“where the northern lights come down a’ nights to dance on the houseless snow.”
“ivan, i forbid you to go farther in this undertaking. not a word about this, or we are all undone. let the americans and the english know that we have gold in these mountains, then we are ruined. they will rush in on us by thousands, and crowd us to the wall — to the death.”
so spoke the old russian governor, baranov, at sitka, in 1804, to one of his slavonian hunters, who had just drawn from his pocket a handful of golden nuggets. full well baranov, fur trader and autocrat, understood and feared the coming of the sturdy, indomitable gold hunters of anglo–saxon stock. and thus he suppressed the news, as did the governors that followed him, so that when the united states bought alaska in 1867, she bought it for its furs and fisheries, without a thought of its treasures underground.
no sooner, however, had alaska become american soil than thousands of our adventurers were afoot and afloat for the north. they were the men of “the days of gold,” the men of california, fraser, cassiar, and cariboo. with the mysterious, infinite faith of the prospector, they believed that the gold streak, which ran through the americas from cape horn to california, did not “peter out” in british columbia. that it extended farther north, was their creed, and “farther north” became their cry. no time was lost, and in the early seventies, leaving the treadwell and the silver bow basin to be discovered by those who came after, they went plunging on into the white unknown. north, farther north, they struggled, till their picks rang in the frozen beaches of the arctic ocean, and they shivered by driftwood fires on the ruby sands of nome.
but first, in order that this colossal adventure may be fully grasped, the recentness and the remoteness of alaska must be emphasized. the interior of alaska and the contiguous canadian territory was a vast wilderness. its hundreds of thousands of square miles were as dark and chartless as darkest africa. in 1847, when the first hudson bay company agents crossed over the rockies from the mackenzie to poach on the preserves of the russian bear, they thought that the yukon flowed north and emptied into the arctic ocean. hundreds of miles below, however, were the outposts of the russian traders. they, in turn, did not know where the yukon had its source, and it was not till later that russ and saxon learned that it was the same mighty stream they were occupying. and a little over ten years later, frederick whymper voyaged up the great bend to fort yukon under the arctic circle.
from fort to fort, from york factory on hudson’s bay to fort yukon in alaska, the english traders transported their goods — a round trip requiring from a year to a year and a half. it was one of their deserters, in 1867, escaping down the yukon to bering sea, who was the first white man to make the north-west passage by land from the atlantic to the pacific. it was at this time that the first accurate description of a fair portion of the yukon was given by dr. w. h. ball, of the smithsonian institution. but even he had never seen its source, and it was not given him to appreciate the marvel of that great natural highway.
no more remarkable river in this one particular is there in the world; taking its rise in crater lake, thirty miles from the ocean, the yukon flows for twenty-five hundred miles, through the heart of the continent, ere it empties into the sea. a portage of thirty miles, and then a highway for traffic one tenth the girth of the earth!
as late as 1869, frederick whymper, fellow of the royal geographical society, stated on hearsay that the chilcat indians were believed occasionally to make a short portage across the coast range from salt water to the head-reaches of the yukon. but it remained for a gold hunter, questing north, ever north, to be first of all white men to cross the terrible chilcoot pass, and tap the yukon at its head. this happened only the other day, but the man has become a dim legendary hero. holt was his name, and already the mists of antiquity have wrapped about the time of his passage. 1872, 1874, and 1878 are the dates variously given — a confusion which time will never clear.
holt penetrated as far as the hootalinqua, and on his return to the coast reported coarse gold. the next recorded adventurer is one edward bean, who in 1880 headed a party of twenty-five miners from sitka into the uncharted land. and in the same year, other parties (now forgotten, for who remembers or ever hears the wanderings of the gold hunters?) crossed the pass, built boats out of the standing timber, and drifted down the yukon and farther north.
and then, for a quarter of a century, the unknown and unsung heroes grappled with the frost, and groped for the gold they were sure lay somewhere among the shadows of the pole. in the struggle with the terrifying and pitiless natural forces, they returned to the primitive, garmenting themselves in the skins of wild beasts, and covering their feet with the walrus mucluc and the moosehide moccasin. they forgot the world and its ways, as the world had forgotten them; killed their meat as they found it; feasted in plenty and starved in famine, and searched unceasingly for the yellow lure. they crisscrossed the land in every direction, threaded countless unmapped rivers in precarious birch-bark canoes, and with snowshoes and dogs broke trail through thousands of miles of silent white, where man had never been. they struggled on, under the aurora borealis or the midnight sun, through temperatures that ranged from one hundred degrees above zero to eighty degrees below, living, in the grim humour of the land, on “rabbit tracks and salmon bellies.”
