KLONDIKE DAYS- Memories Of Gold Rush

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 386, 18 March 1937, Page 3

KLONDIKE DAYS- Memories Of Gold Rush

“I was up in the Klondike for two years during the gold rush, but it seems now a long time ago," writes T. E. Hockley in “The Listener.” “The other day I came across my discharge from the North-West Mounted Police. It Is headed Dawson City, Yukon Territory. I see I was only 24 years of age on completion of my service, so I must have been just over 21 when I entered the country. “I had been a year or so in the Force on detachment duty, when I transferred to the Yukon, otherwise known as the Klondike. Two years in the Yukon werd reckoned equal to five anywhere else. I had lo go to Vancouver, and from there we went by cargo steamer and river-boat (or y sternwheelers as they called them) to Dawson. The whole distance was 3000 miles, and it took us a fortnight, across the open sea to Skagway, over the Chilkoot, and up river from White Horse to Dawson. “At last, early one evening, about eight o'clock, in the half-light, we moored at Dawson wharf. A huge crowd was cheering—and we wondered why. It was because we carried mails and newspapers a month overdue, and, I remember, thousands of cases of whisky, champagne—no beer of course—too bulky— and also we had on board some women, no doubt to be employed at the dancing-halls. ; Later on I found that this surmise i Was correct.

“My chum and I went to the Police Barracks and reported for instructions. We found that nothing was expected from us that night except any news we might have of the outside world. After unloading our budget of news, I found that it would be possible to have a look round Dawson City, so I passed the guard and strolled down the wide, uneven street, looking with interest at the different types of men, making their way to stores, saloons and dance-halls. And from the saloons and dance-halls, particularly the dance-halls, came the sounds of revelry and music where the dancing was going on. INTO ITS STRIDE. “It was now about midnight, and Dawson was just getting into its stride for making merry for the rest of the night, anyway up to 6 a.m. The music was supplied mainly by string instruments, including banjos and mandolins, and the dances were mostly of the graceful kind, waltzing. I was surprised to see miners and their professional partners reversing,

j-which was new to me; and, under the lights of the large oil lamps, the women with their silk dresses sweeping the floor, or, in some cases, the more sober of them carrying the train looped over their partner’s shoulder. “From here I passed on to a saloon, and this place, besides selling spirits, brandy, rye whisky, liqueurs, etc., had some dozen tables devoted to gambling; every form of this was at one’s disposal, from roulette to black Jack (vingt-et-un); and each table was presided over by a professional gambler. Play was, on the whole, perfectly fair, and Chips, like large counters, were used for staking. Currency was gold dust and nuggets, and amounts were weighed out roughly, 1G dollars 70 cents to the ounce of gold, or in English money, £3/7/-. The gold contained no foreign matter; it was just as when taken out of Mother Earth and washed in river water; then it was ready for spending. “The gamblers were good-natured men; they had to be, for occasionally miners who found the luck against them lost their tempers and upset the 1 table, scattering cards and chips on th© floor, but the majority of the miners would take the part of the gambler. A drink cost a dollar, and a dance cost a dollar. DANCING PARTNERS.

“Incidentally, you" got a dancing partner for the dollar, and she collared a quarter of this, also a quarter of the price of drinks. The girls did pretty well before the night was out. They were pretty, and well, if garishly, dressed, and their morals were fair. There were some notorious characters at Dawson. There was English Lu, Californian Belle, Madagascar Zoe, Cripple Creek Carrie, and so on. Most of them were fine women, with a high code of honesty. Sometimes they would nurse sick miners for weeks without any recompense. “Dawson City was built on the delta made by the Klondike River where it joined the Yukon. The barracks of the North-West Mounted Force at Dawson Ciy were built in a commanding position on the highest part of the banks of the river. There were about sixty of us. We had a gaol built of logs by prison labour, with bolts strongly made by the police blacksmith. Prisoners served their full time up here. Dangerous men were shackled with ball and chain, and wore a distinctive prison garb, yellow and black legs and jacket. .There was also a large open pen in-

