to stop and kick footholds in the crust at every step. It was twilight again, but still foggy, and we could see neither up nor down, only what appeared to be a vast chasm beneath us, wherein great in- distinct shapes were slowly shifting — an impres- sion infinitely more grand and appalling than the reality. At any rate, it made us very careful in every step, for we had no mind that a misplaced foot should send us sliding down the grooves we were following. At last we gained the top, found here again the trail we had lost, and waited for the rest. Around us, sticking out of the snow% were rocks, which appeared distorted and moving. It was the mists which moved past them, giving a deceptive effect. My companion suddenly exclaimed, " There's a bear ! " On looking, my imagination gave the shape the same semblance, but on going towards it, it resolved itself very reluctantly into a rock, as if ashamed of its failure to " bluflf." Most grown-up people, as well as children, I fancy, are more or less OJ'ER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 57 afraid of the dark — where the uncertain evidence of the eyes can be shaped by the imagination into unnatural things. Goethe must once have felt something like what Faust expressed when he stood at night in one of the rugged Hartz districts : "Seh' die Baiime liinter Baiime, Wie sie schuell voriiber riicken, Uiul die Klippen, die sich biickeu, Und die langen Felsennasen, "Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen." Presently the rest of the })arty came up from quite a different direction and with them a whole troo]) of packers. The main trail, from which we had straj'ed, was much longer, but not so steep ; while the one w^e had followed was simply the mark of the articles wliich the packers were accustomed to send down from the summit to save carrying, while they themselves took the more circuitous route. On the interior side of the summit is a small lake with steep sides, which the miners have named Crater Lake, fancying from the shape that it had Ijeen formed by volcanic action ; it has no such origin however, but occupies what is 58 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. known as a glacial cirque or amphitheatre — a deep hollow carved out of the dioritic mountain mass l)v the powerful wearing action of a valley glacier. This lake ^vas still frozen and we crossed on the ice, then followed down the valley of the stream which flowed from it and led into another small lake. There are several of these small bodies of water and connecting streams before one reaches Lake Lindeman, which is several miles long, and is the uppermost water of the Yukon which is navigable for boats. Our path was devious, following the packers, but always along this valley. We crossed and re- crossed the streams over frail and reverberant arches, half ice, half snow, which, already broken away in places, showed foaming torrents be- neath. As we descended in elevation, the ice on the little lakes became more and more rotten and the snow changed to slush, through which we waded knee deep for miles, sometimes putting a foot through the ice into the water beneath. AVe were all very tired by this time and were separated from one another by long distances, each silent, and travelling on his nerve. The Indian packers, too, in spite of their long expe- OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 59 rience, were tired and out of temper ; but the most pitiful sight of all was to see the women, especially the old ones, bending under crushing- loads, dragging themselves by sheer effort at every step, groaning and stopping occasionally, but again driven forward by the men to whom they belonged. One could not interfere ; it was a family matter ; and as among white people, the woman would have resented the interference as much as the man. Finally we came to a lake where the water was almost entirely open and were obliged to skirt along its rocky shores to where we found a brawling and rocky stream entering it, cutting us off. After a moment of vain glancing up and down in search of a ford, we took to the water bravely, floundering among the boulders on the stream's bottom, and supporting ourselves some- what with sticks. Afterwards we found a trail which led away from the lake high over the rocky hillside, where the rocks had been smoothed and laid bare by ancient glaciers, now vanished. Here we found the remnants of a camp, left by some one who had recently gone before us ; we inspected the corned beef cans lying about (iO Til ROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. rather hungrily, thinking that something might have been left over. Our only lunch since leaving Sheep Camp had been a snuiU piece of chocolate and a biscuit. The biscuit ])ossessed certain almost miraculous qualities, to which I as- cribe our success in completing the trip and in ar- rivino: first amono- the travellers at Lake Linde- num. I myself was the concocter of this biscuit, but it was done in a moment of inspiration, and since I have forgotten certain mystic details, it probably could never be gotten together again. It was the first and last time that I have made biscuit in my life, and I did it sim[)ly for the purpose of instruction to the others, who were shockingly ignorant of such practical matters. We had brought a reflector with us for baking, — a metal arrangement which is set up in front of a camp-fire, and, from polished metallic sur- faces, reflects the heat up and down, on to a pan of biscuit or bread, wdiich is slid into the middle. These utensils as used in the Lake Superior region, that home of good wood-craft, are made of sheet iron, tinned ; l)ut thinking to get a lighter article, I had one constructed out of aluminum. This first and last trial with our OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 61 alumimnn reflector at Sheep Camp showed us that one of the peculiar properties of this metal is that it reflects heat but very little, but trans- mits it, almost as readily as glass does light. So when I had arrived at the first stage of my demonstration and had the reflector braced up in front of the fire, I found that the dough re- mained obstinately dough, while the heat passed through the reflector and radiated itself around about Sheep Camp, Still I persisted, and after several hours of stewing in front of the fire, most of the Avater was evaporated from the dough, leaving a compact rubbery grey biscuit, as I termed it. I offered it for lunch and I ate one myself ; no one else did, but I was rewarded by feeling a fullness all through the tramp, while the others were empty and famished. I also was sure that it gave me enormous strength and en- durance ; while some of the rest were unkind enough to suggest that the same high courage Avhich led me up to the biscuit's mouth, figura- tively speaking, kept me plugging away on the Lake Lindeman trail. AYe reached Lake Lindeman at about nine o'clock in the morning, and found Pete and 62 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. Cooper already there. It Avas raining drearily and they had made themselves a shelter of poles and boughs under which they Avere lying con- tentedW enough, waiting until the packers should bring the tents. In a very short time after we had arrived all the natives were at hand, and set- ting down their packs demanded money. They could not be induced to accept bills, because they could not tell the denomination of them, and would as soon take a soap advertisement as a hundred-dollar note ; they dislike gold, because they get so small a quantity of it in comparison with silver. Like the Indians of the United States, the Alaskans formerly used wampum largely as a medium of exchange — small, straight, horn- shaped, rather rare shells, which were strung on thongs — but when the trading companies began shipping porcelain wampum into the country the natives soon learned the trick and stopped the use of it. I have in my possession specimens of this porcelain wampum, which I got from the agent of one of the large trading companies on the Yukon. Silver is now the favorite currenc}'^, whether or not on the Ijasis of sound political OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS. 63 cconoiny ; and each particular section has often a preference for some s|)ecial coin, such as a quarter, (" two bits," as it is called in the lan- guage of the west coast) a half-dollar or a dollar. Alaskan 1m>ians and House. Where the natives have had to deal only with quarters, you cannot buy anything for half-dol- lars, exce})t for nearly double the pi'ice you 64 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. would pay in quarters; wbilo dimes, however large the quantity, would probably be refused entirely. The Chilkoots, however, on account of their residence on the coast and consequent contact with the whites, had become more liberal in their views as regarded denomination of silver, but drew the line at bimetalism, and had no faith whatsoever in the United States as the ful- filler of promises to redeem greenbacks in silver coin. So there was some trouble in paying them satisfactorily ; and after they were paid they came back, begging for a little flour, a little tea, etc., and keeping up the process with unwearied ardor till the supply was definitely shut otf. The toughness of these people is well shown by the fact that when they had rested an hour and had cooked themselves a little food and drunk a little tea, they departed over the trail again for Sheep Camp, although they had made the same journey as the white men, who were all ex- hausted, and had, in addition, carried loads of as high as 1()0 pounds over the whole of the rough trail of thirteen miles. When affairs were settled we pitched our tents, rolled into our blankets, and for the next twenty hours slept. CHAPTER III. THE LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. UPON" reaching Lake Lindeman, we found a number of other parties encamped, — men who had come over the trail before us, and had been delavins' a short time, for different reasons. From one of these parties Pete had been lucky enough to buy a boat already built, so that we did not have to wait and build one ourselves — a job that would have consumed a couple of weeks. The boat was after the dory pattern, but sharp at both ends, made of spruce, lap-streaked and un- painted, with the seams calked and pitched ; about eighteen feet long, and uncovered. Dur- ing the trip later we decided that it ought to be christened, and so we mixed some soot and bacon-grease for paint, applied it hot to the raw, porous wood, and inscribed in shaky letters the words " Sl-ookum Pete^'' as a com})liment to our {)ilot. Sl'ookum is a Chinook word sig- nifying strength, courage, and other excellent 65 66 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. qualities necessary for a native, a frontiersman, or any other dweller in the wilderness — qualities which were conspicuous in Pete. Fete was over- come with shame on reading the legend, how- ever, and straightway erased his name, so that she was simply the Skookum. And skookum she proved herself, in the two thousand miles we afterwards travelled, even though she sprung a leak occasionally or became obstinate when be- ing urged up over a rapid. It may be observed that the Chinook, to which this word belongs, is not a language, but a jargon, composed of words from many native American and also from many European tongues. It sprung up as a sort of universal language, which was used by the traders of the Hudson Bay Company in their intercourse with the natives, and is consequently widely known, but is poor in vocabulary and expression. There were several boats ready to start, craft of all models and grades of workmanship, vari- ously illustrating the efforts of the cowboy, the clerk, or the lawyer, at ship-carpentry. Several of us got off together in the morning, our boat carrying four, and the English traveller's boat LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FOliTV MILE. 67 the same number, for he had taken into his i)arty the priest Avhom we had met on the Scrambler. This gentleman, with a number of miners and a newspaper reporter, had been unlucky enough to fall into the trap of a certain transportation company, w^hich had a very prettily furnished office in Seattle. This office was the big end of the company. As one went north towards the region where the company was supposed to be doing its transportation, it shrunk till nothing- was left but a swindle. They promised for a certain sum of money to transport supplies and outfits over the Pass, and to have the entire ex- pedition in charge of an experienced man, who would relieve one of all worry and bother ; and after transportation across the Pass, to put their passengers on the company's steamers, which would carry them to the gold fields. Even at Juneau the " experienced man " who was to take the party through, and who was a high officer of the company, kept up the ridiculous pretences and succeeded in obtaining a number of pas- sengers for the trip. AVhen these men learned later, however, that the guide had never yet been further than Juneau ; that he had no means (is THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. of transj)ortino' freight over the Pass ; that the steamers existed only in fancy ; and finally, when opportunity to hire help offered, that the leader had no funds, so that they were obliged to do all the work themselves, in order to move along : when they learned all this they were naturally a disgusted set of men, but having now given away their money, most of them de- cided to stick together till the diggings were reached. The priest, however, who was in a hurry, became nervous when he saw different parties leaving the rapid and elegant transporta- tion company in the rear, and effected a separa- tion. When we left Sheep Camp, the manager was trying to cajole his passengers into cari-ying their own packs to the summit, even going so far as to take little loads himself — "just for exercise," as he airily informed us. He was an Englishman, of aristocratic tendencies, with an awe-inspiring- acquaintance with titles. " You know Lord Dud- son Dudley, of course," he would begin, fixing one with his eye as if to hypnotize ; "his sister, you remember', made such a row by her flirtation with Sir Jekson Jekby. — Never heard of them ? — LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY" MILE. 69 lluinph ! " And then with a h^ok which seemed to say " AVhat kind of a bhirsted Philistine is this ? " he woukl retreat to his own camp-tire. We sailed down Lake Lindeman with a fair brisk wind, using our tent-fly braced against a pole, for a sail. The distance is only four or five miles, so that the lower end of the lake was reached in an hour. A mountain sheep was sighted on the hillside above us, soon after start- inff, and a lono--rano-e shot with the rifle was tried at it, but the animal bounded away. At the lower end of this first of the Yukon navigable lakes there is a stream, full of little falls and rapids, which connects with Lake Ben- nett, a much larger body of water. According to Pete, the boat could not run these rapids, so we began the task of " lining " her down. With a long pole shod with iron, especially brought along for such work, Pete stood in the bow or stern, as the emergency called for, planting the pole on the rocks which stuck out of the water and so shoving and steering the boat through an open narrow channel, while we three held a long line and scrambled along the bank or waded in the shallow water. We had put on long rubber boots 70 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. roaching' to the lii[) and sti'a[)pe(l to our belts, so at first (jiir wading was not uncomfortable. On ac- count of the roar of the water we could not hear Pete's orders, but could see his signals to •■' haul in," or "let her go ahead." On one difficult little place he manoeuvered quite a while, getting stuck on a rock, signalling us to pull back, and then try- ing again. Finally he struck the right channel, and motioned energetically to us to go ahead. We spurted forward, waddling clumsily, and the foremost man stepped suddenly into a groove where the water was above his waist. ITgh ! It was icy, but he floundered through, half swim- ming, half ^vading, dragging his great water- filled boots behind him like iron weights ; and the rest followed. We felt quite triumphant and heroic when we emerged, deeming this something of a trial : we did not know that the time would come when it would be the ordinary thing all day long, and would become so monotonous that all feelings of novelty would be lost in a general neutral tint of bad temper and rheumatism. On reaching shallow water the \veight of the water-filh'd i'ul)ber l)oots \vas so great that we could no longer navigate among the sli})})ery LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 71 rocks, SO we took turns going ashore and empty- ing them. There was a smooth round rock with steep sides, glaring in the sun ; on this we stretched ourselves head down, so that the water ran out of our boots and trickled in cold little streams down our backs ; then we returned to our work. Before undertaking to line the Skookum through the rapids we had taken out a large part of the load and put it on shore, in order to lighten the boat, and also to save our " grub " in case our boat was capsized. The next task was to carry this over the half-mile portage. Packing is about the hardest and most disliked work that a pioneer has to do, and yet every one that travels liard and ^vell in Alaska and similar rough countries must do it ad nauseam. In such remote and un- finished parts of the world transportation comes back to the original and simple phase, — carrying- on one's back. The railroad and the steamboat are for civilization, the wheeled vehicle for the inhabited land where there are roads, the camel for the desert, the horse for the plains and where trails have been cut, l)ut for a large part of Alaska Nature's only highways are the rivers, 72 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. and when the water will not cany the burdens the explorer must. In a ])r()perly-constructed pack-sack, the weight is carried partly by the shoulders but mainly by the neck, the back being bent and the neck stretched forward till the load rests upon the back and is kept from slipping by the head strap, which is nearly in line with the rigid neck. An aston- ishing amount can be carried in this way with practice, — for half a mile or so, very nearly one's own Aveight. Getting uj) and down with such a load is a work of art, which s})oils the temper and wrenches the muscles of the beginner. Having got into the strap he finds himself pinned to the ground in spite of his backbone-breaking efforts to rise, so he must learn to so sit down in the be- ginning that he can tilt the load forward on his back, get on his hands and knees and then elevate himself to the necessary standing-stooping pos- ture ; or he must lie down flat and roll over on his face, getting his load fairly between his shoulders, and then work himself up to his hands and knees as before. Sometimes, if the load is heavy, the help of another must be had to get an upright position, and then the packer goes LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 73 trudging oil', red and sweating and with bulging- veins. By the time we had carried our outfits over the portage, we were ready for supper, and after that for a sleep. We pitched no tent — w^e were too tired, and the blue sky and the still shining sun looked very friendly — so we rolled in our blankets and slumbered. There were other craft than ours at Lake Ben- nett, — belonging to parties who had come over before us, and who had not yet started. The most astonishing thing was a small portable sawmill, which had been pulled across the Chil- koot Bass in the winter, over the snow and ice ; and the limited means of communication in this country are well shown by the fact that no news of any such mill was to be had anywhere along the route. Men went over the Chilkoot Bass into the interior, but rarely any came back that way. Among the gold hunters was a solitary Dutch- man, a pathetic, desperate, mild-mannered sort of an adventurer, who had built himself a boat like a woodbox in model and construction, square, lop-sided, and leaky ; but he started 74 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. bravely down Lake Bennett, paddling, ^vith a rag of a square-sail braced against a pole. We pitied, admired, and laughed at him, but many Avere the doubts expressed as to Avhether he could reach the diggings in his cockle-shell. Then there was a large scow, also frailly built ; this contained several tons of outfit, and a party of seven or eight men and one woman. They were the parasites of the mining camp, all ready, with smuggled whisky and faro games — Wein, Weib, und Gesang — to relieve the miners of some of their gold-dust : and I am told that the manager of the expedition brought out $100,000 two years later. AVe all got away, one after the other. There was a stiff fair wind blowing down the lake, which soon increased to a gale, and the waves became very rough. The lake is narrow and fjord-like, walled in by high mountains which often rise directly from the shores. Lakes like this all through Alaska are naturally subject to frequent and violent gales, since the deep mountain valleys form a kind of chimney, up and down which the currents of air rush to the frosty snowy mountains from the warmer low- LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY 311 LE. 75 lands, or in the o})posite direction. The further we went the harder the wind blew, and the rougher became the water, so that when about half-way down we made a landing to escape a heav}^ squall. After dinner, it seemed from our snug little cove that the wind had abated, and we put out again. On getting well away from the sheltering shore we found it rougher than ever ; but while we were at dinner we had seen the scow go past, its square bow nearly buried in foaming water, and had seen it apparently run ashore on the opposite side of the lake, some miles further down. Once out, therefore, we steered for the place where the scow had been beached, for the purpose of giving aid if any were necessary. On the run over we shipped water repeatedly over both bow and stern, and sometimes were in imminent danger of swamp- ing, but b}^ skillful managing we gained the shelter of a little nook about half a mile from the open beach where the scow was lying, and landed. We then walked along the shore to the scow, and found its passengers all right, they having beached voluntarily, on account of the roughness of the water. 76 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. However, we had had enough navigation for one (lay, so we did not venture out again. Pres- ently another little boat came scudding down the lake through the white, frothy water, and shot in alongside the Skookum. It w^as a party of miners — the young Irishman whom I had overtaken on the trail to Sheep Camp, and his three " pardners." It was not an ideal spot where we all camped, being simply a steep rocky slope at the foot of cliffs. When the time came to sleep we had difficulty in finding places smooth enough to lie down comfortably, but finally all were scattered around here and there in various places of con- cealment among the rocks. I had cleared a space close under a big boulder, of exactly my length and breadth (which does not imply any great labor), and with my head muffled in the blankets, was beginning to doze, when I heard stealthy footsteps creeping toward me. As I lay, these sounds were muffled and magnified in the marvellous quiet of the Alaskan night (al- though the sun was still shining), so that I could not judge of the size and the distance of the ani- mal. Soon it got quite close to me, and I could LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 11 iiear it scratching at something ; then it seemed to be investigating my matches, knife and com- pass. Finally, Avide-awake, and somewhat star- tled, I sat up suddenly and threw my blanket from my face, and looked for the marauding animal. I found him — in the shape of a saucy little grey mouse, that stared at me in amaze- ment for a moment, and then scampered into his hole under the boulder. As I had no desire to have the impudent little fellow lunching on me while I slept, I plugged the hole with stones before I lay down again. Some of the same animals came to visit Schrader in his bed- chamber, and nibbled his ears so that they were sore for some time.* As the gale continued all the next day with- out abatement, we profited by the enforced delay to climb the high mountain which rose precipi- tously above us. And apropos of this climb, it is remarkable what difference one finds in the ap- pearance of a bit of country wdien simply sur- veyed from a single point and when actually travelled over. Especially is this true in moun- * A portion of this description is similar to that used bv the writer in an article published in "Outing." 