to-day, a man may wander away from the trail for a hundred days, and just as he is congratulating himself that at last he is treading virgin soil, he will come upon some ancient and dilapidated cabin, and forget his disappointment in wonder at the man who reared the logs. still, if one wanders from the trail far enough and deviously enough, he may chance upon a few thousand square miles which he may have all to himself. on the other hand, no matter how far and how deviously he may wander, the possibility always remains that he may stumble, not alone upon a deserted cabin, but upon an occupied one.
as an instance of this, and of the vastness of the land, no better case need be cited than that of harry maxwell. an able seaman, hailing from new bedford, massachusetts, his ship, the brig fannie e. lee, was pinched in the arctic ice. passing from whaleship to whaleship, he eventually turned up at point barrow in the summer of 1880. he was north of the northland, and from this point of vantage he determined to pull south of the interior in search of gold. across the mountains from fort macpherson, and a couple of hundred miles eastward from the mackenzie, he built a cabin and established his headquarters. and here, for nineteen continuous years, he hunted his living and prospected. he ranged from the never opening ice to the north as far south as the great slave lake. here he met warburton pike, the author and explorer — an incident he now looks back upon as chief among the few incidents of his solitary life.
when this sailor-miner had accumulated $20,000 worth of dust he concluded that civilization was good enough for him, and proceeded “to pull for the outside.” from the mackenzie he went up the little peel to its headwaters, found a pass through the mountains, nearly starved to death on his way across to the porcupine hills, and eventually came out on the yukon river, where he learned for the first time of the yukon gold hunters and their discoveries. yet for twenty years they had been working there, his next-door neighbours, virtually, in a land of such great spaces. at victoria, british columbia, previous to his going east over the canadian pacific (the existence of which he had just learned), he pregnantly remarked that he had faith in the mackenzie watershed, and that he was going back after he had taken in the world’s fair and got a whiff or two of civilization.
faith! it may or may not remove mountains, but it has certainly made the northland. no christian martyr ever possessed greater faith than did the pioneers of alaska. they never doubted the bleak and barren land. those who came remained, and more ever came. they could not leave. they “knew” the gold was there, and they persisted. somehow, the romance of the land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go. man after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for good. but the following spring always found him drifting down the yukon on the tail of the ice jams.
jack mcquestion aptly vindicates the grip of the north. after a residence of thirty years he insists that the climate is delightful, and declares that whenever he makes a trip to the states he is afflicted with home-sickness. needless to say, the north still has him and will keep tight hold of him until he dies. in fact, for him to die elsewhere would be inartistic and insincere. of three of the “pioneer” pioneers, jack mcquestion alone survives. in 1871, from one to seven years before holt went over chilcoot, in the company of al mayo and arthur harper, mcquestion came into the yukon from the north-west over the hudson bay company route from the mackenzie to fort yukon. the names of these three men, as their lives, are bound up in the history of the country, and so long as there be histories and charts, that long will the mayo and mcquestion rivers and the harper and ladue town site of dawson be remembered. as an agent of the alaska commercial company, in 1873, mcquestion built fort reliance, six miles below the klondike river. in 1898 the writer met jack mcquestion at minook, on the lower yukon. the old pioneer, though grizzled, was hale and hearty, and as optimistic as when he first journeyed into the land along the path of the circle. and no man more beloved is there in all the north. there will be great sadness there when his soul goes questing on over the last divide —“farther north,” perhaps — who can tell?
frank dinsmore is a fair sample of the men who made the yukon country. a yankee, born, in auburn, maine, the wanderlust early laid him by the heels, and at sixteen he was heading west on the trail that led “farther north.” he prospected in the black hills, montana, and in the coeur d’alene, then heard a whisper of the north, and went up to juneau on the alaskan panhandle. but the north still whispered, and more insistently, and he could not rest till he went over chilcoot, and down into the mysterious silent land. this was in 1882, and he went down the chain of lakes, down the yukon, up the pelly, and tried his luck on the bars of mcmillan river. in the fall, a perambulating skeleton, he came back over the pass in a blizzard, with a rag of shirt, tattered overalls, and a handful of raw flour.
