RE KLONDYKE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 301, 29 December 1897, Page 2

RE KLONDYKE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l have noticed a letter m your columns from Mr G. D. Ingall, in which he sets out an excerpt from a letter of a friend in British Columbia. Now, the main thing is, with how much real knowledge does Mr Ingall's British Columbia friend write ? A perusal of the excerpt as set out does not inspire me, a Canadian, with the idea that he really knows much about Klondyke. He carefully avoids any mention of it. He pays of either British Columbia or Canada proper: "The climate is no drawback." Well! I should smile! I rather guess the Canadian climate is away ahead of this humid, fickle and inclement New Zealand climate. The country is .also better in most senses, better for fruitgrowing, farming and manufacturing, and also better and cheaper to live in for those of slender incomes, or of the working man class: Further, he says: British Columbia has a great future before it in a mineral way. I Sightly guess it just has. If Mr Ingall's friend has been, as I have, to Kamloops, Kootenai, Rossland, and Carriboo, he may well feel sure of his ground. But when he adds (alluding to Canada mind) : " Every part, in a mineral sense, is booming," he is, to put it mildly, mistaken. What mineral exists upon the "baldheaded " prairies for instance ? Not enough even to tempt a New Zealand syndicator. From the tone of the excerpt of Mr Ingall's correspondent he seems to think Klondyke is quite near Victoria or Vancouver. Let anyone look at a map of Canada and examine it with a scale and he will see what will surprise him. Klondyke is not in British Columbia at all, large as our Pacific Province is (roughly 360,000 square miles). That may surprise Mr Ingall and the Board of the New Zealand Klondyke Syndicate, but it is a cold fact. To get from Victoria or Vancouver 2 or 3 routes are available to Klondyke. One is to take a steamer from Victoria in the summer and sail away up North to the Straits of Bearing and then up the great river Yukon to the Klondyse district. This is a distance of roughly 4,600 miles. The nearest is by the coast steamers Lynn Canal, Dyea,' Skagway route or via the Stickeen River route. This is only about 1,600 or 1,700 miles, and if I mistake not is all in British territory, thereby avoiding Uncle Sam's duty of 35 per cent, on all Canadian or foreign goods entering his possessions. The sole reason Victoria and Vancouver are getting a fair share of Klondyke business (as Mr Ingall's friend truly observes) is because they are the only Canadian ports of importance on the Pacific, and therefore though so distant are the nearest to the gold district of the frozen North. But he should not have alluded to them as English, for this they are not; with 7,000 and 6,000 respectively almondeyed sons of Confucius amon« their mongrel populations the parallel hardly applies. Now, although I can speak with some confidence of British Columbia, having hunted, trapped, fished, camped, prospected, tramped 7£ years there, yet Ido not and cannot speak personally of Klondyke, but let me warn any one going there from this enervating climate that the cold there is most extreme, so near to the Arctic Circle. I am. assured the thermometer drops to SO degrees below zero (of course in winter). There is a very short summer, only 10 to 13 weeks. I can't say what 80 degrees below zero may be like, I know over 50 degrees below is all I can stand, and I'm no hog that wants a lot of that. I have no curiosity to watch the mercury trying to crawl out of sight. Finally I would add this advice to anyone going from here—for God's sake take warm clothing (bought in Canada, mind, to save duty) and food. Both mean life in that hyperborean land, and the absence of either spells death.—l am, etc

Canuck,