Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small]

there are many dangerous rocks and shoals. Its changes are very abrupt. The writer, when he had entered this river, took down his sail, shipped his oars, drew a long breath of relief, and supposed that all danger was past and nothing remained but to drift swiftly and quietly down to his destination. He was rudely awakened from this delusion. There was a sharp bend some distance ahead, where the river turned and flowed for several miles in an almost opposite direction. On approaching this bend an ominous roar some distance beyond gave warning of another peril. On turning the bend, an immense rock, the jagged end of which protruded about a foot above the water, stood nearly in the middle of the stream a few hundred yards below. A few short, hard strokes with the oars carried the boat to one side and out of danger; but for a half mile or more the right bank of the river was literally strewn with wrecked boats and their contents. It is said that twenty-eight boats were wrecked on this rock in three days, and many thousands of dollars worth of goods lost or ruined. One boat, containing two men and two women, struck the rock and broke in two, one half going on down the river with one woman and two men clinging to its sides, who were picked up

below; the other half stuck on the rock with a woman holding on to it. It was an hour before she could be rescued, during which time the cold water was continually sweeping over her. When rescued, she was more dead than alive.

On this same journey, just below the Little Salmon River, I saw, some distance ahead, an immense pile of driftwood that had lodged against an island. On top of this drift a man was sitting with his arms folded over his breast, despondently gazing down into the surging waters. Looking down I saw the corner of a scow sticking out from beneath the drift. He had lost all, including two horses and the goods which at great expense and with much toil he had brought over Chilcoot Pass, down the lakes and rivers, past Miles Cañon, White Horse Rapids, and through the treacherous Thirty Mile River, only to be drawn under a drift in the Yukon and lose everything.

No one can consider himself safe until he has reached the end of his journey and has his boat tied fast to the shore. In one instance a man had reached Dawson City, and in endeavoring to land opposite the city was drawn under a scow and barely escaped with his life. All these risks one might afford to take if there were any

good reason to expect success. But not one out of a hundred will succeed. There are a few claims in the Klondike district, the riches of which have never been overstated; but there is not a claim within sixty miles in any direction from Dawson City, supposed to be worth anything, which is not already staked and recorded. About all the streams within the gold belt, tributary to the Yukon, have been pretty well prospected. It should be borne in mind that for twenty years men have been scouring through that country in search of gold, and, until the Klondike discoveries were made, nothing of special value had been found. Last year all the streams swarmed with prospectors, and more prospecting was done than in all past years put together, but no finds of importance have been reported.

Prospecting is exceedingly slow and laborious. No one can have any conception of its hardships unless he has himself tried it. The roughest, rockiest country imaginable; spongy moss soaked with water under your feet; millions of mosquitos swarming about your head and making life wretched; a heavy pack on your back, and a heavy load on your heart, - these are some of the tribulations of prospecting on the Yukon. The ground which is supposed to contain the muchsought gold has to be thawed out by slow degrees down, through twenty to forty feet of frozen earth, to bed rock. While the heat above ground may be torrid, you have but to strip off the moss any

where to find ground which has been frozen hard for perhaps ten thousand years.

While every physical condition in that country is disheartening, some of the conditions imposed on the prospector by the Canadian government seem still less endurable. The very first man one meets after crossing the Canadian frontier is a revenue officer, who exacts a tax of twenty

five per cent of the value of the miner's outfit. To arrive at the valuation, a blank must be filled out with the aid of a broker who charges five or ten dollars for about fifteen minutes' work. The Canadian government reserves absolutely to itself half of the gold-bearing ground discovered, and leases to miners the other half, limiting each miner to 250 feet, except the first discoverer, who may take 500 feet. It then charges an annual rental of fifteen dollars and a royalty of ten per cent of all gold taken out above the first $2,500. If the mine yields $200 per day or more, the royalty is twenty per cent.