but he was unafraid. that winter he worked for a grubstake in juneau, and the next spring found the heels of his moccasins turned towards salt water and his face toward chilcoot. this was repeated the next spring, and the following spring, and the spring after that, until, in 1885, he went over the pass for good. there was to be no return for him until he found the gold he sought.
the years came and went, but he remained true to his resolve. for eleven long years, with snow-shoe and canoe, pickaxe and gold-pan, he wrote out his life on the face of the land. upper yukon, middle yukon, lower yukon — he prospected faithfully and well. his bed was anywhere. winter or summer he carried neither tent nor stove, and his six-pound sleeping-robe of arctic hare was the warmest covering he was ever known to possess. rabbit tracks and salmon bellies were his diet with a vengeance, for he depended largely on his rifle and fishing-tackle. his endurance equalled his courage. on a wager he lifted thirteen fifty-pound sacks of flour and walked off with them. winding up a seven-hundred-mile trip on the ice with a forty-mile run, he came into camp at six o’clock in the evening and found a “squaw dance” under way. he should have been exhausted. anyway, his muclucs were frozen stiff. but he kicked them off and danced all night in stocking-feet.
at the last fortune came to him. the quest was ended, and he gathered up his gold and pulled for the outside. and his own end was as fitting as that of his quest. illness came upon him down in san francisco, and his splendid life ebbed slowly out as he sat in his big easy-chair, in the commercial hotel, the “yukoner’s home.” the doctors came, discussed, consulted, the while he matured more plans of northland adventure; for the north still gripped him and would not let him go. he grew weaker day by day, but each day he said, “to-morrow i’ll be all right.” other old-timers, “out on furlough,”, came to see him. they wiped their eyes and swore under their breaths, then entered and talked largely and jovially about going in with him over the trail when spring came. but there in the big easy-chair it was that his long trail ended, and the life passed out of him still fixed on “farther north.”
from the time of the first white man, famine loomed black and gloomy over the land. it was chronic with the indians and eskimos; it became chronic with the gold hunters. it was ever present, and so it came about that life was commonly expressed in terms of “grub”— was measured by cups of flour. each winter, eight months long, the heroes of the frost faced starvation. it became the custom, as fall drew on, for partners to cut the cards or draw straws to determine which should hit the hazardous trail for salt water, and which should remain and endure the hazardous darkness of the arctic night.
there was never food enough to winter the whole population. the a. c. company worked hard to freight up the grub, but the gold hunters came faster and dared more audaciously. when the a. c. company added a new stern-wheeler to its fleet, men said, “now we shall have plenty.” but more gold hunters poured in over the passes to the south, more voyageurs and fur traders forced a way through the rockies from the east, more seal hunters and coast adventurers poled up from bering sea on the west, more sailors deserted from the whale-ships to the north, and they all starved together in right brotherly fashion. more steamers were added, but the tide of prospectors welled always in advance. then the n. a. t. & t. company came upon the scene, and both companies added steadily to their fleets. but it was the same old story; famine would not depart. in fact, famine grew with the population, till, in the winter of 1897–1898, the united states government was forced to equip a reindeer relief expedition. as of old, that winter partners cut the cards and drew straws, and remained or pulled for salt water as chance decided. they were wise of old time, and had learned never to figure on relief expeditions. they had heard of such things, but no mortal man of them had ever laid eyes on one.
the hard luck of other mining countries pales into insignificance before the hard luck of the north. and as for the hardship, it cannot be conveyed by printed page or word of mouth. no man may know who has not undergone. and those who have undergone, out of their knowledge, claim that in the making of the world god grew tired, and when he came to the last barrowload, “just dumped it anyhow,” and that was how alaska happened to be. while no adequate conception of the life can be given to the stay-at-home, yet the men themselves sometimes give a clue to its rigours. one old minook miner testified thus: “haven’t you noticed the expression on the faces of us fellows? you can tell a new-comer the minute you see him; he looks alive, enthusiastic, perhaps jolly. we old miners are always grave, unless were drinking.”
another old-timer, out of the bitterness of a “home-mood,” imagined himself a martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth. “there are the continents,” he indicated; “and up there near the polar cap is a country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called alaska. now, in other countries and states there are great insane asylums, but, though crowded, they are insufficient; so there is alaska given over to the worst cases. now and then some poor insane creature comes to his senses in those awful solitudes, and, in wondering joy, escapes from the land and hastens back to his home. but most cases are incurable. they just suffer along, poor devils, forgetting their former life quite, or recalling it like a dream.” again the grip of the north, which will not let one go — for “most cases are incurable.”