78 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. tains. Broad slopes which appear to be perfectly easy to traverse are in reality cut up by narrow and deep canyons, almost impossible to cross ; what seeins to be a trifling bench of rock, half a mile up the mountain, grows into a perpendicular cliff a hundred feet high before one reaches it ; and pretty grey streaks become gulches filled with great angular rock fragments, so loosely laid one over the otlier that at each careful step one is in fear of starting a mighty avalanche, and of being buried under rock enough to build a city. Owing to difficulties like these it was near supper-time when we gained the top of the main mountain range. As far as the eye could see in all tlirections, there rose a wilderness of barren peaks, covered with snow ; while in one direction lay a desolate, lifeless table-land, shut in by high mountains. Below and near us lay gulches and canyons of magnificent depth, and the blue waters of one of the arms of Lake Bennett ap- peared, just lately free from ice. Above, rose a still higher peak, steep, difficult of access, and covered witli snow; this the lateness of the hour prevented us from attempting to climb. LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY 3IILE. 79 Next day and the next the \vind was as high as ever ; but the waiting finally became too tedious, and we started out, the four miners hav- ing preceded us by a half an hour. Once out of the shelter of the projecting point, we found the gale very strong and the chop disagreeable. We squared off and ran before the wind for the op- posite side of the lake, driving ahead at a good rate under our little rag of a sail. Although the boat was balanced as evenly as possible, every minute or two we would take in water, some- times over the bow, sometimes in the stern, sometimes amidships. I have in my mind a very vivid picture of that scene : Wiborg in the stern, steering intently and carefully ; Goodrich and Schrader forward, sheets in hand, attending to the sail ; and myself stretched flat on my face, in order not to make the boat top-heavy, and bail- ing out the water with a frying-pan. On near- ing the lower shore we noticed that the boat containing the miners had run into the breakers, and presently one of the men came running along the beach, signaling to us. Fearing that they were in trouble, we made shift to land, al- though it was no easy matter on this exposed 80 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. shore ; and we then learned that they had kejit too near tlie beach, had drifted into the breakers and had been swamped, but had all safely landed. Three of our party went to give assist- ance in hauling their boat out of the Avater, while I remained behind to fry the bacon for dinner. After dinner we concluded to wait again be- fore attempting the next stage ; so we picked out soft places in the sand and slumbered. When we awoke we found the lake perfectly smooth and calm, and lost no time in getting under way. On this day we depended for our motive power solely on our oars, and we found the results so satisfactory that we kept up the practice hundreds of miles. Below Lake Bennett came Tagish Lake, beauti- ful and calm. Its largest fjord-like arm is fa- mous for its heavy gales, whence it has been given the name of " Windy Arm " ; but as we passed it we could hardly distinguish the line of division between the mountains in the air and those reflected in the lake, so completel}^ at rest was the water. At the lower part, where we camped, we found the first inhabitants since LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 81 leaving- the coast, natives belonging to the Tag- ish tribe. They are a handful of wretched, half- starved creatures, who scatter in the summer season for hunting and fishing, but always return to this place, where they have constructed rude wooden habitations for winter use. We bought here a large pike, which formed an agreeable change from bacons, beans, and slapjacks. "While camped at this place we met an old man and his tw^o sons, who had brought horses into the country some months before, with some crazy idea of taking up land for farming pur- poses, or of getting gold. The old man had been taken sick, and all three were now on their way out, having abandoned their horses on the Hootalinqua. All three were thin and worn, and agreed if they ever got out of the country they would not come back. The old man begged for a little tea, which we supplied him, together with a few other things ; he insisted on our tak- ing pay for them, with the pathetic pride of a man broken in health and fortune, but we under- stood the pioneer custom well enough to know we should give no offence by refusing. After passing out of this lake we entered an- 82 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. other, a])propriately called 1)}^ the miners " Mud Lake"; it is very shallow, with muddy bottom and shores. Here we found camping disagree- able, for on account of the shallowness we could not bring our heavily laden boat quite to the shore, but were obliged to wade knee deep in soft mud for a rod or two before finding even moderately solid ground. About this time we experienced the first sharp taste of the terrible Alaskan mosquito — or it might be more correct to reverse the statement, and say that the mosquitoes had their first taste of us. At the lower end of Tagish Lake they sud- tlenlv attacked us in swarms, and remained with us steadily until near the time of our departure from the Territory. We had heard several times of the various hardships to be encountered in Alaska, but, as is often the case, we found that these accounts had left a rather unduly magnified image of the difficulties in our imaginations, as compared with our actual experiences. In this generalization the mosquito must be excepted. I do not think that any description or adjective can exaggerate the discomfort and even torture produced by these pests, at their worst, for they LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 83 stand peerless among their kind, so far as niv ex- perience goes, and that of othei-s with whom I have spoken, for wickedness unalloyed. We were driven nearly fi'antic when they at- tacked us and quickly donned veils of netting, fastened around the hat and buttoned into the shirt, and gauntleted cavalry gloves ; but still the heat of rowing and the warmth of the sun made the stings smart till we could hardly bear it. From time to time I glanced at Pete, who sat in the stern, steering with a paddle, his face and hands unprotected, his hat pushed back, trolling his favorite song. " And none was left to tell me, Tom, And few was left to know Who played upon the village green. Just twenty year ago! " I admired him beyond ex})ression. "How long," thought I, " does one have to stay in Alaska before one gets so indifferent to mosquitoes as this ? Or is it simply the })hlegm of the Norwegian — mag- nificent in mosquito time ? " Just then Pete broke in his song and began a refrain of curses in Norwegian and English and some other Ian- 84 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. guages — all apropos of mosquitoes. He averred emphatically that never — no, never — had he seen mosquitoes quite so disagreeable. This lasted about five minutes; then he settled down to a calm again. I perceived that men's tempers may be something like geysers — some keep bubbling hot water continually, while others, like Pete's, keep quiet for a while and then explode violently. It seems strange to many that a country like Alaska, sub-Arctic in climate, should be so bur- dened with a pest wliich we generally associate with hot weather and tropical swamps. But the long warm days of summer in these high lati- tudes seem to be extraordinarily favorable to all kinds of insect life — mosquitoes, gnats, and flies — which harbor in the moss and dense under- brush. Other countries similarly situated, such as the region between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Arctic Ocean — Northern Finland — which is north of the Arctic Circle, are also pestered with mosquitoes during the summer months. In Alaska the mosquitoes are so numerous that they occupy a large part of men's attention, and form the sul)ject for much conversation as long as they remain — and they are astonishing stayers, LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY 3IILE. 85 appearing before the snow is gone and not leav- ing until the nights grow comparatively long and frosty. They flourish as well in cool weather as in hot, thawing cheerfully out after a heavy frost and getting to work as if to make up for lost time. We were able to distinguish at least three species : a large one like those met at the seaside resorts, which buzzes and buzzes and buzzes ; then a smaller one that buzzes a little but also bites ferociously ; and, worst of all, little striped fellows who go about in great crowds. These last never stop to buzz, but come straight for the intruder on a bee-line, stinging him almost before they reach him— and their sting is particularly irritating. Many stories have been told of the mosquitoes in Alaska ; one traveller tells how bears are sometimes killed by these pests, though this story is probably an exag-fi-eration. But men who are travelling DO must have veils and gloves as protection against them. Even the natives wrap their heads in skins or cloth, and are overjoyed at any little piece of mosquito-netting they can get hold of. With the best protection, however, one cannot help being tormented and worn out. 86 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. We always slept witli gloves and veils on, and with our heads wrapped as tightly as })ossible, yet the insects w'ould crawl through the crevices of the blankets and sting through the clothes, or where the veil pressed against the face, — not one, but hundreds — so that one slept but fitfully and woke to find his face bloody and smarting, and would at once make for the cold river water, bathing hands and face to relieve the pain, and dreading to keep his veil up long enough to gobble his breakfast. The climate of this interior country is dry, and the rains infrequent. We worked so long during the day that we seldom took the trouble to pitch a tent at night, but lay down with our backs against some convenient log, so that the mos- quitoes had a good chance at us. Even in the day, when protected by veil and gloves, I have been so irritated by them as to run until l)rcath- less to relieve my excitement, and I can readily believe, as has been told, that a man lost in the underbrush without protection, would very soon lose his reason and his life. As soon as the coun- try is cleared up or burned over, the scourge be- comes much less, so that in the mining camps the LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 87 annoyance is comparatively slight. Mosquitoes are popularly supposed to seek and feed upon men, while the reverse is true. They avoid men, swarming most in thick underbrush and swamps which are difficult of access, and disappearing almost entirely as soon as the axe and the plow and other implements in the hands of man in- vade their solitudes. Out of Mud Lake we floated into the river again, and slipped easily down between the sand- banks. Ducks and geese were plentiful along here, and Ave practised incessantly on them with the rifle, without, however, doing any notice- able execution. On the second day we knew we must be near the famous canyon of the Lewes ; and one of our party was put on watch, in order that we might know its whereabouts be- fore the swift current sliould sweep us into it, all heavily laden as we were. The rest of us rowed and steered, and admired the beauti- ful tints of the hills, which now receded frpm the river, now came close to it. Presently we heard a gentle snore from the lookout who was comfortably settled among the flour sacks in the bow; this proved to us that our confidence had 88 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. been misplaced, and all liands became immedi- ately alert. Soon after, we noticed a bit of red flannel fluttering from a tree projecting over tlie bank, doubtless a part of some traveller's shirt sacrificed in the cause of humanity ; and by tlie time we had pulled in to the shore we could see the waters of the river go swirling and roaring into a sudden narrow canyon with high, per- pendicular walls. We found the parties of miners already landed, and presently, as we waited on the bank and reconnoitered, Danlon's party came up, and not long after, the barge, so that we were about twenty in all.' Wiborg, and Danlon's guide. Cooper, were the only ones that had had ex- perience in this matter, so all depended on their judgment, and waited to see the results of their efforts before risking anything themselves. In former years all travellers made a jjortage around this very difficult place, hauling their boats over the hill with a rude sort of a wind- lass ; but a man having been accidentally sucked into the canyon came out of the other end all right, which emboldened others. In this case Wiborg and Cooper decided that the canyon LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 89 could be run, although the water was very high and turbulent ; and they thought best to run the boats through themselves. Our own boat was selected to be experimented with ; most of the articles that were easily damageable by water were taken out, leaving perhaps about eight hundred pounds. I went as passenger sitting in the bow, while the two old frontiersmen managed paddles and oars. Rowing out from the shore we were immediately sucked into the gorge, and went dashing through at a rate which I thought could not be less than twenty miles an hour. So great is the body of water confined between these perpendicular walls, and so swift is the stream, that its surface becomes convex, being considerably higher in the centre of the channel than on the sides. Waves rushing in every di- rection are also generated, forming a puzzling chop. Two or three of these waves presently boarded us, so that I was thoroughly wet, and then came a broad glare of sunlight as we emerged from the first half of the canyon into a sort of cauldron which lies about in its centre. Here we were twisted about by eddying currents for a few seconds, and then precipitated 90 TlIllOUaH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. half sidewise into the canyon again. The latter half turned out to be the rougher part, and our bow dipped repeatedly into the waves, till I found myself sitting in water, and the bow, where most of the w^ater remained, saoged ^ Do alarmingly. It seemed as if another ducking would sink us. This fortunately we did not get, but steered safely through the final swirl to smooth water. During all this ti'ip I had not looked up once, although as we shot by we heard faintly a cheer from the rocks above, where our companions were. Next day, after a night made almost unbear- able b}^ mosquitoes, we rose to face the difficul- ties of White Horse llapicls, which lie below the canyon proper, and are still more formidable. Here the river contracts again, and is confined between perpendicular walls of basalt. The channel is full of projecting rocks, so that the whole surface is broken, and there are many strong conflicting currents and eddies. At the end of these rapids, which extend for a quarter of a mile or so, is a narrow gorge in the rocks, through which the whole volume of water is forced. This is said to be only twenty or thirty LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY 311 LE. 