Part 8 (1/2)
However, Constantine and his detachment keep the country in order, administer justice, collect customs due to the Dominion and generally make conditions civilized and British. There was a time when it was generally believed that most of the gold-bearing creeks were on the American side of the line, but a survey made under direction of the Police revealed the opposite to be the case and Constantine notified the miners on Miller, Glacier and other creeks that they were on Canadian territory, subject to British law and amenable to regulations as to mining fees, Constantine's modesty and determination are ill.u.s.trated in one quiet paragraph, which some of us who knew him will find luminous between the lines. He says, ”A few miners denied Canada's jurisdiction and right to collect fees on the ground that there was a possibility of error in the survey. However, I went up to Miller and Glacier Creeks and all dues were paid without any trouble except that of a hard trip, but as all trips in this country are of that nature, it was part of the bargain. On Glacier Creek a number of miners undertook to run matters in accordance with their own ideas of justice and set themselves up as the law of the land. The trouble ended, however, by the Canadian law being carried out.” Constantine was clearly serving notice on all and sundry that the Mounted Police were on hand to live up to their reputation of seeing justice done and playing no favourites. The authorities had made no mistake when they sent him in as the pioneer.
Then he speaks in 1896 of new discoveries which began to cause the mad rush from all parts of the world as the news percolated through to the outside. ”In August of this year a rich discovery of coa.r.s.e gravel was made by one George Carmack on Bonanza Creek, a tributary to the Klondike. His prospect showed $3.00 to the pan.” Not bad picking for George, who became wealthy. But George's shovel and pick and pan, clattering as he worked, awakened echoes to far distances and the wild stampede of all kinds of people, prominently the adventurous and the get-rich-quick cla.s.s, began with a vengeance.
Constantine got ready for it, strongly recommending the establishment of civil courts, the appointment of an administrator and law-officer and the reinforcing of the Police so that they could be scattered up and down the new mining areas as required. A post called Fort Herchmer, after the Commissioner, was built at Dawson which was to become the big centre shortly, and the Police Force was augmented by the arrival of two small detachments under command respectively of two well-known officers, Inspectors Scarth and Harper. And not any too soon were these precautions taken, for Constantine lets light in on the kind of people who began to head for the diggings when he says in his graphic way, ”A considerable number of people coming in from the Sound cities appear to be the sweepings of the slums and the result of a general jail delivery.
Heretofore goods could be cached on the side of the trails and they would be perfectly safe, now a man has to sit on his cache with a shotgun to ensure the safety of his goods. Cabins in out-of-the-way places are broken into and everything cleaned out.” That was before the newcomers realized that the Mounted Police were to the fore. Constantine and his men kept on their track and perpetrators of ordinary offences were astonished when they were run out of the country in order to save food for the decent people who were willing to work without preying on others. And the Inspector gives parting salute to the deported individuals by saying, ”Many of them could well be spared in any community, for the rush had brought in toughs, gamblers, lewd women and criminals of almost every type, from the petty thief to the murderer.”