for a quarter of a century the battle with frost and famine went on. the very severity of the struggle with nature seemed to make the gold hunters kindly toward one another. the latch-string was always out, and the open hand was the order of the day. distrust was unknown, and it was no hyperbole for a man to take the last shirt off his back for a comrade. most significant of all, perhaps, in this connection, was the custom of the old days, that when august the first came around, the prospectors who had failed to locate “pay dirt” were permitted to go upon the ground of their more fortunate comrades and take out enough for the next year’s grub-stake.
in 1885 rich bar-washing was done on the stewart river, and in 1886 cassiar bar was struck just below the mouth of the hootalinqua. it was at this time that the first moderate strike was made on forty mile creek, so called because it was judged to be that distance below fort reliance of jack mcquestion fame. a prospector named williams started for the outside with dogs and indians to carry the news, but suffered such hardship on the summit of chilcoot that he was carried dying into the store of captain john healy at dyea. but he had brought the news through —coarse gold! within three months more than two hundred miners had passed in over chilcoot, stampeding for forty mile. find followed find — sixty mile, miller, glacier, birch, franklin, and the koyokuk. but they were all moderate discoveries, and the miners still dreamed and searched for the fabled stream, “too much gold,” where gold was so plentiful that gravel had to be shovelled into the sluice-boxes in order to wash it.
and all the time the northland was preparing to play its own huge joke. it was a great joke, albeit an exceeding bitter one, and it has led the old-timers to believe that the land is left in darkness the better part of the year because god goes away and leaves it to itself. after all the risk and toil and faithful endeavour, it was destined that few of the heroes should be in at the finish when too much gold turned its yellow-treasure to the stars.
first, there was robert henderson — and this is true history. henderson had faith in the indian river district. for three years, by himself, depending mainly on his rifle, living on straight meat a large portion of the time, he prospected many of the indian river tributaries, just missed finding the rich creeks, sulphur and dominion, and managed to make grub (poor grub) out of quartz creek and australia creek. then he crossed the divide between indian river and the klondike, and on one of the “feeders” of the latter found eight cents to the pan. this was considered excellent in those simple days. naming the creek “gold bottom,” he recrossed the divide and got three men, munson, dalton, and swanson, to return with him. the four took out $750. and be it emphasized, and emphasized again, that this was the first klondike gold ever shovelled in and washed out. and be it also emphasized, that robert henderson was the discoverer of klondike, all lies and hearsay tales to the contrary.
running out of grub, henderson again recrossed the divide, and went down the indian river and up the yukon to sixty mile. here joe ladue ran the trading post, and here joe ladue had originally grub-staked henderson. henderson told his tale, and a dozen men (all it contained) deserted the post for the scene of his find. also, henderson persuaded a party of prospectors bound for stewart river, to forgo their trip and go down and locate with him. he loaded his boat with supplies, drifted down the yukon to the mouth of the klondike, and towed and poled up the klondike to gold bottom. but at the mouth of the klondike he met george carmack, and thereby hangs the tale.
carmack was a squawman. he was familiarly known as “siwash” george — a derogatory term which had arisen out of his affinity for the indians. at the time henderson encountered him he was catching salmon with his indian wife and relatives on the site of what was to become dawson, the golden city of the snows. henderson, bubbling over with good-will, open-handed, told carmack of his discovery. but carmack was satisfied where he was. he was possessed by no overweening desire for the strenuous life. salmon were good enough for him. but henderson urged him to come on and locate, until, when he yielded, he wanted to take the whole tribe along. henderson refused to stand for this, said that he must give the preference over siwashes to his old sixty mile friends, and, it is rumoured, said some things about siwashes that were not nice.
the next morning henderson went on alone up the klondike to gold bottom. carmack, by this time aroused, took a short cut afoot for the same place. accompanied by his two indian brothers-in-law, skookum jim and tagish charley, he went up rabbit creek (now bonanza), crossed into gold bottom, and staked near henderson’s discovery. on the way up he had panned a few shovels on rabbit creek, and he showed henderson “colours” he had obtained. henderson made him promise, if he found anything on the way back, that he would send up one of the indians with the news. henderson also agreed to pay for his service, for he seemed to feel that they were on the verge of something big, and he wanted to make sure.