'Jl feet "wide, although at the time of our passing the water was sufficiently high to flow over the top of the enclosing walls, thus concealing the actual width of the chute. Through this the water plunges at a tremendous velocity— proba- bly tiiirty miles an hour — forming roaring, foam- ing, tossing, lashing waves which somehow make the name White Horse seem appropriate. Above the beginning of the rapid we unloaded our boat, and carefully lowered it down by ropes, keeping it close to the shore, and out of the resistless main current. After having safely landed it, with considerable trouble, below the chute, we carried our outfit (about twelve hun- dred pounds) to the same point. Danlon's boat and that belonging to the miners were safely gotten through in the same way, all hands help- ing in turn. When it came to the scow, it was the general opinion that it would be impossible to lower it safely, for its square shape gave the current such a grip that it seemed as if no available strength of rope or man could hold out against it. As carrying the boat was out of the question, the only alternative was to boldly run it through the 92 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. rapids, in the middle of the channel ; and this naturally hazardous undertaking was rendered more difficult by the frail construction of the scow, which had been built of thin lumber by unskilled hands. The scow's crew did not care to make the venture themselves, but finally pre- vailed upon Wiborg and Cooper to make the trial. Reflecting that at any time I might be placed in similar difficulties, in this unknown countr}'^, and thrown upon my ow^n resources, I resolved to accompany them, for the sake of finding out how the thing was done ; but I was ruled out of active service by Wiborg, who, however, con- sented finally to my going along as passenger. Tw^o of the scow's own crew were drafted to act as oarsmen, and we pushed out, Cooper steering, and Wiborg in the bow, iron-shod pole in hand, fending off from threatening rocks ; and in a second we were dancing down the boiling rapids and tossing hither and thither like a cork. I sat facing the bow, opposite the oarsmen, who tugged frantically away, white as death ; behind me Cooper's paddle flashed and twisted rapidly, as we dodged by rocks projecting from the LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 93 water, sometimes escaping only by a few inches, where a collision would have smashed us to chips. The rest of the party, waiting below the chute, said that sometimes they saw only the bottow of the scow, and sometimes looked down upon it as if from above. As we neared the end, Shooting the White Horse Rapids. Cooper's skillful paddle drove us straight for the centre, where the water formed an actual fall ; this central part was the most turbulent, but the safest, for on either side, a few feet away, there was danger of grazing the shallow underlying 94 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. rocks. As we trembled on the brink, I looked up and saw our friends standing close by, look- ing much concerned. A moment later there was a dizzying plunge, a blinding shower of water, a sudden dashing, too swift for observation, past rock walls, and then Wiborg let out an exultant yell — we were safe. At that instant one of the oarsmen snapped his oar, an accident which would have been serious a moment before. On the shore below the rapids we found flour-sacks, valises, boxes and splintered boards, mementoes of poor fellows less lucky than ourselves. We camped at the mouth of the Tahkeena River that night, and arrived the next day at Lake Labarge, the last and longest of the series. When we reached it, at one o'clock, the water Avas calm and smooth ; and although it was nearly forty miles across, we decided to keep on without stopping till we reached the other side, for fear of strong winds such as had delayed us on Lake Bennett. Danlon's party concluded to do the same, and so we rowed steadily all night, after having rowed all day. About two o'clock in the morning a favorable wind sprung up suddenly, and increased to a LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 95 gale. At this time we became separated from the other boats, which kept somewhat close to the shore, while we, with our tiny sail, stood straight across the lake for the outlet. As soon as we stopped rowing I could not help falling asleep, although much against my will, for our position was neither comfortable nor secure ; and thus I dozed and woke half a dozen times before landing. On reaching the shore we found difficulty in sleeping on account of the swarms of hungry mosquitoes, so we soon loaded up again. We had got caribou meat from some })eople whom we passed half-way down Lake Labarge ; and the next day we saw a moose on an island, but the current swept us by before we could get a shot at him. Large game, on the whole, how- ever, was very scarce along this route. The weather was warm and pleasant after leaving Lake Labarge, and there w^ere no serious obstruc- tions. The swift current bombarded the bottom of the boat with grains of sand, making a sound like a continual frying. " Look out ! " Pete would say. " The devil is frying his fat for us ! " We travelled easily sixty or eighty miles a day, floating with the current and rowing. 9G THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. Danlon's party, which we had lost sight of on Lake Labarge, reached us a couple of days after- wards, having pulled night and day to catch up. They were grey and speckled with fatigue and told us of having decided to leave one boat (they came with only one of the two they had started in) at Lake Labarge, and also of leaving some of their provisions. They had un- fortunately forgotten to keep any sugar — could we lend them some ? We produced the sugar and smiled knowingly ; a few days later we ran across the solitary Dutchman, who had en- gineered his wood-box thus far, and he told us the whole story : how when the boats got near the shore one was swamped in shallow water, losing most of its cargo, and how the occupants had to stand in cold water the rest of the night, finally getting to shore and to rights again. The priest had been naming the camps after the let- ters of the Greek alphabet, and the night on Labarge should have been Camp Rho ; and this was appropriate as we rowed nearly all night. From here the journey was comparatively easy. The skies were always clear and blue, and the stream had by this time increased to a lordly \ LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 97 river, growing larger by continual accessions of new tributaries. It is dotted with many small islands, which are covered with a dense growth of evergreen trees. On the side of the valley are often long smooth terraces, perfectly carved and smoothly grassed, so as to present an almost artificial aspect. From this sort of a country are sudden changes to a more bold and picturesque type, so at one time the river flows swiftly through high gates of purple rock rising steeply for hundreds of feet, and in a few moments more emerges into a wide low valley. The cliffs are sometimes carved into buttresses or pinnacles, which overlook the Avails, and appear to form part of a gigantic and impregnable castle, on the top of which the dead spruces stand out against the sky like spires and flag- staves. Usually on one side or the other of the river is low fertile land, where grows a profusion of shrubs and flowers. In the mellow twilight, which lasts for two or three hours in the middle of the night, one can see nearly as far and as distinctly as by day, but everything takes on an unreal air. This is some- thing like a beautiful sunset effect further south. 98 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. but is evenly distributed over all the landscape. At about ten o'clock the coloring becomes ex- quisite, when the half-light brings out the vio- lets, the purples, and various shades of 3'ellow and brown in the rocks, in contrast to the green of the vegetation. Talking it Over. We had some difficulty in finding suitable camping-places in this country. One night I re- member, we ran fifteen miles after our usual camping-hour, with cliffs on one side of the river LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 99 and low thickets on the other. Three tmies we hmded on small islands, in a tangle of vines and roses ; and as many times we were driven off by the innumerable mosquitoes. At last we found a strip of shore about ten feet wide, between the water and the thickets, sloping at a considerable ano-le: and there we made shift to spend the night. There are two places below the White Horse Rapids where the channel is so narrowed or shallowed that rapids are formed. At the first of these, called the " Five Finger Rapids," the river is partially blocked by high islets, which cut up the stream in several portions, Although the currents in each of these " fingers " is rapid, and the water rough, yet we found no difficulty in running through without removing any part of the load, although one of the boats shijjped a little water. When we arrived at the second place, which is called the " Rink Rapids," and is not far below the Five Fingers, we were re- lieved to find that owing to the fullness of the river, the rough water, which in this case is caused by the shallowing of tlie stream, was smoothed down, and we went through, close to loo THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. the shore, with no more trouble than if we had been floating down a lake. During the whole trip the country through which we passed was singularly lonely and unin- habited. After leaving the few huts on Tagish Lake, which I have mentioned, we saw a few In- dians in a summer camp on Lake Labarge ; and this was all until we got to the junction of the Lewes and Pelly Rivers, over three hundred miles from Tagish Lake. At Pelly we found a log trading-post, with a single white man in charge, and a few Indians. There were also three miners, who had met with misfortune, and were discon- solate enough. They had started up Pelly River with a two 3^ears' outfit, intending to remain and prospect for that period, but at some rapid water their boat had been swamped and all their pro- visions lost. They had managed to burn off logs enough to build a raft, and in that way had floated down the river to the post, living in the meantime on some flour which they had been lucky enough to pick up after the wreck. Although there are very few people in the country, one is continually surprised at first by perceiving solitary white tents standing on some LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 101 prominent point or cliff wliicli overlooks the river. At first this looks very cheerful, and we sent many a hearty hail across the river to such places ; but our calls Avere never answered, for these are not the habitations of the living but of the dead. Inside of each of these tents, which are ordinarily made of white cloth, though sometimes of woven matting, is a dead Indian, and near him is laid his rifle, snowshoes, ornaments and other per- sonal effects. I do not think the custom of leav- ing these articles at the grave implies any belief that they will be used by the dead man in another world, but simply signifies that he will have no more use for the things which were so dear to him in life — just as among ourselves, articles which have been used by dear friends are hence- forth laid aside and no longer used. These dwell- ings of the dead are always put in prominent po- sitions, commanding as broad and fair a view as can be obtained. At Pelly we saw several Indian graves that were surrounded by hewn palings, rudely and fantastically painted. When we reached the White River we found it nearly as broad as the Yukon. The waters of the two rivers are separated by a distinct line at l()-2 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. their confluence and for some distance further down, the Yukon water being- chirk and the other milky, whence the name — White River. All over this country is a thin deposit of white dust-like volcanic ash, covering the surface, but on White River this ash is very thick, and the river flow- ing through it carries away enough to give the waters continually a milky appearance. As we ap[)roached AVhite River we beheld what seemed a most extraordinary cloud hanoin"' over its val- ley. It was a solid compact mass of white, like some great