I-side the gaol, which was to accomI rnodate miners who had been celeI brating too freely even for Dawson, I and the night haul would be anything I from 15 to 50; in the morning they would be fined by one of oui’ officers who were magistrates (ex officio). Murder was tried by an outside judge and a jury of miners, but the death sentence was carried out in Dawson Barracks. We had no public executioner, and it was difficult to find a volunteer to take on the job. We had to rehearse with a sack of stones corresponding to the prisoner’s weight. FIRING THE NOON GUN. “One of our most curious duties, though it didn't seem so then, was to see to the firing of the noon g’un, a flve-pounder. This gun went off with a colossal row at twelve noon, and the Yukon and the Klondike took their time from it. You could hear it easily up the creeks twenty miles away. There were no public clocks and few people had watches. We never had watches ourselves. As time was no object, we didn’t need them. “For our patrol work we used 18feet Peterborough canoes in summer and dogs in winter. The Yukon is about a mile and a half wide here, and is frozen nine months of tile year. I shall never forget one occasion when I was half-way over and the ice began to break. I got across and the cracks began to widen with a roar like thunder. It was always an awe-iupsiring sight to see the Yukon break up, but one preferred to watch it from the bank.

“Food in the Klondike, supplied to police posts, consisted of iron rations, supplemented by deer and occasionally bear or wild duck. The Yukon River was full of coarse salmon at certain periods, which made a welcome change in our menu. The salmon boiled with rice was the staple food for our dog teams. We were our own cooks, and built our own living quarters. There was plenty of timber for fuel, which was fortunate, as the average temperature was 40 below zero, and on one occasion 56 below. “More than once my duties took me up the Klondike River, and I would see the miners at work. The stuff looked simply like golden sand. I saw the fellows working the gold all the way up. They were panning, some alone, in ones and twos—filling big pans, about three feet across, with mud, and dipping it underneath the water. They washed the mud off and left the gold on the bottom of the pan. They were very rough pans—probably of cast iron—which held the specks of dust. The miners scooped out the wet earth on the side of the river. If they could get it on the bank, so much the better. All the

► claims were staked when I went up. They were trying out with a pan whether there was any gold; any of these little streams could be bringing gold dust down from a higher level. Might pick £4O or £5O sterling in a Week. FIFTY-YARD STAKES. “There might be more ambitious concerns —one or two men employing 12 or 20 others, wtih primitive machinery, and paying wages, sometimes £3 a day. Two partners might have brought enough capital to employ six or seven men. There was so much room it was easy to stake thousands of claims. A stake was about 50 yards. You measured the stage by the length of the river bank. Nothing to prevent you staking a hundred yards of it. It was not an infuriated rush; it was a gradual rush; it was a trickle. Bags of room for all to stake.

“It is quaint nowadays to look back on the various types who went to Dawson: the Australians, Canadians, and the “Seans,” as were called the Swedes and Norwegians. There were a few Germans, and, of course, a lot of Americans. I don’t think I met half-a-dozen Englishmen besides myself in my whole two years up there. “Then here was Diamond Tooth Gertie, who was very notorious. She had put part of her lifetime’s savings into having a front tooth stopped with a diamond. I suppose the idea was to give her a flashing smile. And I remember a man who turned undertaker and hung the frozen bodies above the stove in his shack to thaw out before putting them in the coffins. As he was als oa barber, you can imagine some of his customers got a shock when they came in for a shave; which they did;, incidentally, about every three months. “And once, on patrol, I saw the Aurora Borealis. I was trekking over the frozen Yukon on foot, because the trail was so< bad, and going towards Eagle City (U.S.A.) from Forty Mile Detachment. There was that stillness that can be felt, not a sound, with the temperature anywhere between 50 and 60 below. Suddenly the heavens were aflame, a most aweinspiring sight; waves of crimson purple, and all the colours dreamt of, but never seen, passed across the sky rapidly. With the high mountains and the eternal whiteness, and not a living creature to be seen, words fail to describe the loneliness amidst this manifestation of something which appeared to me, at time, to be not of this earth.

“All that happened a long while ago. Before I was 25. And I’m now a good deal more than 55. But I can remember those two years up the Klondike more clearly now than most of what has happened to me since.”