WHAT SOME MINERS SAW IN KLONDIKE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 25, 22 October 1897, Page 27

WHAT SOME MINERS SAW IN KLONDIKE.

The following, poem from the New York S>t», is decidedly open to improvement in the matter of style but the subject matter is so interesting that we have no hesitation in giving it to our readers :—: — We were up in Alaska, A prospecting party of five ; TJp in the Arctic circle, Up near the North Pole ; And you couldn't guess what we saw there. When out forty days. And about half dead. Getting short on rations, Stiff iv every joint, We knew what kind of a country it was. We were a thousand miles from anybody, So far as we know ; We hadn't seen a live man ; Two men we passed, both dead ; The dead men seemed like company. Then, in three days more, Young Rubdub broke down, Asked if his mother was there. And quibbled about her ; Though he ought to have known different. Sometimes we had to carry him. The tour of us, two at a time. One day avo heard a shout ; It came from a camp ; We had got near the city of Dawson. One whimpered to me : •' Take him to Forty Mile Camp ; There's a chance for him theie."' We agreed, for we heard back ;it Juneau, Theru'b a ho pi^al out there, somewhere. At l;:st we near'd Forty Mile Camp, And Rubdub was pretty near gone. Tnough we took him along on ,1 board, Ho had chills when we got to the place. Now you couldn't tell what we then saw. There, up in the Arctic circle. A man wearing black paid, '• Here's the hospital ; " But that didn't strike us much. Wh it struck us w.is two womjii in white, And the man in black said, " They're Sifters of Mercy Up there in the roughest part of this earth, Whtro the «no\v is everywhere for e\er, Wnere it's cold as the North Pole, Where hardly a bear can live. We saw a settlement of Sisters of Meroy. And they took in Rubdub, Who w.ih ju.st about gone ; Ami they nursed him, and had a doctor. \\eek.s he stayed there. All this time we raked in dust at Klondike. RuMub got through all right ; 1 And he turned up one day at our diggings ; 4 And he worked tor a mouth in the pi icers ; And he made a rich strike, rich nuggets ; 1 Every dollar 'cau«e of the nursing he * <iot from the Sisters of Men y in the f 110.-.piL>l at Forty Mile Camp. True as you're alive, 2 There are Sisters of Mercy , o .it in that part of Alaska, And in other parts of it ; H And it was a good thing for Rubdub that wo heard of them.