ice-flower rising from the hills, re- minding one as one explored it through field- glasses, in its snowy vastness and unevenness, of some great glacier. The clouds were in rounded bunches and each bunch was crenulated. Below Avas a mass of smoke with a ruddy reflection as if from some great fire, and smaller snowy com- pact clouds came up at intervals, as if gulped out from some crater. This we thought might be the fabled volcano of the White River, but on get- ting nearer it seemed to be probably a forest-fire. Although there are no railway trains to set fires Avith their sparks, nowhere do fires start more easily than in Alaska, for the ground is generally LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 103 covered deep with a peat-like dry moss, which ig- nites when one lights a fire above and smoulders so persistently that it can hardly be extinguished, creeping along under the roots of the living moss and breaking out into flame on opportunity. The Fourth of July was celebrated by shoot- ing at a mark ; and that night we had a true bless- ing, for we camped on a little bare sandspit on an island, where the wind was brisk and kept the mosquitoes away. These insects cannot stand against a breeze, but are whisked aAvay by it like the imps of darkness at the first breath of God's morning light, as we have read in fairy stories. The freedom was delicious, so Ave just stretched ourselves in the sand, and slept ten hours. We were awakened by a violent plunge in the water and stuck our heads out of the blankets in a hurry, thinking it was a moose; but it turned out to be only one of our party celebrating the day after the Fourth l)y a bath. At Sixty Mile we found an Indian trading-post, located on an island in the river, and kept by Jo La Dn, a lonely trader who a year afterwards became rich and famous from his participation in the Klondike rush. lie had no idea of this when 104 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. we saw him, but shook hands with us shyly and silently, a man whom years had made more ac- customed to the Indian than to the white man. The name Sixty Mile is applied to a small river here, which is sixty miles from old Fort Keli- ance, an ancient trading post belonging to the Hudson Bay Company. The hardy and intrepid agents of the company were the first white men to explore the interior of Alaska. The lower Yukon in tlie vicinity of the delta was explored by the Russians in 1835 to 1838, and the river Avas called by the Eskimo name of Kwikpuk or Kwikpak, — the great river : in 1812-3 the Eussian Lieutenant Zagoskin explored as far as the Nowikakat. I>ut the up})er Yukon was first ex- plored by members of the Hudson Bay Company. In 1816 a trader named Bell crossed from the Mackenzie to the Porcupine, and so down to the Yukon, to which he first applied the name by which it is now known : it is an Indian, not Eskimo, word. Previous to this, in 1810, liob- ert Campbell, of the Hudson Bay Com])any, crossed from the Stikeen to the Pelly and so down to its junction with the Lewes or upper Yukon, At the point of the junction Campbell built LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE. 105 Fort Selkirk, which was afterwards pillaged and burned by the Indians, and remained deserted till Harper built the present post, close to the site of the old one. Forty miles below old Fort Reliance is Forty Mile Creek, so that the moutlis of Forty Mile and Sixty Mile are a hundred miles apart. The river by this time is a mile wide in places, and filled with low wooded islands : its water is muddy and the eddying currents give the appear- ance of boiling. We found no one on the site of old Fort Reli- ance, and we used the fragments of the old build- ings lying around in the grass for fire- wood. It was practically broad daylight all night, for al- though the sun went down behind the hills for an hour or two, yet it was never darker than a cloudy day. The day of leaving Fort Reliance we came to the junction of the Klondike or Thronduc River with the Yukon, and found here a village of probably two hundred Indians, but no white men. The Indians were living in log cabins : on the shore numbers of narrow and shallow birch canoes were draw^n up, very graceful and delicate in shape, and marvellously light, weighing only lOG THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. about thirty pounds, but very diflicult for any one but an Indian to manoeuvre. Yet the na- tives spear salmon from these boats. At the time we were there most of the male Indians were stationed along the river, eagerly watching for the first salmon to leaj) out of the water, for about this time of the year the immigration of these fish begins, and they swim up the rivers from the sea thousands of miles, to place their &})awn in some quiet creek. On account of the large number of salmon who turn aside to enter the stream liere, the Indians called it Thron-duc ov Jish-water\ this is now corrupted by the min- ers into Klondike, the Indian village is replaced by the frontier city of Dawson, and the fame of the Klondike is throughout the world. The trip of forty miles from Fort Reliance to Forty Mile Post was made in the morning, and was enlivened by an exciting race between our boat and that belonging to Danlon. A¥e had kept pretty closely together on all our trip, passing and repassing one another, but our boat was gener- ally ahead ; and when we both encamped at Fort Reliance, the other party resolved to outwit us. So they got up early in the morning and slipped Alaska Humpbacked Salmon, Male and Fk.male. 107 108 TIIROUail THE YUKON fiOLD DIGGINGS. away before we were well awake. When we dis- covered that they were gone, Ave got off after them as quickly as possible, but as the current flows about seven miles an hour, and they were row- ing hard besides, they were long out of sight of us. However, we buckled down to hard rowing, each pulling a single oar only, and relieving one another at intervals, tugging away as desper- ately as if something important depended on it. When we were already in sight of Forty Mile Post we spied our opponents' boat about a mile ahead of us, and we soon overhauled them, for they had already spent themselves by hard row- ing. Then Pete knew^ a little channel which led up to the very centre of the cam}), while the oth- ers took the more roundal)Out way, so that we arrived and were quite settled — we assumed a very negligent air, as if we had been there all day — when the otliers arrived. We called this the great Anglo-American boat race and crowed not a little over the finish. CHAPTER ly. THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. pORTYMILE CREEK is the oldest mining ^ camp in the Yukon country, and the first where coarse gold or " gulch diggings " was found. In the fall of 1886 a prospector by the name of Franklin discovered the precious metal near the mouth of what is now called Forty Mile Creek, This stream was put down on the old maps as the Shitando River, but miners are very independ- ent in their nomenclature, and often adopt a new name if the old one does not suit them, pre- ferring a simple term with an evident meaning to the more euphonious ones suggestive of Pullman cars. At the time of the discovery of gold there was a post of the Alaskan Commercial Company at the mouth of the stream, but the trader in charge. Jack McQuesten, was absent in San Fran- cisco. As the supplies at the post were very low, and a rush of miners to the district was anticipated for the next summer, it was thought 109 110 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. best to try to get word to the trader, and (reorge AVilliains undertook to carry out a letter in mid- winter. Accompanied by an Indian, he succeeded in attaining the Chilkoot Pass, but was tliere frozen to death. The letter, however, was car- ried to the post at Dyea by the Indian, and the necessary supplies were sent, thus averting the threatened famine. From 1887 to 1803 the various gulches of Forty Mile Creek were the greatest gold producers of the Yukon country, but by 1893 the supplies of gold began to show exhaustion ; and about tliis time a Russian half- breed, by the name of Pitka, discovered gold in the bars of Birch Creek, some two liundred miles further down the Yukon. A large part of the population of the Forty Mile district rushed to the new diggings and built the mining camp to which they gave the name of Circle City, from its proximity to the Arctic Circle. The Forty Mile district is partly in British and partly in American territory, since the boundary line crosses the stream some dis- tance alcove its mouth, while Birch Creek is en- tirely in American territory. The world-re- THE FORTY BIILE DIGGINGS. Ill nowned Klondike, again, is within British bound- aries. So the tide of mining population has ebbed back and forth in the Yukon country, each wave growing lai'ger than the first, till it culminated in the third of the great world-rushes after gold, exciting, wild and romantic — the Klondike boom, a ti.t successor to the " forty- nine " days of California, and to the events which followed the discovery of gold in Australia. At the time of our visit, in 1896, Forty Mile Post was distinctly on the decline. Yet it con- tained probably 5U0 or GUO inhabitants, not counting the Indians, of whom there were a considerable number. These Indians were called Charley Indians, from their chief Charley. There is a mission near here and the Indians have all been Christianized. It is told that the Tanana Indians, who had no mission, and who came here out of their wild fastnesses only once in a while to trade, did not embrace Christianity, wdiich rather elated Charley's followers, as they considered that they now had decidedly the ad- vantage ; and they openly vaunted of it. In this country at certain times of the year, par- ticularly in the fall, great herds of caribou pass, 112 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. and then one can slaughter as many as he needs for the winter's supply of meat, without much hunting, for the animals select some trail and are not easily scared from it. One fall a herd marched u[) one of the busiest mining gulches of Birch Creek and the miners stood in their cabin doors and shot them. So the Indians ahvays watch as eagerly for the caribou, as they do for the salmon in the summer. But this particular fall it happened that the animals stayed away from the Charley Indians' hunting grounds, but passed through those of the Tananas in force. The heathen then came down to the trading post laden with meat, and the chief, who knew a little English, taunted Charley in it. " Where moose, Charley '? " he asked. " No moose," said Charley. "Woo!" said the Tanana chief, grinning in triumph. " AYhat's the matter with your Jesus ? " The Indians at Forty Mile Post were mostly encamped in tents or were living in rude huts of timber plastered with mud ; while the white men had built houses of logs, unsquared, with the chinks tilled with mud and moss and the THE FORTY 311 LE DIGGINGS. 113 roof covered with similar material. Prices were hifjfh throuo^hout : A lot of land in the middle of the town, say 100 by 150 feet, Avas worth $7,000 or $8,000 ; sugar was worth twenty-five cents a pound and ordinary labor ten dollars a day. All provisions were also very expensive, and the supj)ly was often short. Many common articles, usually reckoned among what the fool- ish call the necessities of life, could not be ob- tained by us. I say foolish, because one can learn from pioneering and exploring, upon how little life can be supported and health and strength maintained, and how many of the sup- posed necessities are really luxuries. The Alaskan Eskimo lives practically on fish alone throughout the year, without salt, without bread, — just fish — and grows fat and oily and of pungent odor. But white men can hardly be- come so simple in their diet without some dan- ger of dying in the course of the experiment, like the famous cow that was trained to go with- out eating, but whose untimely death cut short her career in the first bloom of success. The miners have always been dependent for supplies on steamers from San Francisco or 114 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. Seattle, which have to make a trip of 4,000 miles or more ; ami, in the early days, if any accident occurred, there was no other source. I have heard of a bishop of the Episcopal Church, a missionaiy in this country, who lived all winter upon moose meat, without salt ; and an old miner told me of working all summer on flour alone. When the fall came he shot some caribou, and his description of his sensations on eating his first venison steak were touching. Hardly a winter has passed until very recently when the miners were not put on rations — so many pounds of bacon and so much flour to the man, — to biidge over the time until the steamer should arrive. The winter of l!SSU-90 is known to the old Yukon pioneer as the " starvation winter," for during the previous summer a suc- cession of accidents })revented the river boat from reaching Forty Mile with provisions. The men were finally starved out and in October they all began attempting to make their way down the Yukon, towards St. Michaels, over a thousand miles away, where food was known to be stored, having been landed at this