Klondike Gold Rush

“ Those who have seen the Alaska gold say it is very bright, and brassy in color, but not as fine in quality as the California gold.
The stories of these enormous fortunes have set the Californian and Northwestern towns in a fever of excitement. A tremendous rush is being made for the Klondike. Men are leaving good employment and hurrying off to the gold-fields. Professional men (lawyers and doctors) , business men, merchants, clerks, and laborers are all joining in the mad rush for the land of gold. ”

“ At this time many of the journals of civilization in the East, repeating the warnings that they persistently threw out following the discovery of gold in the Klondike, jealously guarded the secrets of the earth by doubting, or even denying, the claims to discovery, but, withal, wisely counseling against that haphazard and purseless rush which is one of the invariable accompaniments of gold announcements. ”

“ Hugh then cracked the whip, re-harnessed himself in the cord, and grasped the gee-pole.
"Mush," he ordered. The five dogs strained at the traces, taking quick, furtive glances over their shoulders at the man with the whip. The load [Pg 50] moved; the march towards the great and golden Klondike had started.
Early as they were they saw, as they reached the main street, others on the trail; and up the long avenue heading north between the great mountains horse-teams, dog-teams, and men unaided were drawing their loads. The wind was roaring down the pass, cutting their faces like a knife. ”

“ Frank and I will try our chances again, and George can stay here and watch you 'live happy ever afterwards.'"
John frowned; his mind reverted to his "Mission." He believed that his duty was to the great portion of the Klondike's population whom Poo-Bah and the system of grafters had wronged. He refused even yet to recognize the game was up.
"Our people——" he began.
"Our people are mostly down the river striking for God's country, where there ain't no yellow-legs, and a shot-gun holds down your claim!"
"Frank is right," interposed Hugh, "our whole big following has gone." ”

“ John was thoughtful for a time. They were looking at him. "I don't [Pg 323] know what I shall do if you and Frank desert me," sighed John.
"Get married and settle down," Frank said bluntly.
"You'll do all right," interposed Hugh, "you and George got record for two claims on the left limit of Bonanza working out your quartz proposition right against discovery. Well, this is Chechacho Hill, now reckoned amongst the richest ground in all the Klondike. You and George don't need to worry about Poo-Bah and Dominion Creek hillsides, nor your daily bread, no more. ”

“ During the following winter the more important economic results were thrown into popular form for immediate publication. It is no exaggeration to state that, had it been possible to give to the public a year earlier the information obtained during this first season, i. e., before the Klondike rush began, hundreds of thousands of dollars might have been saved: first, by directing the inland travel along the best routes, and, second, by furnishing a clew to the general distribution of the placer gold. ”

“ The rush to the far-away territory of Alaska, when gold in large quantities was discovered upon Klondike Creek, was somewhat similar to the rush to California in years gone by. The gold fever spread to even the remotest of our hamlets, and men, young and old, poured forth, ready to endure every hardship if only the much-coveted prize might be secured. ”

“ The Yukon placer goldmines are producing more gold than any other placer mines in the world, and since the wonderful Klondike rush in 1897, when 60,000 people sought this far-away northern country, gold to the value of $100,000,000 has been taken out. ”

“ He borrowed the craft and began poling up-stream towards the mouth of the Klondike.
He had noted that the site of Five Ace's labour was very near the river, so that when he passed the spot he could have stepped on the tools with which the convict worked.
A labourer toiling with pick and shovel first loosens the soil with the pick and then uses the shovel. The astute mind of Long Shorty conceived that if he dropped the paper close to where the hand of the toiler, as he grasped the shovel, would be, events would work out—as they did. ”

“ John Muggsley was still shaking his fist vociferously in the faces of his listeners as the party returned from deck to seek their beds.
"Good-night, you fellows. Glad I met you. My name's Hugh Spencer," the stranger said, as he settled in his cot.
"The same to you!" answered the others.
The freemasonry of the gold-seeker holds throughout the world, and its handshake is honest. Three gold-seekers have been introduced to the reader in this chapter; and these pages will tell something of what befell them in what was probably the most spectacular gold-rush in the history of the world. ”