But Constantine gave them no quarter, and so it was that by the time the big stampede took place into Dawson and the Creeks it had become known far and wide that the Mounted Police would stand no nonsense. So the way was made simpler, though not at any time a sinecure, for those who followed the intrepid pioneers in the scarlet tunic. But coming at the summit of an active and strenuous life, the exposure, responsibility and general wear and tear of his Yukon years undermined the once rugged strength of Constantine. He was transferred to the prairie after nearly four years in the Yukon, but never fully recovered his vigour. His leaving the Yukon had a very human side. The miners showed their appreciation of his manly, straightforward character by crowding in and presenting him and his wife and boy with nuggets of gold and indicating in their diffident but genuine way that if ever any of them needed help they could count on their Yukon friends for anything required. Which reminds us that tribute should be paid to the wives of these policemen who braved the wilderness places of the west and north to be helpers to their husbands and to make their homes centres of social refining influence where such influences were of untold value.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHILCOOT Pa.s.s: N.W.M. POLICE AND CUSTOM HOUSE.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: KLONd.y.k.e RUSH: SQUAW RAPIDS, BETWEEN CANYON AND WHITE HORSE RAPIDS. 1898]
Inspector Cortlandt Starnes, the present efficient a.s.sistant-Commissioner at Ottawa Headquarters and who has done valuable service all the way across the country from Hudson Bay to the Yukon as well as on the plains, took over the command from Constantine and remained in charge till the arrival of Superintendent Steele, a period extending from June to September, 1898. Starnes, who is a short, heavily built and powerful man, capable of enduring much hards.h.i.+p, had come through in the previous winter, staying some months at Lake LaBarge and Little Salmon, acc.u.mulating stores of goods from the coast to be taken through in the spring to Dawson, where a shortage was impending. He had no easy time getting over the route, he and his men only saving themselves from wreck on Lake Bennett by throwing overboard some of their freight. With forty below zero and everything frozen up, Starnes had to build winter quarters at Little Salmon, and with the true democracy of the frontier we find the officials he was escorting into the Yukon giving a hand--Judge McGuire, Mr. F. O. Wade, Crown Prosecutor, Dr. Bonnar and others. But early in the spring Starnes moved on to Dawson. The rush was setting in and with Inspector F. Harper and a few men he had to hold the place for law and order during a sort of interregnum period. No civil courts were established till Judge McGuire came, and to administer the law under such conditions was always trying.
But it was done. Offenders were given no rest. ”Gunmen” were made impossible and gamblers found no city of refuge in the gold country. In three months Starnes and Harper, princ.i.p.ally the former, tried 215 cases, these being all the way from dog-stealing (dogs were dogs in the north), drunkenness, keeping or frequenting disorderly houses to vagrancy, using vile language and refusing to work. If men would not work when free they were sentenced to jail with hard labour, because these experienced men knew that idleness is the prolific progenitor of crime. In consequence crime never got a start in the most quickly crowded mining camp in the world. It had been held down from the beginning. The place had its saloons and dance hall and fools were fleeced there as they are in older centres, but the superb strength and incorruptibility of the Mounted Police proved too much for the lawless element, and the whole period makes one of the proudest records in the history of this wonderful force.
The big stampede for Dawson started in 1897-98, and to cope with the incidentals and probably accompaniments of it, there was a whirlwind series of movements by the Mounted Police which seemed to antic.i.p.ate every contingency, head off all manner of calamities, make provision for protecting the boundary line against infractions of the customs regulations, and generally see that law and order should prevail all over the wide area that was soon teeming with a nondescript heterogeneous population of excited gold-hunters. Two of the big men of the Force, Superintendents A. B. Perry, a masterly organizer, and S. B.
Steele, a determined enforcer of law, were called on to go up to the north and meet the unprecedented situation. That these two superior officers did not s.h.i.+rk any of the hards.h.i.+ps could be demonstrated from many an instance like the following related casually by Steele as to an incident at the outset. ”At Dyea I met Perry and together we returned to Skagway in a small sailing boat. The weather was very cold and as the tide was out we were obliged to wade through the pools in our moccasins.
When we embarked we were soaked to the hip and our clothes were frozen like boards.” And they came that way the whole distance to Skagway, where they got no time to change as Perry had to leave for Vancouver that night in regard to further arrangements.
With these two from the beginning, indeed some were in the country ahead of them, was a group of very able officers, Superintendent Z. T. Wood, Inspectors P. C. H. Primrose, C. Starnes, F. Harper, W. H. Scarth, A. E.
Strickland, R. Belcher, A. M. Jarvis, F. L. Cartwright, Surgeons W. E.