de})ot from ocean steamers. ]S' early a hundred men left the post THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 115 ill small boats. Some travelled the whole dis- tance to St. Michaels, others stopped and wintered by the way at the various miserable trading posts, or in the winter camps of the In- dians themselves, wherever food could be found. It happened that this year the river did not freeze up so early as usual, which favored the flight, though the journey down the lower part of the river was made in running ice. In connection with the shortness of provisions and supplies in these early years, a story is told of a worthless vagabond who used to hang- around Forty Mile Post, and whose hoaxes, in- vented to make money, put the ^vooden nutmeg and the oak ham of Connecticut to shame. There was a dearth of candles one year at the post, and in midwinter, when, for a while, the sun hardly rises at all, that was no trifling priva- tion. The weather was cold, as it always is at Forty Mile in the winter time. The trickster had some candle molds in his possession, but no grease ; so he put the wicks into the molds, Avhich he filled with water colored white with chalk or condensed milk. The water immedi- ately froze solid, making a very close imitation llfi THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. of a candle. He inanufactured a large nuinber and then started around the })ost to peddle tlieni. All bought eagerly — Indian squaws to sew by, miners, shop-keepers, everybody. One man bought a whole case and shoved them under his bed ; when he came to pull them out again to use, he found nothing but the wicks in a pile, the ice having melted and the water having evapo- rated in the warm room. What punishment was meted out to this unique swindler I do not know, but I could not learn that he was ever severely dealt with. The evening of our arrival in Fort}^ Mile Post we were attracted by observing a row of miners, who were lined up in front of the saloon en- gaged in watching the door of a large log cabin opposite, rather dilapidated, with the Avindows broken in. On being questioned, they said there was going to be a dance, but when or how they did not seem to know: all seemed to take only a languid looker-on interest, speaking of the affair lightly and flippantly. Presently more men, however, joined the group and eyed the cabin expectantly. In s})ite of their disclaim- ers they evidently expected to take part, but THE FORTY 51ILE DIGGINGS. 117 where were the fair partners for the mazy waltz ? The evening wore on until ten o'clock, when in the dusk a stolid Indian woman, with a baby in the blanket on her back, came cautiously around the corner, and with the peculiar long slouchy step of her kind, made for the cabin door, looking neither to the right nor to the left. She had no fan, nor yet an opera cloak ; she was not even decollete ; she wore large moccasins on her feet — number twelve, I think, according to the Avhite man's system of measurement — and she had a bright colored handkerchief on her head. She was followed by a dozen others, one far behind the other, each silent and uncon- cerned, and each with a baby upon her back. They sidled into the log cabin and sat down on the benches, where they also deposited their babies in a row : the little red people lay there very still, Avith wide eyes shut or staring, but never crying — Indian babies know that is all foolishness and doesn't do any good. The moth- ers sat awhile looking at the ground in some one spot and then slowly lifted their heads to look at the miners who had slouched into the cabin 118 THROUGH THE YUKON HOLD DIGGINGS. after them — men fresh from the diggings, spoil- ing for excitement of any kind. Then a man witii a dihipidated fiddle struck up a swinging, sawing melody, and in the intoxication of the moment some of the most reckless of the miners grabbed an Indian woman and began furiously swinging her around in a sort of waltz, while the others crowded around and looked on. Little bv little the dusk grew deeper, but candles were scarce and could not be afforded. The figures of the dancing couples grew more and more indistinct and their faces became lost to view, while the sawing of the fiddle grew more and more rapid, and the dancing more ex- cited. There was no noise, however ; scarcely a sound save the fiddle and the shuffling of the feet over the floor of rough hewn logs ; for the Indian women Avere stolid as ever, and the min- ers could not speak the language of their part- ners. Even the lookers-on said nothing, so that these silent dancing fio-ures in tlie dusk made an almost weird effect. One by one, however, the women dropped out, tired, picked up their babies and slouched off home, and the men slipped over to the saloon to THE FORTY 311 LE DIGGINGS. 119 liave a drink before going to their cabins. Surely this squaw-dance, as they call it, was one of the most peculiar balls ever seen. No sound of reveli-y by night, no lights, no flowers, no in- troductions, no conversations. Of all the Muses, Terpsichore the nimble-footed, alone was repre- sented, for surely the nymph who presides over music would have disowned the fiddle. All the diggings in the Forty Mile district were remote from the Post, and to reach them one had to ascend Forty Mile Creek, a rapid stream, for some distance. Pete left us here, and we three concluded to go it alone. Inas- much as we were young and tender, we were overwhelmed with advice of such various and contradictory kinds that we were almost dis- heartened. Every one agreed that it would be impossible to take our boats up the river, that we should take an '' up river " boat, (that is, a boat built long and narrow, with a wide over- hang, so as to make as little friction with the water as possible, and to make upsetting diffi- cult) ; but when we came to inquire we found there was no such boat to be had. We were ad- vised to take half-a-dozen experienced polers, but 120 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. such polers could not be found. Evidently we must either wait the larger part of the summer for our preparations a la mode., or go anyhow ; and this latter we decided to do. We announced our intention at the table of the man whose hospitality we were enjoying. He stared. " You'll lind Forty Mile Creek a hard river to go up," he said, slowly. " Have you had much experience in ascending rivers ? " "• Very little," we replied. " Are you good polers ? " asked another. "•Like the young lady who was asked whether she could play the piano," I answered, " we don't know — we never tried." Everybody roared ; they had been wanting to laugh for some time, and here was their opportunity. Later a guide was offered to us, but we had got on our dignity and refused him ; then he asked to be allowed to accompany us as a passenger, taking his own food, and helping with the boat, and we con- sented to this. He had a claim on the head- waters of Sixty Mile, to which he wished to go back, but could not make the journey u]i the river alone. A year afterwards this ])enniless fellow was one of the lucky men in the Klondike THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 121 rush and came back to civilization with a reputed fortune of $100,000. We could row only a short distance up the creek from the post, for after this the current became so swift that we could make no head- way. We then tied a long line to the bow of the boat, and two of us, walking on the shore, pulled the line, while another stood in the bow and by constant shoving out into the stream, succeeded in overcoming the tendency for the pull of the line to make the boat run into the shore or into such shallow water that it would ground. AVe soon reached the canyon, supposed to be the most difficult place in the creek to pass ; here the stream is very rapid and tumbles foaming over huge boulders which have partially choked it. We towed our boat up through this, however, without much difficult}^, and on the second night camped at the boundary line. Here a gaunt old character, Sam Patch by name, had his cabin. He was famous for his patriotism and his vegetables. His garden was on the steep side of a south-facing hill and was sheltered from the continual frosts which fall in the summer nights, so that it succeeded well. 1-22 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. Foreign vegetables, as well as native plants, thrive luxuriantly in Alaska so long as they can be kept from being- frost-bitten : for in the long- sunshiny summer days they grow twice as fast and big" as they do in more temperate climates. "Sam Patch's potato patch" was famous through- out the diggings, and the surest way to win Sam's heart was to go and inspect and admire it. Sam was always an enthusiastic American, and when the Canadian surveyors surveyed the meridian line which constituted the International boundary, they ran it right through his potato patch ; but he stood by his American flag and refused to haul it down — quite unnecessarily, because no one asked him to do so. The next day we reached the mouth of the little tributary called Moose Creek. From here a trail thirty miles in length leads over the low mountains to the headwaters of Sixty Mile Creek, where several of the richest gulches of the Forty Mile district were located. We beached our boat, therefore, put packs on our backs and started. At this time the days were hot and the mosquitoes vicious, and nearly every night was frosty ; so we sweat and smarted all THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 123 day, and shivered by night, for our blankets were hardly thick enough. We used to remark on rising in the morning that Alaska was a de- lightful country, with temperature to suit every taste; no matter if one liked hot weather or moderate or cold, if he would wait he would get it inside of twenty-four hours. We were tired when we started over the trail, and the journey was not an easy one, for we carried blankets, food, cameras, and other small necessaries. We camped in a small swamp the fii-st night, where the ground was so wet that we were obliged to curl up on the roots of trees, close to the trunks, to keep out of the water. The second day a forest fire blocked our journey, but we made our way through it, treading swiftly over the burning ground and through the thick smoke : then we emerged onto a bare rocky ridge, from which we could look down, on the right, over the net-work of little valleys which feed Forty Mile Creek, and on the other side over the tribu- taries of Sixty Mile Creek, clearly defined as if on a map. The ridge on which we travelled was cut up like the teeth of a saw, so that a large ]iart of our tiuie was spent in climl)ing up and down. 124 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. On the latter part of the second day we found no wood, and at night we coukl hardly prepare food enough to kee}) our stonuichs from sicken- ing. My feet had become raw at the start from hard boots, and ever}^ step was a torture ; yet the boots could not be taken off, for the trail was covered with small sliarp stones, and the packs on our backs pressed heavily downward. The third day we separated, each descending from the mountain ridge into one of the little gulches, in which we could see the white tents or the brown cabins of the miners, with smoke rising here and there. My way led me down a rocky ridge and then abruptly into the valley of Miller C^reek. As I sat down and rested, surveying the little valley well dotted with shanties, two men came climbing up the trail and sat down to chat. They were going to the spot on Forty Mile Creek which we had just left — there was a keg of whisky " cached " there and they had been selected a com- mittee of tw(^ by the miners to escort the afore- said booze into camp. They were alternately doleful at the prospect of the sixty mile tramp and jubilant over the promised whisky, for, as they in- formed us, the camp had been "• dry for some time." THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 125 Descending into the camp where the men were busily working, I stopped to watch them. Gaunt, muscular, sweating, they stood in their long boots in the wet gravel and shovelled it above their heads into " sluice boxes," — a series of long wooden troughs in which a continuous current of water was running. The small material was carried out of the lower end of the sluices by the water. Here and there the big stones choked the current and a man with a long shovel was continuously occupied with cleaning the boxes of such accumulations. Everybody was working intensely. The season is short in Alaska and the claim-owner is generally a hustler ; and men who are paid ten dollars a day for shovelling must jump to earn their money. Strangers were rare on Miller Creek in those days, and everybody stopped a minute to look and answer my greetings politely, but there was no staring, and everybody went on with his work without asking any questions. Men are courteous in rough countries, where each one must travel on his merits and fight his own battles, and where social standing or previous condition of servitude count for nothing. I wandered slowly down 126 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. from claim to claim. They were all working, one below the other, for this was the best part of