THE SITUATION AT DAWSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6028, 16 November 1897, Page 4

THE SITUATION AT DAWSON.

"FLEE OK STARVE." Provisions will buy claims at Dawson ami Forty-Mile this winter that raouey cannot touch. In the gulches arouud Circle City the minors are supplied, but in the city itself there is not much more than twelve tons of flour. Forty-Mile has little or nothing, and a large part of Dawson must already be on short rations. Such is the information brought down by the Danube. "Escape or starve" is the message that has been sent up the river, and when the history of that region comes to bo written, the daring and perseverance of the plucky man who, at the risk of his life, undertook to carry the warning to the thousands of people waiting anxiously for news, "will have to be recorded. The news brought overland some days ago of the difficulties encountered by the river steamer Margaret in the attempt to reach Dawson City is amply confirmed by the reports brought down by the Danube. Assistant Superintendent Hansen, of the Alaska Commercial Com--i pany, caffie; dowif the river on the Margaret after .she had laaided there half of her «axgo, to laake a heroic effort to get the ■; i einainder ...of the' provisions cached at .JDevil's Teeth rapids (and aptly aie they ~" named), for Ibja relief of the threatened starvation' rtt Dawson. '-- • . JJ"he Attempts made to get the boat up she. river all proyed-fr niilessyand : finally tit, the risk of sacrificing, his own life the "gallant captain started up in a birch bark cun.o3' toctell the beleaguered residents that no help could reach them, and if they would live, they 'must make their way down to where food awaited them. No word has been received from him since he ' was heard of as having reached a point but a few miles beyond the rapids, and perhaps none will be until the warmth of the springtime sun unlocks the frozen gates f which havo closed forbiddingly and forebodingly on the upper reaches of that desolate stream. No words seem too strong to those men who have come down from St Michael's, wherewith to depict the danger which exists for those who are still left in the vicinity of Dawson. The starvation will not be for those at Dawson, they say, but the dead men will be between Dawson and Dyea ; those who are .going over the pass lats will be caught in the winter storms, and. they must surely die. One and all agree that there is not enough money even in the rich Klondyke region to induce them to attempt the journey over the trail this winter. Men were flocking down to St Michael's from Circle City. Every day boat3 arrived heavily laden vrith men who had been warned by those who started up when the steamer Hamilton found the Devil's Teeth impassable. No one tells any more of gold, the cry ia all for " grub." The Margaret was to wait until the last possible safe moment at the rapids, in the hope of catching "fhe down-stream rush from Dawson City, to feed the hungry and convey all .vposable-tp where food awaited them lower down the river. • -At -Slanook a - camp of several hundred men has been established by the unloading by the steamers of . the passengers they could take no further. Two boats, one belonging to each of the rival companies, arrived there together, and " dumped " their living- freight upon the inhospitable reaches of that lonely Arctic spot. Many of them will winter there, some of them will make other, but perhaps no more successful efforts to get away ; and, alas, some it is feared will fall victims to the rigor and hardships of that dreadful place. Another possibility which lends horror to the contemplation of the fate in store

for those who have been thus beleaguered at Dawson is the almost certain fact that darkness will bft. unrelieved by, any ray of light. The stock of coal oil and candles is reported to be exhausted. This, added to the hunger, if not worse, which must exist, causes a° dsep feeling of sympathy among the men who, having reached civilisation with thankful hearts for their own deliverance, are filled with commiseration for those less fortunate than they.