Klondike

“ He and his fellows were bound for the Klondike goldfields. Before them lay adventures, toil, and danger; the adventurous will ever draw the tributes of goodwill from the multitude staying at home.
The air was chill and damp; and the increased speed of the steamer as she passed from the harbour accentuated the effect of the breeze that blew against her, so that Berwick felt cold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The crude moral worth of the Klondike woman might be all that her two defenders had alleged, and indeed I felt again that strange little thrill of almost sympathy for her as one who had been unjustly aspersed. But I could only resolve that I would be no party to any unfair plan of opposing her. The Honourable George must be saved from her trifling as well as from her serious designs, if such she might have; but so far as I could influence the process it should cause as little chagrin as possible to the offender. This much the Mixer and my charwoman had achieved with me. ”

“ The Klondike was throwing a thick flow of ice, partly mush and partly solid, and swept the boat out towards the middle of the Yukon. They could see the struggle plainly from the bank,—four men standing up and poling a way through the jarring cakes. A Yukon stove aboard was sending up a trailing pillar of blue smoke, and, as the boat drew closer, they could see a woman in the stern working the long steering-sweep. At sight of this there was a snap and sparkle in Jacob Welse's eyes. It was the first omen, and it was good, he thought. She was still a Welse; a struggler and a fighter. ”

“ George met one Australian whose sentiments were so pronounced that he quickly [Pg 235] closed with him; and as the recruit knew several others in the library, the agitation made good progress.
It was agreed by the reformers and the new recruits that they should all meet later in the day at Lookout Point, which was the angle of the Klondike Bluffs, where the valley of the Klondike met that of the Yukon. In later years a seat and a flag-staff were erected there, and it became a favourite trysting-place for young men and maidens engaged in another quest than that of gold. ”

“ It had been a little thing in itself, but it meant much to a woman playing a desperate single-hand in the equally desperate Klondike rush of ’97. Men were occupied with their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of women playing, single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter. “If I was a man, I know what I would do.” Thus reiterated Molly, she of the flashing eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of five American-born generations.
In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the Yukon stove and piled on fresh fuel. ”

“ CHAPTER III KATRINE'S NEIGHBOURS
Good Luck Row was a little row of small, insignificant cabins towards the back of the city, and at right angles to the direction of the main street. Dawson faces the Yukon, and its main thoroughfare lies parallel with the river. In the summer, when the Yukon and the Klondike, that joins it just above, are free, the waters of the two rivers united come rolling by in jubilant majesty, tossing loose blocks of ice, the remnants of their winter chains, on their swelling tide. ”

“ It is scarcely possible to exaggerate it. That teeming town at the mouth of the Klondike set a pace in libertinism that has never been equalled.
I would divide its population into three classes: the sporting fraternity, whose business it was to despoil and betray; the business men, drawn more or less into the vortex of dissipation; the miners from the creeks, the Man with the Poke, here to-day, gone, to-morrow, and of them all the most worthy of respect. He was the prop and mainstay of the town. It was like a vast trap set to catch him. He would "blow in" brimming with health and high spirits ”

“ In their visionary leaps to affluence they soared to giddy heights. They strutted and bragged as if the millions were already theirs. To hear them, you would think they had an exclusive option on the treasure-troves of the Klondike. Yet, before and behind us, were dozens of similar vessels, bearing just as eager a mob of fortune-hunters, all drawn irresistibly northward by the Golden Magnet. ”

“ I wished tha'd been to th' Klondike. I want to be towd about it,” he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a place in it.
“That theer's Dawson,” he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the frequent passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over with special curiosity.
“There's gowd-moines theer,” revealed Tummas. “An' theer's welly newt else but snow an' ice. A young chap as set out fro' here to get theer froze to death on th' way.” ”

“ The Klondike, in spite of its isolated position, brought together miners and adventurers from all parts of the world, and it is greatly to the credit of the Canadian government and of the mounted police, who were entrusted with the keeping of order, that life and property were as safe as elsewhere and that no lawless methods were adopted by the miners as in placer mining camps in the western United States. ”

“ The Klondike itself, whose upper waters are as yet only imperfectly known, seemingly carries but little gold, the main quantity of the precious metal and that which has made the region famous being contributed by one of its southern arms, the Bonanza, and by a tributary of this, the Eldorado. Hunker Creek, draining a mountainous district several miles to the eastward of the Bonanza, and like it a southern affluent of the Klondike, finds promise of a wealth but little if at all inferior to that of the Bonanza. ”