“ I'm going to supply the outfit, and they're going to dig the gold. Exploit, or be exploited. Care to come in with us, Stornaway? Anything you like to put up, you know...."
He could not persuade me to come and help him exploit, nor could he save Bannerman from being exploited, but the enterprise as he saw and planned it was a giant success even in the history of gold-rushes. I believe Aylmer Lancing supplied the capital; Grayle reached Klondike a week after the rush had begun and only came east when it was starkly not worth his while to be left with a month's stores on his hands ”

“ The other two were drowned in a rapid."
"Poor fellows! That will do, Sergeant."
Smoothbore was left to his recollections and general musings. [Pg 242]
"Gold, gold—the price that is paid for it! Fifty thousand men in this stampede; two hundred and fifty thousand people affected; homes devastated; affections torn asunder! Hundreds dead by scurvy or drowning; thousands with constitutions wrecked! The gold is not worth the candle, with the Trusts betrayed and morals twisted! It is not worth it. Look at this little Yukon district, remote from the world. Our genesis was of gold ”

“ It was over there, just under the bluff, that Carmack made discovery. He found a bunch of high-grade pay in the creek bottom and worked it out; and then he had to go twenty feet through the muck to bed-rock before he got the real thing. Now, how did the gold get on top of the muck where Carmack first found it? There has not been a good-sized colour found above bed-rock on any other claim on the creek. ”

“ It is ever the way in gold rushes. No wonder the man who had advised them to "keep on going till they struck St. Michael's" had said it was a disease!
They passed on down the Bonanza trail; soon the majority of the people met were other than the stampeders. The stampeders were in the crowd, but the bulk were those engaged in the ordinary economic development of Bonanza.
They passed from the Valley of Bonanza, after each had contributed the usual twenty-five cents [Pg 205] to the coffers of Poo-Bah. Here they were but a mile or two from Dawson, and the flood of stampeders had passed. ”

“ I tell you if you try to figure where gold in this country comes from, you'll go bughouse before you find out. Gold is where you find it. It's a blooming conundrum. Take me; I came up here and could have staked in on Eldorado. Well, I couldn't find a colour in the creek; but what I could see was a sign stuck up [Pg 168] readin', 'This creek is reserved for Swedes and Moose.' Now, I weren't a Swede, and I sure weren't a Moose! So I passes her up. What happens? Why, a lot of fools take her up and she's the richest ground in the country. ”

“ They all looked into each other's eyes. Hugh gritted his teeth as he thought of Poo-Bah. [Pg 190] If there was any extent of this gravel it constituted a fortune—yes, very little of this ground meant wealth. How much of it would there be? Was this gold of Dominion Creek pay-streak? He did not know: the great thing about mining is, you never know.
John's shaft found bed-rock at twenty-two feet, where he got a good five dollars to the pan. Frank jabbered; the others said but little.
It was late in the afternoon when the pan of dirt from John's shaft was tried. After supper Hugh took a stroll. ”

“ The Klondike Free State!" shouted a man. The crowd took up the cry. Chaos reigned.
John Berwick, who had pushed his way through the crowd, sprang upon the bar beside Joseph Andrews the orator. He raised his hand for silence.
[Pg 214]
CHAPTER XXIII REVOLUTION
"Is a man's life to be mere existence—breathing, and the eating of food with hours of repose; or is it to be striving after some ideal, whether of ambition or duty? Strife, surely! Man spends his life in toil; the results of his labour represent his life. Imagine for one moment that we are standing upon Dawson's Dome." ”

“ The history of the Klondike gold-fields has so often been told that I shall not weary the reader by going over old ground: how George Cormack made his lucky strike on Bonanza Creek, taking out £240 of gold in a couple of days from a spot which, with proper appliances, would have yielded £1000, or how the steamship Excelsior arrived in San Francisco one July day in 1897 with half a million dollars and thirty old timers whose tales of a land gorged with gold were almost universally discredited. ”

