The Klondike Goldfield.

Hastings Standard, Issue 415, 2 September 1897, Page 4

The Klondike Goldfield.

Eecent American papers contain long and graphic accounts of the unparalleled nchness of the Klondike goldfields. The Call, under date Seattle. Washington, July 17th, publishes the following account: —■ When the North American Trading and Transportation Company's goldladen ship Portland, from St Michael's, Alaska, steamed into the harbor of Seattle this morning at 7 o'clock, it had, besides sixty-eight souls in the nature of human freight, a yellow metal cargo conservatively estimated at £160,000. All save five or six of the passengers- were miners who had taken from £IOOO to £30,000 each. They had taken these snug sums from the famous Klondike. The dust and nuggets were scraped together and dug out since last August, in which month the widely heralded district was discovered. It is safe, therefore, to say that no one of the number worked to exceed nine months in the actual acquirement of his golden possessions. In truth most of the wealth was taken out during the three or four winter months. Scarcely any of it was dug from the ground later than May Ist. It was taken in the main from claims known as the deep diggings. They are prospects that can be worked to the best advantage during the winter. What the 3000 men who went into the Yukon with the early spring have accomplished or will do is merely problematical. Some of the larger amounts taken from the Klondike were: —Clarence Berry, £27,000 ; William Stanley, £18,600; Henry Anderson, £18,000; Frank Kellett, £10,000; J. Clement, £IO,OOO ;T. Kelly, £ /000 ;W. Solane, £SOOO ; John Wilkinson, £SOOO. The valley of the Klondike has within the last two days become the golden wonder of the age. Two days ago a little steamboat arrived from a jumping off place of this cold world with £300,000 or thereabouts, in grains of virgin gold, and yesterday the second steamer to come from the new El Dorado brought over a ton of gold, worth about £160,000. It is not only a wonderful field of gold, surpassing all that man has found, that has been uncovered, for the human interest of it all is the thing to the vast majority of people, who will only read about the gold of the Yukon, and with the finding comes a romantic phase of human effort. The Yukon promises to rival the days of '49 in the picturesqueness and romance of human life, when it is connected with the thing that can most deeply stir the springs of the human heart. From the early reports that are at hand the Klondike placers appear to be the richest that Nature has ever revealed. In the early 'so's the California placers yielded as high as £1,000,000 a year. Besides these figures the Alaska production pales into insignificance, but the Californiau placers were spread over an immensely greater territory. The comparative point is that while the early Californian placers displayed rich bar and pockets here and there yielding fortunes to individual claims, there never was found in this State a narrow valley as long as fourteen miles in which the main watercourse and its little tributaries proved as uniformly rich as has the little valley of the Klondike.

For five or six years the auriferous valleys of other tributaries of the Upper Yukon have been worked by hundreds of adventurous miners with just fair success, the fairly rich gravel which is found in plenty yielding but little more than expenses and grub stakes in that expensive country. Most of this placer mining in the Yukon country has heretofore been done near the Yukon, just after it crosses the unofficially accepted boundary line between the North-west Territory and Alaska. The little metropolis of the growing placer mining population has Circle City, located very close to the junction of the boundary line, the Yukon river and the Arctic circle. One of the most interesting of the many Klondike stories is a tale told by William Stanley to a representative of the San Francisco Call. He is a man 50 years old, and has a family of seven children. When he left Seattle for the Yukon a year ago last March he was very poor. One of the sons cared for the family, while another and the father sought fortune in the Alaskan placers. They were successful beyond their boldest and most fanciful dreams. Stanley made the statement to-day that he would not take £200,000 for his possessions in the Klondike. In less than three months he and his partners took out £28,000 from claims 25 and 26 on the El Dorado Creek. This great sum, incredible as it may seem, simply represented the yield of prospect holes and shafts sunk here and there in order to find bedrock, and ascertain something as to the actual value of the claim. They have actually in sight on these two properties over £200,000. They are 500 ft.-claims, and every prospect hole gives up dirt running over £2OO to the lineal foot. Stanley and his partners, the Warden brothers, also own claims on El Dorado Creek, known to contain equally as high paying dirt. When the owners first began sinking prospecting holes, so general was the excitement and the rush to get claims that men could not be found who would work for wages _at any price. Eight men were finally induced to work claim No. 25 for a while on shares. They stayed with it for six weeks, and Stanley said their proportion for the labor performed averaged £ll2O to the man. The San Francisco correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, under date 22nd July, gives the following interesting details about the Klondike diggings : While there is no doubt that this discovery is equal to, if not surpassing, any gold find in the United States, its

locality is such, and transportation so { difficult, that for many years to come j there will be room for several thous- j ands of prospectors. j liloudiko is situated in the north- ! west territory of Canada, and there- j fore Canadian raining laws prevail. A j iyiuad of police have so iar maintained . excellent ordyr, and lb;? c.virip is said to be one of the most pacific and lawabiding known. How long this condition of affairs will continue is problematic, for now that the rush has begun, Seattle, Tacoma, Victoria, Vancouver, and other Paget Sound ports are contributing members of the gambling fraternity and also the usual crowd of rough characters towards swelling the tide that has set in. To reach these new diggings there are steamers (two) from Seattle and San Francisco that run as far as St. Michael's Island, in Norton Sound, Alaska. From thence stern - wheel steamers ply up the Yukon River to the diggings, a distance of over 1900 miles. At least 20 to 25 days are consumed upon this trip up river, as frequent stoppages to wood, and the swift current always running down stream, prevent a more speedy passage. From Klondike to St Michael's the run is made with the current in a week. Altogether from San Francisco to Klondike the passage by sea and river, occupies 40 days. But two journey.-; can be made during the year by sea and river, as the Yukon is closed by ice from September until May. There is also another route to these diggings —by steamer to Dyea, South-eastern Alaska, and thence by a journey by foot and boat of some 400 miles. A divide some 2000 ft. above sea level has to be crossed, and over this summit the property of those traversing the route has to be packed by Indians until the waterway is reached. The route is anything but an easy one, as even during the summer heavy gales spring up that envelope the passengers in snow and hail drifts. In the winter the pass is almost closed,-except for the most hardy, and indeed the entire trip is a rough one. Nevertheless, women and men of a type unaccustomed to hardships have made the journey. Labor is in demand, an ounce of gold per day being paid. The only fear at present is that sufficient food supplies cannot be brought into the district before the river is icebound to supply the rush that is now in evidence. That the discovery of this field inaugurates a new era in the production of gold is beyond doubt, but that the sudden intense rush of people will be able to sustain this season is a question of doubt. I cannot but quote a person who is well acquainted with the Yukon. He says : —" It's a great country for people who will go provided with the means to sustain themselves until they can work out their salvation on the fields. The gold is there, and in great quantities, but the boom which has been caused in the past two .weeks will bring people from all over the world, and those who start must realise that their only success is to go through a long siege of perseverance, this cannot be carried on without food and other supplies in plenty." Should any Australians be tempted to try their fortunes in this new goldfield, it will be well for them to know they cannot leave San Francisco for the Yukon until May, 1898, and by that litne authentic and more detailed accounts of the output and outlook will be available.