作者：Ladue, Joseph
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Klondyke Nuggets A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest试读：
PREFACE.
The extraordinary excitement arising from the reports of the discovery of Gold in the Klondyke region in the great Canadian Northwest is not surprising to one who, through personal residence and practical experience, is thoroughly conversant with the locality.
Having recently returned for a temporary stay, after a somewhat successful experience, I have received applications for information in numbers so great that it far exceeds my ability and the time at my disposal to make direct replies.
I have therefore arranged with the American Technical Book Co., 45 Vesey Street, New York City, for the issue of this brief description, preparatory to the publication of my larger book, "Klondyke Facts," a book of 224 pages, with illustrations and maps, in which will be found a vast fund of practical information, statistics, and all particulars sought for by those who intend emigrating to this wonderful country.
It is well-nigh impossible to tell the truth of these recent discoveries of gold, but while I can only briefly describe the territory in this small work, it shall be my endeavor to give the intending prospector, in the large work above mentioned, as many facts as possible, and these may thoroughly be relied upon, as from one who has lived continuously in those regions since 1882.CHAPTER I.KLONDYKE.
Klondyke! The word and place that has startled the civilized world is to-day a series of thriving mining camps on the Yukon River and its tributaries in the Canadian Northwest Territories.
Prior to August 24, 1896, this section of the country had never been heard of. It was on this day that a man named Henderson discovered the first gold.
On the first day of the following month the writer commenced erecting the first house in this region and called the place Dawson City, now the central point of the mining camps.
Dawson City is now the most important point in the new mining regions. Its population in June, 1897; exceeded 4,000; by June next it cannot be less than 25,000. It has a saw-mill, stores, churches, of the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Roman Catholic denominations. It is the headquarters of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police, and perfect law and order is maintained.
It is at Dawson City that the prospector files his claims with theGovernment Gold Commissioner, in the recording offices.
Dawson City faces on one of the banks of the Yukon River, and now occupies about a mile of the bank. It is at the junction of the Klondyke River with the Yukon River. It is here where the most valuable mining claims are being operated on a scale of profit that the world has hitherto never known. The entire country surrounding is teeming with mineral wealth.
Copper, silver and coal can be found in large quantities, but little or no attention is now being paid to these valuable minerals, as every one is engaged in gold-hunting and working the extraordinary placer mining claims already located.
The entire section is given up to placer mining. Very few claims had been filed for quartz mining. The fields of gold will not be exhausted in the near future. No man can tell what the end will be. From January to April, 1897, about $4,000,000 were taken out of the few placer claims then being worked. This was done in a territory not exceeding forty square miles. All these claims are located on Klondyke River and the little tributaries emptying into it, and the districts are known as Big Bonanza, Gold Bottom and Honker.
I have asked old and experienced miners at Dawson City who mined through California in Bonanza days, and some who mined in Australia, what they thought of the Klondyke region, and their reply has invariably been, "The world never saw so vast and rich a find of gold as we are working now."
Dawson City is destined to be the greatest mining camp in the history of mining operations.CHAPTER II.KLONDYKE FACTS.
There is a great popular error in reference to the climate of the gold regions. Many reports have appeared in the newspapers which are misleading. It has been even stated that the cold is excessive almost throughout the year. This is entirely a mis-statement.
I have found I have suffered more from winter cold in Northern New York than I ever did in Alaska or the Canadian Northwest.
I have chopped wood in my shirt-sleeves in front of my door at Dawson City when the thermometer was 70 degrees below zero, and I suffered no inconvenience. We account for this from the fact that the air is very dry. It is a fact that you do not feel this low temperature as much as you would 15 below zero in the East.
We usually have about three feet of snow in winter and it is as dry as sawdust.
As we have no winter thaws no crust forms on the snow, therefore we travel from the various points that may be necessary with snowshoes. These may be purchased from the Indians in the vicinity of Dawson City at from $5.00 to $10.00 per pair according to the quality.
The winter days are very short. In this region there are only two hours from sunrise to sunset. The sun rises and sets away in the south but there is no pitch darkness.