It was openly charged by many miners and newspapers published in Dawson City that any person not "on the inside" with the government officials stood a very poor chance indeed of having his claim recorded, if it were supposed in the recorder's office that said claim was of any special value. The refusal was generally based on the ground that the claim had already been recorded. The miner had no means of knowing whether this was true or not, and consequently had no redress.

Another extortion was effected by the authorities selling the river front at Dawson

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

The government land agent has sold to the sawmill companies all the live timber on the Yukon for more than a hundred miles up the river. Any one needing logs to whip-saw into lumber or to build a cabin was obliged to see the sawmill-man. I went personally to the crown land agent and asked him what arrangements could be made to cut and bring down dry wood for commercial purposes. He said that

If a man is up in the mines his miner's license gives him the right to cut wood and logs for his own private use in mining, but for no other purpose. There is a vast region of country, known as the British Northwest Territory, which holds more timber than will be used in a thousand years, more fish and game than will be caught or killed while the timber lasts. Any one going into that country

has no right to cut wood for any purpose, or to kill any game or catch any fish, without a license, for which a fee of ten dollars must be paid. With such a license it is unlawful to sell a stick of wood for any purpose, or a pound of fish or game. The law is strictly enforced. To do anything, one must have a special permit, and for every such permit he must pay roundly. An anecdote which went the rounds among the miners will serve to show the situation as seen by them. It was said that a miner, being sick in the hospital, was informed that he must die. Being asked whether he wished to see any one, he said: "Send for Major Walsh." On being asked what he wanted with Major Walsh he replied: "I haven't any permit, and if I should undertake to die without a permit I should get myself arrested."

[graphic]

GROUP OF TAGISH INDIANS AND Two MEMBERS OF THE NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE

no such arrangement could be made through that office; that all the dry wood for a hundred miles up the river, including the drifts, were sold to two firms, and any negotiation of the kind I desired would have to be made with one or the other of those firms.

One cannot live through a winter in that country without a cabin and firewood to keep it warm, yet the prospector must get his logs and wood through the sawmill companies or the firewood firms, or freeze to death. I went to one of these firms, and the best arrangement I could make was that they would allow me seven dollars a cord for cutting and rafting wood down to Dawson City. The price they are said to have paid the government was fifty cents a cord. Last winter the price for wood in Dawson City ranged from $50 to $75 a cord, while it cost them not to exceed $10 delivered at Dawson City. One can have a pretty clear idea of the bonanza these monopolies are creating for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

It is doubtful whether there is a place on the continent where living is more expensive than at Dawson City. A letter recently received from there says:

"We leased a lot 25 by 70 feet for $150 a month, and put up a building 25 feet by 44, two stories, with eight rooms upstairs. We get $50 a month for each room, or $400 a month for all. Then we get $200 a month for one half of the downstairs rooms, making $600 a month rent, besides a room 12 by 44 feet for our goods."

Walking down the street one day I noticed a scale of prices on a bulletin

[blocks in formation]

Fresh newspapers from the United States sold at a dollar each, and at that price were all taken so quickly that one stood but little show of getting one. If a newspaper reading was announced, the reader would have an audience which in size and attentiveness would be complimentary to any orator. News was eagerly sought during the war with Spain. The most exaggerated versions of events sometimes reached the miners. When the trouble between Dewey and the German admiral took place, the news of it reached Dawson in this form: "A German warship had been for some time spying upon the movements of the American vessels and disregarding the American blockade of the port of Manila. Dewey, tiring of the annoyance, fired a shot across the bow of a German vessel and demanded to know whether Germany

was at peace or war with the United States. The German warship fired upon the American ship, whereupon the American answered with a broadside which sent the German to the bottom. The Russian officer in port steamed over to the German admiral and placed himself at the command of the German, while the English warships lined up with the Americans. At this critical moment the German asked for twenty-four hours in which to confer with the home government, but the outlook was that a general war would follow with Spain, Germany, France, and Russia on one side, and the United States, England, and probably Japan on the other." If a recruiting officer had been present at that time he would have had no trouble in enlisting five thousand men.