one of the oldest and richest gulches of the Forty Mile district. One man asked me where I was going to sleep, and on my telling him that I had not thought of it, replied that there were some empty log cabins a little distance below. Further down a tall, dark, mournful man addressed me in broken English, with a Canadian French accent, and put the same ques- tion. " I work on ze night shift to-night," he contin- ued, " so I do not sleep in my bed. You like, you no fin' better, you is very welcome, sair, to sleep in my cabine, in my bed." I accepted gratefully, for I was very tired ; so the Frenchman conducted me to a cabin about six feet square and insisted upon cooking a little supper for me. He was working for day's wages, he answered to my rather blunt questions, but hoped that he would earn enough this summer and the next winter to buy an outfit and enough " grub " to go prospecting for himself, on the Tanana, which had not been ex])lored and where he believed there must be gold ; prospectors get THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 127 very firmly convinced of such things with no real reason. After supper he darkened the windows for me and went to work. I sought the comfort of a Avooden bunk, covering myself with a dirty bed- quilt. It was very ancient and perhaps did not smell sweet, but what did I care ? It was Heaven. The darkness was delicious. I had not known real darkness for so long throughout the summer — always sleeping out of doors in the light of the Alaskan night — that I had felt continually strained and uncomfortable for the lack of it, and this darkened cabin came to me like the sweetest of opiates. When I awoke the Frenchman was preparing breakfast. I had slept some ten hours without moving. There was only one tin plate, one cup, and one knife and fork, and he insisted upon my eating with them, while he stood by and gravely superintended, urging more slapjacks upon me. I suddenly felt ashamed that I had told him neither m}'^ name nor business, for although I had questioned him freely, he had not manifested the slightest curiosity. So without being asked I volunteered some information about myself. He 128 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. listened attentively and politely, l)ut without any great interest. It was quite apparent that the most important thing to him was that I was a stranger. Soon after breakfast I thanked him warmly and went away — I knew enough of miners not to insult him hy offering him money for his hospitality. The night shift of shovellers had given Avay to the day shift, and work was going on as fiercely as ever. The bottoms of all these gulches are covered with roughly stratified shingle, most of which slides down from the steep hillsides of the creek. Among the rocks on the hillsides are many quartz veins, which carry " iron pyrite " or " fool's gold " ; these often contain small specks of real gold. So when all the rubble gets to- gether and is broken up in the bottom of the stream, where the water flows through it, the different materials in the rocks begin to separate one from another, more or less, according to the difference in their weights and the fineness of the fragments into which they are broken. Kow gold is the heaviest of metals, and the result is, that through all this jostling and crowding it gradually works itself down to the bottom of the THE FORTY 311 LE DIGGINGS. 129 heap, and generally quite to the solid rock l^elow. This has been found to be the case nearly every- Avhere. In process of time the gravel accumula- tions become quite thick ; in Miller Creek, for example, they varied from three or four feet at the head of the valley, where I was, to fifty or sixty at the mouth. But all the upper gravels are barren and valueless. "Where the gravels are not deep, they are simply shovelled off and out of the way, till the lower part, where the gold lies, is laid bare ; this work generally takes a year, during which time there is no return for the la;bor. Once the pay gravel — as it is called — is reached, a long wooden trough called a " sluice," is constructed, the current turned through it, and the gravel shovelled in. This work can only be carried on in the summer-time, when the water is not frozen, so that the warm months are the time for hustling, day and night shifts being em- ployed, with as many men on each as can work conveniently together. In case the barren over- lying gravel is very deep, the miners wait until it is frozen and then sink shafts to the pay dirt, which they take out by running tunnels and ex- 130 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. cavating chambers or " stopes " along the bed rock. In this work they do not use Wasting, but build a small fire wherever they wish to pene- trate, and as soon as the gravel thaws they shovel it up and convey it out, meanwhile pushing the fire ahead so that more may thaw out. In this way they accumulate the pay dirt in a heap on the surface, and as soon as warm weather comes they shovel it into the sluices as before. At the time of my visit, the construction of the sluices was a work of considerable labor, for as there was no saw-mill in the country, the boards from which they were made had to be sawed by hand out of felled trees. In the last few of the trough-sections or sluice- boxes, slats are placed, sometimes transverse, sometimes lengthwise, sometimes oblique, some- times crossed, forming a grating — all patterns have nearly the same effect, namely, to catch the gold and the other heav}^ minerals by means of vortexes which are created. Thus behind these slats or " riffles " the gold lodges, while the lighter and barren gravel is swept l;)y the current of water out of the trough, and the heavy stones are thrust out by the shovel of the 132 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS miner. Nearly the same jirocess as that which in nature concentrates gokl at the bottom of the gravels and on top of the bed-rock is adopted by man to cleanse the gold perfectly from the at- tendant valueless minerals. Everybody was hospitable along the gulch. I had five different invitations to dinner, — hearty ones, too — and some were loath to be put off with the plea of previous engagement. They Avere all eager for news from the outside world, from which they had not heard since the fall be- fore ; keenly interested in political developments, at home and abroad. They were intelligent and better informed than the ordinary man, for in the long winter months there is little to do but to sleep and read. They develop also a surpris- ing taste for solid literature ; nearly everywhere Shakespeare seemed to be the favorite author, all nationalities and degrees of education uniting in the general liking. A gulch that had a full set of Shakespeare considered itself in for a rather cozy winter ; and there were regular Shakes- peare clubs, where each miner took a certain character to read. Books of science, and espe- cially philosophy, were also widely sought. It THE FORTY 311 LE DIGGINGS. 133 has been my theory that in conditions like this, where there are not the thousand and one stimuli to fritter away the intellectual energy, the men- tal qualities become stronger and keener and the little that is done is done with surprising vigor and clearness. Down the creek I found a Swede, Avorking over tlie gravels on a claim that had already been washed once. He had turned off the water from the sluice-boxes and was scraping up the residue from among the riffles. Mostly black heavy magnetic iron particles with many spark- ling yellow grains of gold, green hornblendes and ruby-colored garnets. He put all this into a gold pan, (a large shallow steel pan such as used in the first stages of prospecting), and proceeded to " pan out " the gold yet a little more. He immersed the vessel just below the surface of a pool of water, and by skillful twirlings caused the contents to be agitated, and while the heavier particles sank quickly to the bottom, he contin- uously worked off the lighter ones, allowing them to flow out over the edge of the pan. Yet he was very careful that no bit of gold should escape, and when he had carried this process as 134 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. far as he could, he invited me into his cabin to see liim continue tlie separation. Here he spread the " dust " on the table and began blowing it with a small hand-bellows. The garnets, the hornblendes and the fragments of quartz, being lighter than the rest, soon rolled out to one side, leaving only the gold and the magnetic iron. Then with a hand magnet he drew the iron out from the gold, leaving the noble yellow metal nearly pure, in flakes and irregular grains. As the material he had sep- arated still contained some gold, he put this aside to be treated with quicksilver. The quick- silver is poured into the dust, Avhere it forms an amalgam with the gold : it is then strained off, and the amalgam is distilled — the quicksilver is vaporized, leaving the gold behind. This man had his wife with him, a tired, lonely looking woman. I asked her if there were no more women on the creek. She said no; there was another woman over on Glacier Creek, and she wanted so much to see her some- times, but she was not a good woman, so she could not go. She was lonely, she said ; she had been here three 3^ears and had not seen a woman. THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 135 From some of the miners I obtained a pair of Indian moccasins, which I padded well with hay and cloth to make them easy for my dialing feet ; then I slnng my own heavy boots on top of my pack and the next morning bade the gulch good-bye, feeling strengthened from my rest. As I climbed out of the gulch I met the miners who had gone as a committee to escort the whisky, arriving with it, white and speckled with fatigue, speaking huskily, (but not from drinking), yet triumphant. The day was cool and when one is alone one is apt to travel hard ; but the unwonted lightness of my feet and the freedom from pain encouraged me, so I set my Indian moccasins into a regular Indian trot, and by noon had covered the entire fifteen miles that constituted the first half of the journey. This brought me to a locality dignified by the name of the " Half- AV ay House," from a tent-fly of striped drilling left by some one, in which the miners were accustomed to pass the night in their journeys over the trail. Here I found Schrader, who had arrived late the night before and was preparing to make a start. We lighted a fire and made some tea, which with corned '136 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. beef and crackers, made up our lunch. While we were eating, our old companion Pete, with two more miners, came in from the opposite direction to that from which we had come ; he was on his way to visit his old claim on Miller Creek, Afterwards we got away, and kept up a steady Indian trot till we reached our camp on Forty Mile Creek at about six o'clock. We found Goodrich already arrived and wrestling with the cooking, with which he was having tremendously hard luck. This travelling thirty miles in one day, carrying an average of thirty-five pounds, I considered something of an achievement ; but the tiredness which came the next day showed that the energy meant for a long time had been drawn upon. For four days after that we worked our way up Forty Mile Creek, making on an average seven or eight miles a day. Mosquitoes were abundant, and the weather showery. We used the same method of pulling and poling as before, — a laborious process and one calculated to ruin the most angelic disposition. The river Avas very low and consequently full of rapids and THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS. 137 " riffles," as the miners call the shallow places over which the water splashes. On many of these riffles our boat stuck fast, and we drao'o-ed it over the rocks by sheer force, wading out and grasping it by the gunwale. Again, where there "Tkackixg" a Boat Upstukam. were many large boulders piled together in deep water, the 1joat Avould stick upon one, and Ave would be obliged to wade out again and pilot it through by hand, now standing dry upon a high boulder, and now floundering waist deep in the 138 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. cold water at some awkward ste}) — maybe losing temper and scolding our innocent companions for having shoved the boat too violently. We generally worked till late, and began cooking our supper in the dusk — which was now beginning to come — over a camp- tire whose glare dazzled us so that when we tossed our flapjack into the air, preparatory to browning its raw upper side, we often lost sight of it in the gloom, and it sprawled upon the fire, or fell ignomin- iously over the edge of the frying-j>an. Those were awful moments ; no one dared to laugh at the cook then. We took turns at cooking, and patience was the watchword. The cook needed it and much more so, those on whom he prac- ticed. One of our number produced a series of slapjacks once which rivalled my famous Chilkoot biscuit. They were leaden, flabby, wretched. We ate one apiece, and ate nothing else for a week, for, as the woodsmen say, it " stuck to our ribs " wonderfully. " How much baking powder did you put in with the flour ? " we asked the cook. " How should I know ? " he answered, indig- nantly. " What was right, of course." THE FOKTY MILE DIGGINGS. 