The twilight lasts all night and the Northern Lights are very common. Then in summer it is exactly the other way. The day there in July is about twenty hours long. The sun rising and setting in the north. A great deal has been said about the short seasons, but as a matter of fact a miner can work 12 months in the year when in that region.
Spring opens about May 1st and the ice commences to break up about that time. The Yukon River is generally clear of ice about May 15. The best part of the miner's work commences then and lasts till about October 1st.
The winter commences in October but the miner keeps on working through the winter. The rainy season commences in the latter part of August and lasts two or three weeks.
A fall of two feet of snow is considered heavy.
There is a wide difference in the quantity of snow that accumulates on the coast and the ranges in the interior where the principal mining claims are located.
While the fall of snow on the coast is heavy the depth of snow as far down as the Yukon, Stewart and Klondyke rivers is inconsiderable.
In my new work on this territory entitled "Klondyke Facts" I deal more largely on the climate of this region.
There are still good diggings at Circle City in Alaska, but nearly all the miners have left for Klondyke, not being satisfied with the pay dirt which they were working. I know at least 20 good claims in Circle City.
Fort Cudahy, or as it is sometimes called Forty Mile Creek, is now practically exhausted as a mining camp, and the miners have left for other diggings.
There will undoubtedly be new and valuable diggings discovered very quickly along this region as it is certain that this enormous territory is rich in gold-bearing districts.
The entire country is teeming with mineral wealth.
When mining operations commence on coal it will be specially valuable for steamers on the various rivers and greatly assist transportation facilities.
In the next few years there will certainly be recorded the most marvellous discoveries in this territory, usually thought to be only a land of snow and ice and fit only to be classed with the Arctic regions.
It is marvellous to state that for some years past we have been finding gold in occasional places in this territory, but from the poverty of the people no effort was made to prospect among the places reported.
It is my belief that the greatest finds of gold will be made in this territory. It is safe to say that not 2 per cent. of all the gold discovered so far has been on United States soil.
The great mass of the work has been done on the Northwest territory, which is under the Canadian Government.
It is possible however that further discoveries will be made on American soil, but it is my opinion that the most valuable discoveries will be further east and south of the present claims, and would advise prospectors to work east and south of Klondyke.THE YUKON RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
"What the Amazon is to South America, the Mississippi to the central portion of the United States, the Yukon is to Alaska. It is a great inland highway, which will make it possible for the explorer to penetrate the mysterious fastnesses of that still unknown region. The Yukon has its source in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and the Coast Range Mountains in southeastern Alaska, about 125 miles from the city of Juneau, which is the present metropolis of Alaska. But it is only known as the Yukon River at the point where the Pelly River, the branch that heads in British Columbia, meets with the Lewes River, which heads in southeastern Alaska. This point of confluence is at Fort Selkirk, in the Northwest Territory, about 125 miles south-east of the Klondyke. The Yukon proper is 2,044 miles in length. From Fort Selkirk it flows north-west 400 miles, just touching the Arctic circle; thence southward for a distance of 1,600 miles, where it empties into Behring Sea. It drains more than 600,000 square miles of territory, and discharges one-third more water into Behring Sea than does the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. At its mouth it is sixty miles wide. About 1,500 miles inland it widens out from one to ten miles. A thousand islands send the channel in as many different directions. Only natives who are thoroughly familiar with the river are entrusted with the piloting of boats up the stream during the season of low water. Even at the season of high water it is still so shallow as not to be navigable anywhere by seagoing vessels, but only by flat-bottomed boats with a carrying capacity of four to five hundred tons. The draft of steamers on the Yukon should not exceed three and a half feet.
"The Yukon district, which is within the jurisdiction of the Canadian Government and in which the bulk of the gold has been found, has a total area, approximately, of 192,000 square miles, of which 150,768 square miles are included in the watershed of the Yukon. Illustrating this, so that it may appeal with definiteness to the reader, it may be said that this territory is greater by 71,100 square miles than the area of Great Britain, and is nearly three times that of all the New England States combined.
