YUKON PAYS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1932, Page 10

YUKON PAYS

MEMORIES OF DAWSON.

From all parts of .Canada and the United States, several hundred suiyiv.ors of the Trail of ’9B assembled at Calgary, at the foothills of the Rockies, for their annual reunion last month. It was a notable gathering. 1 here was Captain Beebe, who abandoned his schooner at Detroit, and was thirteen months on the trail- He proudly displayed a letterhead of the Sourdough Hotel, Dawson. “Best house north of Mexico. Every known fluid, water excepted, for sale at the bar. Private entrance for ladies by ladder in the rear. Rates, one ounce a day. Special rates to ministers and the gambling ■profession'. Indians and Negroes charged double. Guests will be provided with breakfast and dinner, but must rustje 'their' own lunch. Spike boots must be yenjdve.fi at night. Dogs not allowed in the bunks. Candles and hot water charged extra. Towgls changed weekly. Crap, ChuckTluck, S.t'u.fi' Power, a.Pfi Slack Jack ganjes run by the management. Insect pqwfigr on sale at the bar.”

Among tb.e women present was one who made a fortune Put of the first bath in Dawson City. Another, the “Yukon Nightingale,” as she was known, sang again the songs of those stirring times.

There were men who worked for wages—so much bannock, beans, and coffee at the end of the .day. Others fought for their gold with their fists in the squared circle. One made a fortune out of flap-jacks, which he doled out to hungry gold seekers at the head of Dyas Pass. The “Klondyke Kid,” now a prosperous Western merchant, was there. He braved the rigours of the Chilcoof Pass,' where hundreds perished, at the age of “The Kid” smuggled liiraself aboard the s.s. Jefferson, sailing opt of Seattle, through Skagway. Hurled from the boat, he earned his way for tire rest of the journey by playing the piapo for the dance-hall girls of Atjin,' the frontier town of British Columbia.

There was Uncle Al, who made his pile at Claim 33, below bonanza, and operated tire first store in the Chilcoot, where he was one of .the £ejy survivors of the snowslide disaster. Jack Leedham was there, one of tire best of a tough selection of bare knuckle fighters, who stood up to such giants of the ring as the Slavin brothers of Australia. HAND OF THE LAW. Pat Egan, who “made medicine” in the Yukon, was present. Corporal of the Dawson City patrol, he captured, single-handed, the notorious O’Brien and ’ Labelle, who were hanged for their lawlessness. Sitting by him was bis “buddy,” Pete Creiar, who was in charge of the Little Salmon detachment of .the North-west Mounted Police. Alec Low, .the first commercial traveller in Dawson, was also present.

Imbued with the same spirit of adventure that. led them from the comforts of civilisation to light the terrors of the Arctic Northland, they came again by air, land, and water to relive the hectic days when money had no value, and a man was reckoned by his physique and .the size of the “poke” he carried. The Governor of Alberta told how he ran for Mayor of Dawson, and lost the seat because four of his supporters switched their votes, giving as their reason that he was neither a Liberal nor a Presbyterian.

Among others present was David a Welshman, now settled in Washington, who s.ct the record—it has stood ever since—of mushing from Daw'son to Nome, a distance of 1518 miles, in 33 days, with a team of eleven dogs, averaging 46 miles a day, when the stampede to Nome took place. Griffith brought in a. newspaper, con•taining the first news of the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. He sold it for fifty dollars, but the man who biought it hired the pioneer Hall, charged a dollar entrance to all who wished to hear the news, and made 600 dollars pr.ofit. The gathering had a. two-minute silence, to .the memory of Jack .Smith, first Mining Recorder in the Yukon, who died on» his way to the convents cn.