carmack returned down rabbit creek. while he was taking a sleep on the bank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known as eldorado, skookum jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got from ten cents to a dollar to the pan. carmack and his brother-in-law staked and hit “the high places” for forty mile, where they filed on the claims before captain constantine, and renamed the creek bonanza. and henderson was forgotten. no word of it reached him. carmack broke his promise.
weeks afterward, when bonanza and eldorado were staked from end to end and there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over the divide and down to gold bottom, where they found henderson still at work. when they told him they were from bonanza, he was nonplussed. he had never heard of such a place. but when they described it, he recognized it as rabbit creek. then they told him of its marvellous richness, and, as tappan adney relates, when henderson realized what he had lost through carmack’s treachery, “he threw down his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart that it was some time before he could speak.”
then there were the rest of the old-timers, the men of forty mile and circle city. at the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were over to the west at work in the old diggings or prospecting for new ones. as they said of themselves, they were the kind of men who are always caught out with forks when it rains soup. in the stampede that followed the news of carmack’s strike very few old miners took part. they were not there to take part. but the men who did go on the stampede were mainly the worthless ones, the new-comers, and the camp hangers on. and while bob henderson plugged away to the east, and the heroes plugged away to the west, the greenhorns and rounders went up and staked bonanza.
but the northland was not yet done with its joke. when fall came on and the heroes returned to forty mile and to circle city, they listened calmly to the up-river tales of siwash discoveries and loafers’ prospects, and shook their heads. they judged by the calibre of the men interested, and branded it a bunco game. but glowing reports continued to trickle down the yukon, and a few of the old-timers went up to see. they looked over the ground — the unlikeliest place for gold in all their experience — and they went down the river again, “leaving it to the swedes.”
again the northland turned the tables. the alaskan gold hunter is proverbial, not so much for his unveracity, as for his inability to tell the precise truth. in a country of exaggerations, he likewise is prone to hyperbolic description of things actual. but when it came to klondike, he could not stretch the truth as fast as the truth itself stretched. carmack first got a dollar pan. he lied when he said it was two dollars and a half. and when those who doubted him did get two-and-a-half pans, they said they were getting an ounce, and lo! ere the lie had fairly started on its way, they were getting, not one ounce, but five ounces. this they claimed was six ounces; but when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out twelve ounces. and so it went. they continued valiantly to lie, but the truth continued to outrun them.
but the northland’s hyperborean laugh was not yet ended. when bonanza was staked from mouth to source, those who had failed to “get in,” disgruntled and sore, went up the “pups” and feeders. eldorado was one of these feeders, and many men, after locating on it, turned their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought. one man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of flour. other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying them out for a song. and then eldorado “showed up.” it was far, far richer than bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to every foot of it.
a swede named charley anderson had been at work on miller creek the year of the strike, and arrived in dawson with a few hundred dollars. two miners, who had staked no. 29 eldorado, decided that he was the proper man upon whom to “unload.” he was too canny to approach sober, so at considerable expense they got him drunk. even then it was hard work, but they kept him befuddled for several days, and finally, inveigled him into buying no. 29 for $750. when anderson sobered up, he wept at his folly, and pleaded to have his money back. but the men who had duped him were hard-hearted. they laughed at him, and kicked themselves for not having tapped him for a couple of hundred more. nothing remained for anderson but to work the worthless ground. this he did, and out of it he took over three-quarters of a million of dollars.
it was not till frank dinsmore, who already had big holdings on birch creek, took a hand, that the old-timers developed faith in the new diggings. dinsmore received a letter from a man on the spot, calling it “the biggest thing in the world,” and harnessed his dogs and went up to investigate. and when he sent a letter back, saying that he had never seen “anything like it,” circle city for the first time believed, and at once was precipitated one of the wildest stampedes the country had ever seen or ever will see. every dog was taken, many went without dogs, and even the women and children and weaklings hit the three hundred miles of ice through the long arctic night for the biggest thing in the world. it is related that but twenty people, mostly cripples and unable to travel, were left in circle city when the smoke of the last sled disappeared up the yukon.
since that time gold has been discovered in all manner of places, under the grass roots of the hill-side benches, in the bottom of monte cristo island, and in the sands of the sea at nome. and now the gold hunter who knows his business shuns the “favourable looking” spots, confident in his hard-won knowledge that he will find the most gold in the least likely place. this is sometimes adduced to support the theory that the gold hunters, rather than the explorers, are the men who will ultimately win to the pole. who knows? it is in their blood, and they are capable of it.
piedmont, california.
february 1902.