“ Gold is practically the only economic product of the Klondike, though small amounts of tin ore occur, and lignite coal has been mined lower down on the Yukon. The source of the gold seems to have been small stringers of quartz in the siliceous and sericitic schists which form the bed rock of much of the region, and no important quartz veins have been discovered; so that unlike most other placer regions the Klondike has not developed lode mines to continue the production of gold when the gravels are exhausted. ”

“ In the Klondike district are a number of rivers flowing eastward from the Yukon. In all of these gold has been found. The Stewart River, which lies south of the Klondike, has been found to be as rich in gold as the Klondike, and it is confidently asserted that the Alaskan side of this region is as rich in gold as the British Columbian. ”

“ From the Pacific Ocean on up to the Arctic Ocean there’s gold. In every stream and river, as well as the land between them, this precious metal is found in either particles or in nuggets. Take the Klondike! it’s not much larger than the Rat River here and yet so much gold was found there its name became known all over the world. Every river in Alaska and the Yukon, I suppose, is just as rich but you don’t hear much about them because the Klondike was the first and so outshone all the rest. We’ll get ours yet, don’t worry,” said Jack hopefully. ”

“ But they held on until they came to bed-rock, where the gold was so rich that their claim paid them about two million dollars. Unlike Anderson and Gates, this man invested his money in real estate in Seattle.
All sorts of characters came to the Klondike in the early days. With such types as the Lucky Swede, Swift-Water Bill, and Frank Slavin, the prize fighter, came business and professional men from all parts of the United States. Joaquin Miller came to mine gold and write poetry and newspaper articles. ”

“ Then I left the laundry and wrote all the time, and lived and dreamed again. After three months’ trial I gave up writing, having decided that I was a failure, and left for the Klondike to prospect for gold. At the end of the year, owing to the outbreak of scurvy, I was compelled to come out, and on the homeward journey of 1,900 miles in an open boat made the only notes of the trip. It was in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. You get your true perspective. ”

“ On June 16, 1897, a small ship called the Excelsior sailed into San Francisco Harbor, and half an hour after she had landed at her wharf the news was spreading far and wide that gold had been discovered in large quantities on the Klondike. Some of the men had gone out years before; some only a few months earlier, but they all brought back fortunes. Not one had left with less than $5,000 in gold, gathered in nuggets or flakes, in tin cans, canvas bags, wooden boxes, or wrapped up in paper. ”

“ Behind Dude was Two Bits; then came Four Bits, Tom and Jerry. Beginning with Two Bits, he gave each a cut with the whip, causing heart-rending howls; but Dude stood throughout the ordeal, evidently oblivious to the sufferings of his companions; his tongue protruding. He was a picture of conscious virtue. Dude knew these signs of the trail, the stern, hard life, the cut of the whip, the cry of the dog. ”

“ William Van Stooten, the mining engineer and metallurgist, gives his views in the New York Herald as to the necessary outfit required by miners contemplating a trip to the Klondyke diggings. He says:
"I should place the minimum amount at $600. It would not be safe to start out with less. But you had better make it a thousand if possible, for with the present rush it is likely that prices will be trebled or even quadrupled. Even the Indians will charge more for their assistance. ”

“ To-day most of the Klondike gold is recovered by machinery in large-scale workings, but now and then one sees a miner washing the gravel by hand in a contrivance like this. Some of the miners, instead of moving on to new scenes of action when the gold began to give out, have stayed on with their families, working a few acres of land and occasionally panning out a little gold. ”

“ Now-a-days it is easier to reach the Klondike mines 115 than it was a few years ago, but the country is cold and dreary and most of the food must be brought from a distance, so that few white children have found their way there. Yet as they sit in their cosy homes, they are glad to listen to the stories of that wild country, told to them by the brave men who have been to the Klondike gold regions. ”