"A further fact must be borne in mind. The Yukon River is absolutely closed to navigation during the winter months. In the winter the frost-king asserts his dominion and locks up all approaches with impenetrable ice, and the summer is of the briefest. It endures only for twelve to fourteen weeks, from about the first of June to the middle of September. Then an unending panorama of extraordinary picturesqueness is unfolded to the voyager. The banks are fringed with flowers, carpeted with the all-pervading moss or tundra. Birds countless in numbers and of infinite variety in plumage, sing out a welcome from every treetop. Pitch your tent where you will in midsummer, a bed of roses, a clump of poppies and a bunch of bluebells will adorn your camping. But high above this paradise of almost tropical exuberance giant glaciers sleep in the summit of the mountain wall, which rises up from a bed of roses. By September everything is changed. The bed of roses has disappeared before the icy breath of the winter king, which sends the thermometer down sometimes to seventy degrees below freezing point. The birds fly to the southland and the bear to his sleeping chamber in the mountains. Every stream becomes a sheet of ice, mountain and valley alike are covered with snow till the following May.
"That part of the basin of the Yukon in which gold in greater or less quantities has actually been found lies partly in Alaska and partly in British territory. It covers an area of some 50,000 square miles. But so far the infinitely richest spot lies some one hundred miles east of the American boundary, in the region drained by the Klondyke and its tributaries. This is some three hundred miles by river from Circle City.
"We have described some of the beauties of the Yukon basin in the summer season, but this radiant picture has its obverse side.
"Horseflies, gnats and mosquitoes add to the joys of living throughout the entire length of the Yukon valley. The horsefly is larger and more poignantly assertive than the insect which we know by that name. In dressing or undressing, it has a pleasant habit of detecting any bare spot in the body and biting out a piece of flesh, leaving a wound which a few days later looks like an incipient boil. Schwatka reports that one of his party, so bitten was completely disabled for a week. 'At the moment of infliction.' he adds, 'it was hard to believe that one was not disabled for life.'
"The mosquitoes according to the same authority are equally distressing. They are especially fond of cattle, but without any reciprocity of affection. 'According to the general terms of the survival of the fittest and the growth of muscles most used to the detriment of others,' says the lieutenant in an unusual burst of humor, 'a band of cattle inhabiting this district, in the far future, would be all tail and no body, unless the mosquitoes should experience a change of numbers.'"
I am indebted to Wm. Ogilvie, Esq., for the following valuable information relative to The Yukon District.
"The Yukon District comprises, speaking generally, that part of the Northwest Territories lying west of the water shed of the Mackenzie River; most of it is drained by the Yukon River and its tributaries. It covers a distance of about 650 miles along the river from the coast range of mountains.
"In 1848 Campbell established Fort Selkirk at the confluence of the Pelly and Lewes Rivers; it was plundered and destroyed in 1852 by the Coast Indians, and only the ruins now exist of what was at one time the most important post of the Hudson's Bay Company to the west of the Rocky Mountains in the far north. In 1869 the Hudson's Bay Company's officer was expelled from Fort Yukon by the United States Government, they haying ascertained by astronomical observations that the post was not located in British territory. The officer thereupon ascended the Porcupine to a point which was supposed to be within British jurisdiction, where he established Rampart House; but in 1890 Mr. J.H. Turner of the United States Coast Survey found it to be 20 miles within the lines of the United States. Consequently in 1891 the post was moved 20 miles further up the river to be within British territory.
"The next people to enter the country for trading purposes were Messrs. Harper and McQuestion. They have been trading in the country since 1873 and have occupied numerous posts all along the river, the greater number of which have been abandoned. Mr. Harper is now located as a trader at Fort Selkirk, with Mr. Joseph Ladue under the firm name of Harper & Ladue, and Mr. McQuestion is in the employ of the Alaska Commercial Company at Circle City, which is the distributing point for the vast regions surrounding Birch Creek, Alaska. In 1882 a number of miners entered the Yukon country by the Taiya Pass; it is still the only route used to any extent by the miners, and is shorter than the other passes though not the lowest. In 1883 Lieutenant Schwatka crossed this same pass and descended the Lewes and Yukon Rivers to the ocean.