Thompson and S. M. Fraser. Non-commissioned officers like Tucker, Macdonnell, Barker, Bates, Graham, Hyles, Corneil and Raven were amongst those in charge of early detachments or attached to hospital bases in the first year of the big rush, and these with the help of as able and resolute a body of men as ever wore uniform led the way to a new world record for policing a country in a paternal method of oversight which guided and controlled but never resorted to shooting. The use of the word paternal calls to mind the way they threw a cordon around the country to prevent at the threshold the entrance of men who were unprepared for the hards.h.i.+ps with either clothing or supplies or physique. And the manner in which the Police interposed against the madness of inexpert men who were anxious to run the White Horse Rapids and the Miles Canyon in crazy boats on the way to Dawson was admirable in its quiet forcefulness. A good many of these people were men and women from offices and stores in American cities who knew boats only by hearsay. So when Steele arrived at the Rapids he gathered the stampeders together and said:
”There are many of your countrymen who have said that the Mounted Police make the laws as they go along, and I am going to do so now for your own good, therefore the directions that I give shall be carried out strictly and they are these: Corporal Dixon, who thoroughly understands this work, will be in charge here and be responsible to me for the proper management of the pa.s.sage of the Canyon and White Horse Rapids. No women or children will be taken in the boats. If they are strong enough to come to the Klondike they can walk the five miles of the bank to the foot of the White Horse and there is no danger for them here. No boat will be permitted to go through the Canyon until the corporal is satisfied that it has sufficient free board to enable it to ride the waves in safety. No boat will be allowed to pa.s.s with human beings in it unless it is steered by competent men, and of that the corporal will be the judge. There will be a number of pilots selected, whose names will be on the roll in the Mounted Police Barracks here, and when a crew needs a man to steer them through the Canyon to the foot of the rapids, pilots will be taken in turn from that list. In the event of the men not being able to pay, the Corporal will be permitted to arrange that the boats are run without charge.”
Some of the impetuous who were willing to risk everything for the glitter of gold rather demurred at this strong paternalism, but when it was all over they thanked their stars that the Mounted Police had been on hand to head off the folly of fools.
We have antic.i.p.ated in the last paragraph in order to ill.u.s.trate how the Mounted Police guided the wild stampede. But let us get back and find Superintendent Perry on the ground just as the rush was starting for the pa.s.ses. He made a swift trip and placed detachments of police on the Chilcoot and White Pa.s.ses, putting those reliable officers Inspectors Belcher and Strickland in command. Up to a certain date it had almost been taken for granted that the whole country was on the American side as the names of Miles, the Indian fighter, and Gordon Bennett had been given by enthusiasts to the Canyon and the lake. But when Perry put Belcher on the Chilcoot and Strickland on the White Pa.s.s to hoist the British flag and collect customs levies, intimation was given that the great gold country was on the Canadian side of the line and that all who wished to pa.s.s that way must contribute to the Dominion exchequer and thus swell the revenue of Canada. Weather conditions were nothing less than awful. Steele, who, with Constable Skirving, went up the Chilcoot from Dyea where they had come on a craft which was covered from stem to stern with six inches of ice, says, ”As we proceeded up the pa.s.s we faced a wind so cutting that we had often to make a rush for the shelter of a tree or walk in a crouching position behind the tailboard of a sleigh for a few minutes' respite. We overtook some on the trail next day out of a notorious tent town known as Sheep Camp. Many of them were staggering blindly along, with heavy loads on their backs, some of them off the trail and groping for it with their feet. These we a.s.sisted or they would have fallen by the way.”
The same writer goes sympathetically into the following vivid description: ”It would be difficult to describe the hards.h.i.+ps gone through by the Mounted Police stationed at the pa.s.ses. The camp at the Chilcoot under Inspector Belcher was pitched on the summit, where it is bounded by high mountains. A wooden cabin was erected in a couple of days. The place where it was in the pa.s.s was only about 100 yards wide.
Below the summit, on the Canadian side, was Crater Lake, named after an extinct volcano. On its icy surface the men were forced to camp when they arrived. In the night of February 18 the water rose to the depth of six inches. Blankets and bedding were wet, the temperature being below zero with a blizzard. The tents could not be moved and the sleds had to be taken into them to enable the men to keep above the water at night.