For whatever reasons one may go to the Klondike the best way out is by way of St. Michael's. We left Dawson City on the 11th of August, on the steamer "Cudahy." In five days and nineteen hours we had run down to the mouth of the Yukon and on the Behring Sea to St. Michael's, a distance of 1,700 miles. We spent four days there, waiting for the "Roanoke » to sail. On that good craft we had a delightful run of 3,000 miles down Behring Sea and the Pacific Ocean, reaching Seattle in eight days. W. DUDLEY MABRY.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

P

THE GREAT THUNDER-BIRD MYSTERY

ROSPECTORS who have searched for gold in the far Northwest have received from the lips of the Indians strange allusions to a mysterious Thunderbird. But, unless they take a peculiar fancy to a white man, the Indians are reticent regarding their myth, and much remains untold. Still, enough has been ascertained to furnish a pretty accurate idea regarding the Thunder-bird, and the Klale Tah-mah-na-wis, Black Magic, or Thunder-bird performance.*

The tribes of Washington and elsewhere along the north Pacific coast believe that thunder is produced by an immense bird. Its body is covered by a cloud. The flapping of its wings makes

*The legends here given were derived from a prospector and hunter who has spent much of his life among the Indians of the Northwest Coast.

the noise; the bolts of fire sent out of its mouth to kill the whale, its food, are the lightning.

The Makahs and some others invest the bird with a twofold character, human and birdlike. According to these people the being is a gigantic Indian, called in the various dialects Kakaitch, T'hlu-kluts, and Tu-tutsh, the latter being the Nootkan term. He lives in the highest mountains, and his diet is whales. When he wishes to eat he dons a great garment composed of a bird's head, a pair of large wings, and a feather body. Around his waist he fastens the "lightning fish," or killer whale, which slightly resembles a seahorse. This animal has a head as sharp as a knife, and when the Thunder-bird sees a whale he darts the "lightning fish" into its back. Then he seizes his prey

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

lows, in the words of an old Chinook chief:

"Years ago an old man named Too-lux, who was the south wind, was travelling north, and met an old woman named Quootshooi, who was an ogress or giantess. He asked her for food, and she gave him a net, telling him she had nothing to eat and that he must try for fish. He succeeded in trapping a little whale or grampus. He was about to cut it when the old woman cried out to him to use a sharp shell instead of a knife, and to split the fish down the back. Not heeding what she said he cut the fish across the side, and was taking off a slice of blubber, when the fish immediately changed to a great bird, which in flying completely obscured the sky and with its wings shook the earth.

"This Thunder-bird flew to the north, and alighted on the top of a saddleback mountain near the Columbia River. Here it laid many eggs, a whole nest full. The old woman followed and began to break the eggs and eat them. From these sprang the first of mankind, or at least the Chehalis and Chinook tribes. Returning, the Thunder-bird, termed by the narrators Hahness, found the eggs broken; and now regularly the bird and Toolux, the south wind, go forth in search of the old woman."

In the Sound region the Indians affirm that a young girl, just reaching womanhood, during a certain month must not go out of doors if the southwest wind is blowing. If she does, the wind is so offended

that he will send the Thunder-bird to make thunder and lightning. A thunderstorm is rare in this district, but when it occurs the Indians attribute it to the disobedience of some girl.

Anything that is supposed to have been touched or possessed by the Thunder-bird has supernatural value in the eyes of the coast Indians. It is claimed that a Makah, who had been very ill, was reduced to a skeleton, and was considered past recovery. One day he managed to crawl to a brook near by. While there he heard a rustling which so frightened him that he hid his face in his blanket. But peeping out he saw a raven not far away, apparently endeavoring to eject an object from its throat. According to this Indian the bird got rid of a bone about three inches long. The Makah secured this, believing it to be a bone of the Thunderbird. He was assured by the medicinemen that it was a medicine sent him by his Tah-mah-na-wis, or guardian spirit, to cure him. It is a fact that the patient rapidly grew better, and soon was entirely well, probably the result of his imagination.

[merged small][graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
« ÎnapoiContinuă »