Part 58 (1/2)
When we gave Mr. Angus McDonald our keys, it was not quite decided as to our hotel; but when we learned that we were sufficiently respectable in appearance to be accepted by Miss Kinney, we telephoned for our trunks.
Then we forgot all about paying for them, and set out for a walk. When we returned, luncheon was being served; our trunks were in our rooms, but--Mr. Angus McDonald had gone off with our keys! We did not know then what we know now; that Mr. Angus McDonald and his retained keys are a Dawson joke. It seems that whenever one does not pay in advance for the delivery of his trunks, Mr. McDonald drives away with the keys in his pocket, whistling the merriest of Scotch tunes.
The joke has its embarra.s.sments, particularly when one has descended to the Grand Canyon of the Yukon in a sand-slide.
The traveller in Alaska who desires to retain his own self-respect and that of his fellow-man will never criticise a price nor ask to have it reduced. He is expected to contribute liberally to every church he enters, every Indian band he hears play, every charitable inst.i.tution that may present its merits for his consideration, every purse that may be made up on steamers, whatsoever its object may be. Fees are from fifty cents to five dollars. A waiter on a Yukon steamer threw a quarter back at a man who had innocently slipped it into his hand. Later, I saw him in the centre of a group of angry waiters and cabin-boys to whom he was relating his grievance.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle
FAMILY OF KING'S ISLAND ESKIMOS LIVING UNDER SKIN BOAT, NOME]
Since one is constantly changing steamers, and has a waiter, a cabin-boy, a night-boy, and frequently a stewardess to fee on each steamer, this must be counted as one of the regular expenses of the trip.
Other expenses we found to be greatly exaggerated on the ”outside.”
Aside from our amusing experience with soap-bubble soda at White Horse and a bill for eight dollars and fifty cents for the poor pressing of three plain dress skirts and one jacket at Nome, we found nothing to criticise in northern prices.
The best rooms at the ”Kenwood” were only two dollars a day, and each meal was one dollar--whether one ate little or whether one ate much. It was always the latter with us; for I have never been so hungry except at Bennett. I am convinced that the climate of the Yukon will cure every disease and every ill. We walked miles each day, drank much cold, pure water, and ate much wholesome, well-cooked, delicious food--including blueberries three times a day; and our sleep was sound, sweet, and refres.h.i.+ng.
Dawson has about ten thousand inhabitants now; it once had twice as many, and it will have again. Mining in the Klondike is in the transition stage. It is pa.s.sing from the individual owners to large companies and corporations which have ample capital to install expensive machinery and develop rich properties. It is the history of every mining district, and its coming to the Klondike was inevitable. Its first effect, however, is always ”to ruin the camp.”
”Dawson's a camp no longer,” said one who ”went in” in 1897, sadly.
”It's all spoiled. The individual miner has let go and the monopolists are coming in to take his place. The good days are things of the past.
Pretty soon they'll be giving you change when you throw down two-bits for a lead pencil!” he concluded, with a lofty scorn--as much as to say: ”It will then be time to die.”
Dawson is connected with the ”outside” by telegraph. It has two daily newspapers,--which are metropolitan in style,--an electric-light plant, and a telephone system. Its streets are graded and sidewalked, and it is piped for water; but its lack of systematized sewerage--or what might be more appropriately called its systematized lack of sewerage--is an abomination. It is, however, not alone in its unsanitation in this respect, for Nome follows its example.
Both homes and public buildings are of exceeding plainness of style, owing to the excessive cost of building in a region bounded by the Arctic Circle. The interiors of both, however, are attractive and luxurious in finish and furnis.h.i.+ngs; and owing to the sway of the mounted police, the town has an air of cleanliness and orderliness that is admirable.
A creditable building holds the post-office and customs office, and there is a public school building which cost fifty thousand dollars. The handsome administration building, standing in a green, park-like place, cost as much. There is a large court-house, the barracks of the mounted police, and other public buildings. Only the ruins remain of the executive mansion on the bank of the river, which was destroyed by fire two years ago and has not been rebuilt. It was the pride of Dawson. It was a large residence of pleasing architecture, lighted by electricity and finished throughout in British Columbia fir in natural tones. It contained the governor's private office, palatial reception rooms and parlors, a library, a n.o.ble hall and stairway, a state dining room, a billiard room and smoking room, and s.p.a.cious chambers.
The governor's office in the administration building is large and handsomely furnished. The commissioner of Yukon Territory is called by courtesy governor, and the present commissioner, Governor Henderson, is a gentleman of distinguished presence and courtly manners. He had just returned from an automobile tour of inspection among ”the creeks.”
Governors, elegant executive mansions and offices, and automobile tours--where eleven years ago was nothing but the creeks and the virgin gold which brought all that is there to-day! We did not rebel at anything but the automobile; somehow, it jarred like an insult. An automobile up among the storied creeks!
There is a railroad, also, on which daily trains are run for a distance of twenty miles through the mining district. Six and eight horse stages will make the trip in one day for a party of six for fifty dollars.
Thirty dollars is first asked. When that price is found to be satisfactory, it is immediately discovered that the small stage is engaged or out of repair; a larger one must be used, for which the price is forty dollars. When this price is agreed upon, some infirmity is discovered in the second stage; a third must be subst.i.tuted, for whose all-day use the price is fifty dollars. If one cares to see the ”cricks,” with no a.s.surance that he will stumble upon a clean-up, at this price, he meekly takes his seat and is jolted up into the hills, paying a few dollars extra for his meals.
He may, however, take an hour's walk up Bonanza Creek and see the great dredges at work and the steam-pipes thawing the frozen gravel; and if he should voyage on down to Nome, he may take an hour's run by railway out on the tundra and see thirty thousand dollars sluiced out any day.
Almost anything is preferable to the ”graft” that is worked by the stage companies upon the helpless cheechacos at Dawson.
The British Yukon is an organized territory, having a commissioner, three judges, and an executive legislature, of whose ten members five are elected and five appointed. The governor is also appointed. He presides over the sessions of the legislature, giving the appointed members a majority of one.
The Yukon has a delegate in parliament, a gold commissioner, a land agent, and a superintendent of roads. Three-fourths of the population of the territory are Americans, yet the town has a distinctly English, or Canadian, atmosphere. In incorporated towns there is a tax levy on property for munic.i.p.al purposes.
Order is preserved by the well-known organization of Northwest Mounted Police, whose members might be recognized anywhere, even when not in uniform, by their stern eyes, set lips, and peculiar carriage.
The first station of mounted police in the Yukon was established at Forty-Mile, or Fort Cudahy, in 1895, when the discovery of gold was creating a mild excitement. Although so many boasts have been made by the British of their early settlement of the Yukon, not only was Mr.