The storm blew for days with great violence, but on the 21st abated sufficiently to admit of the tents being moved to the top of the hill, where, although the cold was intense, it was better than in the water-covered ice of Crater Lake.”
”The nearest firewood was seven miles away and the men who went after it often returned badly frost-bitten.
”Belcher, collecting customs, performing military as well as police duty on the summit, lived in the shack, which had all the discomforts of a shower-bath. Snow fell so thickly and so constantly that everything was damp and paper became mildewed. For some weeks the weather was very cold without storm, but on the 3rd of March there was a terrific day when the snow buried the cabin and the tents on the summit, the snowfall for the day being six feet on the level.” The occupants had to shovel constantly to keep from being suffocated.
On the White Pa.s.s Inspector Strickland and his men had to pitch tents on the ice at first, no timber for cabins or firewood being nearer than 12 miles. Logs were cut and hauled in by horses. There were raging blizzards and great danger constantly threatened the men, who had to be on the alert to avoid being lost or frozen. However, on February 27 the Union Jack flew to the breeze and collection of customs began. A strong guard kept the trail and men were told off to examine the goods of the stampeders. There was a tremendous rush, and Strickland, overworked and suffering from severe bronchitis, struggled along, ably a.s.sisted by his splendid men. An enormous amount was gathered from those who were rus.h.i.+ng in by thousands from the other side of the line bringing their supplies with them.
About this time Inspector Cartwright arrived from Regina with twenty men, and Steele, going up the White Pa.s.s with him, put him in charge, sending Strickland to Tagish, where the dry air soon restored him to health. It is an illuminating comment on Steele's disposition to look after others and forget himself that he was also, as Dr. Grant said, suffering from bronchitis which he had contracted weeks before when wading through icy waters to a boat. But as there was no one around to order him off duty he just kept right on, trusting that his strong const.i.tution would see him through.
If physical conditions were bad with storm and cold, moral conditions from the coast to the summits were worse. The authorities on the American side seemed to accept as a sort of axiom the statement that a frontier had to be lawless. Anyway ”Soapy Smith,” a notorious gunman and gambler, who was eventually killed by a United States Marshal who was going to arrest him and who was killed by ”Soapy” at the same time, both firing at one moment, had, with a big gang like himself, terrorized Skagway and the trails for months. Murders, robberies, sh.e.l.l games and the rest were practised without cessation up to the Mounted Police line on the summits, where they suddenly ceased because things of that sort would not be tolerated for a moment. At that point the incomers put their ”guns” away and went quietly about their business. One finds it difficult to account for this difference unless by the a.s.sumption that immigrants into the American Republic had taken advantage of her wide proclamation of the ideal of liberty and had abused the ideal by turning it into licence. In this way nests of law-breakers and anarchists were allowed too much opportunity by local officials, where in a similar case a compact force like our Mounted Police with no local strings on them and with intense sentiment for the honour of the whole force, never permitted a situation to get out of hand in any locality however remote from the centre of government.
In a preceding paragraph I mentioned the name of Dr. Grant. He is the Rev. Dr. A. S. Grant, a Presbyterian Missionary who went in over that White Pa.s.s trail with a pack on his back. He could stand it better than most men, for he was a broad-shouldered and powerfully built man. Going as a missionary he was a man of peace, but he would not allow anyone to be imposed on in the difficult road. Hence one day when a bully elbowed a grey-haired man roughly into the snow, Grant interposed and receiving only insult, taught that bully a lesson he did not forget. To the credit of the bully be it recorded he took his medicine and shook hands with the man of peace who believed in protecting the weak.
Grant had taken a course in medicine which proved of immense value on the trail and during the early days in Dawson. Steele says of him, ”Dr.
Grant, a clergyman as well as physician, treats hundreds of sick without remuneration. Our force owes him a heavy debt of grat.i.tude for the way he saved our men. More than half of those at the summit and Lake Bennett had pneumonia but were so well treated that we lost none. I have never seen men in such a dangerous state and it seemed impossible that they should recover, but they were pulled through.”