139 " Did you measure it '? " We persisted, for the slapjack was irritating us inside. "Anybody," replied the cook, with crushing dignity, " who knows anything, knows how much baking powder to put in with flour without measuring it. I just used common sense." So we concluded tliat he had put in too much com- mon sense and not enough baking powder. Just above where the river divides into two nearly equal forks, the water grew so shallow that we could not drag our boat further, so we hauled it up and filled it with green boughs to prevent it from drying and cracking in the sun ; then we built a " cache." It may be best to explain the word " cache," so freely used in Alaska. The term came from the French Canadian voyageurs or trappers ; it is pronounced " cash " and comes from the French cacher, to hide. So a cache is something hidden, and was applied by these woodsmen to hidden supplies and other articles of value, which could not be carried about, being secreted until tlie owners should come that Avay again. In Alaska, when anything was thus left, a high platform of poles was built, supported by the 140 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. trunks of slender trees, and the goods were left on this platform, covered in some way against the ravages of wild animals. To this structure the name " cache " came to be applied ; and later was extended to the storehouses wherein the J I- ^ -^-^ ^f^^sj Ij^^^ jj^T^^^aK^vj^nl^^^^Rp -f g^M BglK ^>^f» i^rjjB||^^^^^^^MK- Unl wi^-<-^^ ''^^^^^mBML-^ ^m ^^^^?^*^ ^^^^hI^HI V^m ^^^^^%Ai|^g|faH^^^I^^^^| '*»'S ^^il^^V'''Mr''~^9|P^^t^^El^HinBl^rel ^ 5Sr^E BJ^HCj^b S^t ^T"" fmP^f'^BBvi iBWI^Bt^^^BHi^^^^^m vt% ' '"w^t^ fMifesUgfy^ '^•^^^^hmm^^^^^bSm^^kB 'i^^i |K^P^; »<, or private houses, I ran across an old savage who was handling an object which immediately attracted my attention ; when he saw my curiosity he explained by signs that it was an apparatus for making tire, and at my re- quest he actually performed the feat. It was 2()(; Tiinouan the yukon gold diggings. the old plan of riibl)iiig two sticks of wood to- gethei-, such as we have often read that savages do; yet I had never known an}^ one who knew exactlv how it was done, although as a boy I had often worn myself out in vain endeavors to make A Native r)ut)iavAY. lire in this way. So far as I know, no one had ever satisfactorily exjilained how the Alaskan natives get their fire, one writer having even supposed that they brought it from volcanoes in the first place ; and from the extraordinary care which they take in preserving hot coals and often in carrying them considei'able distances, S7\ 3IICHAEUS AND SAN FRANCISCO. 267 one does not often see them in the process of ob- taining a new supply. The apparatus which I saw here used was simple and ingenious. In a thoroughly dry stick of spruce were cut a number of little grooves, — this was the wood destined to catch fire. The other piece of wood was a rounded stick of some very hard variety, which the Eskimo told me was picked up in the driftwood along the shore : it was very likely a foreign wood. The point of the hard stick was set upright in one of the grooves of the soft dry piece and by means of a leather thong was made to revolve ra})idly in it, the hard upright piece being kept in place by a stone socket set in a piece of wood, which was held in the mouth of the operator. After vigorously twirling the stick by means of the thong for about a minute the soft wood began to smoke ; a moment afterwards a faint spark was visible. Then the Eskimo stopped revolving the stick and heaping all the fine dust of the soft wood which had Ijeen worn off by the grinding on the spark, and blew it carefully till it grew to larger dimen- sions ; then he placed a blade of dry grass on the spark, and, blowing again, it burst into flame. 2(J8 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. The whole process had histed about three minutes. The old man explained also that in boring' the holes in stone, bone or ivory, they used the same device, emploj'ing a stone drill in- stead of the wooden stick. There was great commotion among the natives at ISt. Michael's the morning after we arrived, and the men all dragged their kayaks into the water and getting into them paddled out into the harbor, wliei'e a number of small whales were seen disporting themselves. When they neared the school the men separated, and when a whale Avould sound they spread themselves out so as to be nearly at the spot where he should come up. Each man had several of the light spears they used for capturing tish ; these weap- ons are perhaps three and a half feet long, and weigh about a pound, the shaft being slender and of light wood and the tip of a barbed piece of bone. To each of these they had fastened by a long thong, as they were paddling out, a blown-up bladder. As soon as a whale rose the Eskimo who happened to be near sent his little spear with great force deeply into its flesh. The wound was of course insignificant, and the ani- ST. MICHAEUS AND SAN FRANCISCO. 269 mal, taking alarm, sank into the water again ; but when alter some time he was forced to re- turn to the surface, he encountered several hunters again, and received several more spears with attached bladders. This time the buoyancy of the bladders made it difficult for him to sink, and he rose soon afterwards, only to be filled with so many spears that the bladders kept him from sinking at all ; then the natives drew near and with all kinds of w^eapons cut and slashed and worried the creature till he finally gave up from loss of blood, and died. Then he was towed ashore amid great excitement and with rejoicing, not only by the hunters, but by the women, children and old men who flocked down to the beach as it came in. The next thing was to cut up and divide the carcass, and this was done thoroughly, every- ■ body in the village coming in for a share. Noth- ing was wasted. Even the blood was carefully saved and divided, and the sinews were given to the women, who would dry and make them into threads for sewing. Soon all the fires in the vil- lage were burning, and the smell of boiling whale-flesh came from many pots, into Avhich •270 THROUGH THE YUKON iWLD DIGGINGS. the women peered expectantly. One old lady whom I noticed doing this showed in her dress some of the etfects of civilization, which is a rare thing with the Eskimo, as they dress by prefer- ence in their squirrel or muskrat-skin parkas ; her flow^ing garment was made of Hour-sacks sewn together, and one might read the legend, inscribed many times and standing in many atti- tudes, that the wearer (presumably) was Anchor Brand. St. Michael's is made up of volcanic rock, and has been lifted from the sea in recent geologic times. The natives know this, and say that they find lines of driftwood marking the ancient limit of the waves, at places far above where the highest water now reaches; on the other hand, they say that the island has been thrice sub- merged since the memory of man. Out of the general swam[)y level of the land around the village rise, further back, broken cones with old craters at their tops ; these were very likely under the level of the sea when they were active. We had time to spend a few days wandering over this country, climbing through the rocky craters, and looking down on the numberless swamp .___^ ■V^. t W:> ''if I f" ." •' '• M 'r^ -'■••> ■<■.' *JI^V f 272 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS. lakes which cover the southeast side of the isUmtl. One day, however, we received sudden word that the steamer on which we had enoaoed o o passage was about to sail, and we hurried on board. That night we were far out on Behring Sea, tossing in a strong wind which soon increased to a terrific gale. We lay several days " hove to " in this gale, with oil casks over the bows to break the great waves which threatened more than once to smash us and often seemed about to roll us over and over. Finally, however, it quieted enough to let the seasick ones drop asleep, while the sailors made things taut again, and before long we were in harbor at the island of Ilnalaska — one of the great chain of Aleutian islands which reaches from America to Asia, and the chief stopping point for nearly all boats between the Yukon mouth and the coast of the United States proper. Unalaska is a country of chaoti- cally wild scenery. The streams in turn meander over level benches and then tumble in waterfalls over steep cliffs to the next bench, and so on till they reach the sea ; such a cataract we saw on the right as we entered the harbor. ST. BIICHAEUS AND SAN FRANCISCO. 273 In the village here we found the Aleuts semi- civilized from their long contact with white men, for here the Russians held direct control long before the territory was sold to the United States ; they live in neat w^ooden houses, and if one peeps in by night he may even see here and there lace curtains and rocking-chairs. Seventeen days after leaving St. Michael's we finally reached San Francisco. It was a clear, fine Sunday when we passed through the Golden Gate, tingling with excitement which we had felt since seeing the first land on the California coast. The sight of the multitude of houses on the hillside, the smoke of the cit}^ the craft of all kinds going back and forth, had in it some- thing very strange and discomposing for us. It was only when the ship was at the dock, and Ave had gone ashore, that we realized, from the way the curious crowd formed a circle around us and stared in open-mouthed wonder, that our appear- ance was unusual for a city. We had not taken much baggage through the Yukon country, and our camp clothes were very shabby. None of us had had opportunity to have hair and beard trimmed since we left — with the result that we 274 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGIA'GS. had a mane reaching to the shoulders and fierce bushy buccaneer wliiskers, inches deep all around. Two of us wore ancient high leather boots and the third wore a kind of moccasin. We all had heavy " maLckinaw " trousers of blanket-cloth, with belted coats of the same material, while coarse flannel shirts and dilapidated felt hats, burned with the sparks of many a camp-fire and seamed with the creases of many a night's sleep, completed our costume. Finding the attention of the crowd embarrass- ing, we took a carriage for the Grand Hotel, and as we were driving through the streets I noticed that if one so much as caught a glimpse of our faces through the carriage window, he would turn and stare after the cab till it was out of sight. It was Sunday afternoon, and the streets were filled with smartly dressed men and women. For our part, the sight of all this correct and con- ventional dressing made a disagreeable impression on us, after so long a period of free and easy life ; the white collars and cuffs of the men, in par- ticular, obtruded themselves on my attention and irritated me. We had left our " store clothes " in Seattle and ST. iVICHAEUS AND SAN FRANCISCO. 275 had to telegraph to get them. It took a couple of days for this, and in the meantime we had only to wait. We had been looking forward to going to the theatre as soon as we should arrive in San Francisco, and when our clothes did not arrive, were disappointed, till we suddenly braced up in defiance of the whole city, and said, "Let's go anyhow." We had not had time to get our hair and beard trimmed, and our costume was in all respects the same as when we left Circle City, but we sallied out bravely. We were late at the theatre, and the play had already begun ; it was a popular one, and the only seats left were some in the " bald-headed " row. Although we had by this time the idea forced on us that our appearance was unusual, we were by no means prepared for the commotion which we brought about, as we walked up the broad aisle to our seats. There was a hum and a sizzle of whispers throughout the house, which changed to laughter and exclamations ; and the actors on the stage, catching sight of us, got "rattled" and forgot to go on. Up in the pea- nut gallery the gods began to indulge in catcalls and make personal inquiries. We hurried to our 276 THROUGH THE YUKON GOLD DIGGINGS seats to escape this storm, and meeting an usher thrust our tickets into liis hand. He looked at us with a puzzled air and a broad grin, as if he thought it all some huge joke, but we were get- ting nerv6us, and gave him a glare which made him indicate our seats for us. The audience evidently believed we were part of the show ; many were standing by this time, waiting to see what the next would be, but after a while the buzz subsided and the play went on. There was a constant current of conversation about us, how- ever ; behind us a young fellow was excitedly asking his companion " Who are they, who are they?" "Don't know," said the other. " h^ail- ors, I guess." After a while we felt like returning to the solitude of our hotel rooms ; the play, too, did not please us, so in the middle of an act we got up, and having remarked very audibly "Disis a rotten show," we went. As we started down the aisle the commotion grew louder than ever, and we slipped quickly out and down a side street. FINIS. OCT 1? y^^^