“ If the pace had been a killing one for their dogs, the one they now set themselves was no less so. But they were racing for a million dollars and great honour in Yukon Country. The only outside impression that came to Smoke on that last mad stretch was one of astonishment that there should be so many people in the Klondike. ”

“ But for five whole days he plunged the land in wailing and sorrow, and for five whole days he was the only man in the Klondike. The country gave him its best of bed and board. The saloons granted him the freedom of their bars. Men sought him continuously. The high officials bowed down to him for further information, and he was feasted at the Barracks by Constantine and his brother officers. And then, one day, Devereaux, the government courier, halted his tired dogs before the gold commissioner’s office. Dead? Who said so? Give him a moose steak and he’d show them how dead he was. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ I noticed that he spoke of the Klondike in the archaic vernacular, calling it the Reindeer River—a conceited custom that the Old Timers employ against the che-chaquas and all tenderfeet in general. But he did it so naively and as such a matter of course, that there was no sting, and I forgave him. He also had it in view, he said, before he crossed the divide into the Yukon, to make a little run up Fort o’ Good Hope way.
Now Fort o’ Good Hope is a far journey to the north, over and beyond the Circle, in a place where the feet of few men have trod ”

“ WAS THE DISGUSTED COMMENT OF FRANK.
"All the same we must be near the spot where the gold was hidden, and I believe we can find it by searching."
"We may, but the chances are a hundred to one against it. How strange that those two men carried no firearms!"
It has been shown that the Klondike country is not one of dangerous weapons, because it is well governed, and the necessity, therefore, does not exist for men to go about armed. ”

“ DISCOVERY CLAIM ON BONANZA OF THE KLONDIKE.
The Klondike is a large stream, about like Elk River of West Virginia, rising two hundred miles eastward in the Rockies, where the summer’s melting snow gives it a large flow of water. The valley is broad—a mile or more. The hills are rolling and rounded, black soil, broad flats of small firs and birches. Bonanza Creek, on which Skookum Jim and “Dawson Charlie” and the white man, discovered the first gold in 1897, has proved the richest placer mining patch of ground the world has ever known. ”

“ With his ring on my finger I could not defy him and swear his claim to be false the dream of a man maddened by his experiences in the Klondike. It must come off. Then, perhaps, I should feel myself a free woman. ”

“ But Mary cut him off. Seizing the day's paper from the kitchen table, she flourished it savagely under her aged progenitor's nose.
"What do those Klondikers say? There it is in cold print. Only the young and robust can stand the Klondike. It's worse than the north pole. And they've left their dead a-plenty there themselves. Look at their pictures. You're forty years older 'n the oldest of them."
John Tarwater did look, but his eyes strayed to other photographs on the highly sensational front page. ”

“ Oh! if I had never come on this terrible trip! I don't even know where we are going, and I'm afraid, afraid."
"No, little girl."
"Yes, I can't tell you how afraid I am. The country's so savage and lonely; the men are so like brute beasts; the women—well, they're worse. And here are we in the midst of it. I don't know what's going to become of us."
"Well, Berna, if it's like that, why don't you and your grandfather turn back? Why go on?"
"He will never turn back. He'll go on till he dies. He only knows one word of English and that's Klondike, Klondike. He mutters it a thousand times a day. ”

“ By 1898, sixty thousand men were on the Klondike and all their fortunes and affairs rocked back and forth and were affected by the battles Daylight fought. And more and more the taste for the larger game urged in Daylight's mouth. Here he was already locked in grapples with the great Guggenhammers, and winning, fiercely winning. Possibly the severest struggle was waged on Ophir, the veriest of moose-pastures, whose low-grade dirt was valuable only because of its vastness. The ownership of a block of seven claims in the heart of it gave Daylight his grip and they could not come to terms. ”

“ Recollection of the fevered days of his old Klondike exploits flooded his brain. He was thirty-five, healthy, and—if he had just made the blunder of his life—an engine of dynamic energy and resource. He called his house, and Cecelia answered. ”

“ The burnished halo of early romance has always clung to her. At the time of the gold excitement and [Pg 89] the rush to the Klondike, the town revived suddenly with the reopening of navigation on the Stikine. This was, at first, a favorite route to the Klondike. At White Horse may to-day be seen steamers which were built on the Stikine in 1898, floated by piecemeal up that river and across Lake Teslin, and down the Hootalinqua River to the Yukon, having been packed by horses the many intervening miles between rivers and lakes, at fifty cents a pound. ”

“ 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. ”