"The explorers found that in proximity to the boundary line there existed extensive and valuable placer gold mines, in which even then as many as three hundred miners were at work. Mr. Ogilvie determined, by a series of lunar observations, the point at which the Yukon River is intersected by the 141st meridian, and marked the same on the ground. He also determined and marked the point at which the western affluent of the Yukon, known as Forty Mile Creek, is crossed by the same meridian line, that point being situated at a distance of about twenty-three miles from the mouth of the creek. This survey proved that the place which had been selected as the most convenient, owing to the physical conformation of the region, from which to distribute the supplies imported for the various mining camps, and from which to conduct the other business incident to the mining operations—a place situate at the confluence of the Forty Mile Creek and the Yukon, and to which the name of Fort Cudahy has been given—is well within Canadian territory. The greater proportion of the mines then being worked Mr. Ogilvie found to be on the Canadian side of the international boundary line, but he reported the existence of some mining fields to the south, the exact position of which with respect to the boundary he did not have the opportunity to fix.
"The number of persons engaged in mining in the locality mentioned has steadily increased year by year since the date of Mr. Ogilvie's survey, and it is estimated that at the commencement of the past season not less than one thousand men were so employed. Incident to this mineral development there must follow a corresponding growth in the volume of business of all descriptions, particularly the importation of dutiable goods, and the occupation of tracts of the public lands for mining purposes which according to the mining regulations are subject to the payment of certain prescribed dues and charges. The Alaska Commercial Company, for many years subsequent to the retirement of the Hudson's Bay Company, had a practical monopoly of the trade of the Yukon, carrying into the country and delivering at various points along the river, without regard to the international boundary line or the customs laws and regulations of Canada, such articles of commerce as were required for the prosecution of the fur trade and latterly of placer mining, these being the only two existing industries. With the discovery of gold, however, came the organization of a competing company known as the North American Transportation and Trading Company, having its headquarters in Chicago and its chief trading and distributing post at Cudahy. This company has been engaged in this trade for over three years, and during the past season despatched two ocean steamers from San Francisco to St. Michael, at the mouth of the Yukon, the merchandise from which was, at the last mentioned point, transhipped into river steamers and carried to points inland, but chiefly to the company's distributing centre within Canadian territory. Importations of considerable value, consisting of the immediately requisite supplies of the miners, and their tools, also reach the Canadian portion of the Yukon District from Juneau, in the United States, by way of the Taiya Inlet, the mountain passes, and the chain of waterways leading therefrom to Cudahy. Upon none of these importations had any duty been collected, except a sum of $3,248.80 paid to Inspector Constantine in 1894, by the North American Transportation and Trading Company and others, and it is safe to conclude, especially when it is remembered that the country produces none of the articles consumed within it except fresh meat, that a large revenue was being lost to the public exchequer under the then existing conditions.
"For the purpose of ascertaining officially and authoritatively the condition of affairs to which the correspondence referred to in the next preceding paragraph relates, the Honorable the President of the Privy Council, during the spring of 1894, despatched Inspector Charles Constantine, of the Northwest Mounted Police Force, accompanied by Sergeant Brown, to Fort Cudahy and the mining camps in its vicinity. The report made by Mr. Constantine on his return, established the substantial accuracy of the representations already referred to. The value of the total output of gold for the season of 1894 he estimated at $300,000.
"The facts recited clearly establish—first, that the time had arrived when it became the duty of the Government of Canada to make more efficient provision for the maintenance of order, the enforcement of the laws, and the administration of justice in the Yukon country, especially in that section of it in which placer mining for gold is being prosecuted upon such an extensive scale, situated near to the boundary separating the Northwest Territories from the possessions of the United States in Alaska; and, second, that while such measures as were necessary to that end were called for in the interests of humanity, and particularly for the security and safety of the lives and property of the Canadian subjects of Her Majesty resident in that country who are engaged in legitimate business pursuits, it was evident that the revenue justly due to the Government of Canada, under its customs, excise and land laws, and which would go a long way to pay the expenses of government, was being lost for the want of adequate machinery for its collection.
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