CHAPTER XXV
THE OVERLAND TRAIL OF '98
Out of the North there rang a cry of Gold!—TOM McINNES.
Only this spring, a widow near Edmonton sold her quarter-section to a real-estate syndicate for eighty thousand dollars. She was one of the women who "stayed at home with the stuff" while her husband fared forth in search of gold at the time of the Klondike stampede in 1897-8. He died on the trail, and ever since the woman has ploughed the lone furrow both literally and metaphorically.
The handsome reward of her industry and pertinacity calls to mind that fable of Æsop's where the young men found that the hidden treasure their father had described to them was in the yield the soil had given after they had industriously digged it over.
We were talking about this the other night, and the humour and tragedies of the gold stampede, over the last bottle of champagne—-positively the last—that remained of the most prolonged and celebrated spree that ever took place in the North. The vintage was a Koch Fils of 1892 and, therefore (to save your mental arithmetic), I may add, twenty-one years old. It was brought in by the Helpman Expedition, familiarly known to the local wiseacres of the day as "The Helpless Proposition."
Did it taste well?
I do not know.
I like lemonade with maraschino cherries better than champagne, but the party were agreed that it was excellent drinking. One said it had a pulse; another, that European grapes sucked in more sun than those grown in America; "The stuff that makes the world go round," remarked a third. Assuredly it looks well, thought I, and the bubbles caper like they were alive.
Under the balm and stimulus of the champagne, the men (all of them old-timers) were not indisposed to talk concerning the party who brought it into the country and of the things that befell them. Also, they tell about the other parties who attempted to reach the gold-diggings by the overland route from Edmonton. These were heart-breaking tales, with, here and there, a golden thread of humour showing up in the black fabric of despoliation and defeat.
The thirty members of the Helpman Party came from Great Britain. They were unfortunate from the start. They arrived at Edmonton on Christmas Eve, one of them, Captain Alleyn, being ill with pneumonia, from which disease he died a couple of days later. He was the artist of the party, and correspondent of Reuter's News Agency.
His was the first military funeral held in the North, so that it was an event around which much interest centred.
The expedition was under the command of Colonel Helpman and Lord Avonmore of Gortmerron House, County Tyrone, known to the local folk by the unkind name of "Lord 'Ave-one-more." He died last year in Ireland. "A truly remarkable man, my dear," said an old lady of our lemonade group, "and always he talked of smashing niggers."
All provisions and supplies for the gold crusade were brought from England, except the horses, and the duty thereon amounted to several thousand dollars. In truth, they were provisioned under War Office approval, for, said they, "We are English gentlemen and must travel as English gentlemen." Baled hay and hay-choppers, baths, beds, tents, sanitary conveniences, and other impedimenta were imported by the train-load.
These Canadian men will have it, moreover, that the Britishers brought in snowshoes for their horses, which gear they were wont to designate as "bloomin' tennis racquets." I might have believed this extraordinary statement had I not guessed that my narrator gleaned his idea from the Voyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain, for these imperturbable northmen never so much as blink an eye when adding the inevitable pinch of spice to a story.
It is quite true though that the party did bring enormous supplies of "arrested" foods, egg powders, Westphalian hams, almost unlimited quantities of tinned ptarmigan, woodcock, plum-pudding, and other toothsome delicacies well calculated to pique the most jaded and club-debauched palate. Unfortunately, on being opened, nearly all these delicate edibles were found to be spoiled, so that the travellers were forced to exist on such crude diet as pig's face, rice, and beans.
But the liquors still remained. Allah be praised!—barrels and cases of it; yes! even kegs and demi-johns—brandy, burgundy, benedictine, claret, champagne, and canary—these and other brands which I forget, for my interest was attracted from the list to the wistful faces of these historians who think with love and longing on those rare old, fair old golden days that are gone beyond recall.
On their arrival at Edmonton, the commanders of the expedition were informed that a prohibition law was in force in the Yukon and that, in consequence, no spirituous liquors could be carried across its borders. This being the case, there was nothing for it but to drink the liquors in Edmonton. They had no licence to sell it, and to pour it upon the unappreciative prairie would be manifestly absurd—even wicked. This is why I was correct in saying that our vintage of the night was the last bottle of the most prolonged and celebrated spree that ever took place in the North. In truth, it was an Homeric carousal.
The spree lasted for six weeks, and fights with their legal sequences were frequent. To use the most generally approved northern expression of the day, "They just fit and fit," so that more than once the good Archdeacon of Alberta had to pour oil and balm into the broken bones and brittle nerves of the combatants. Indeed, he went so far as to have them nursed in his own home. He is a hale-hearted, fine-fibred gentleman, our Archdeacon.
It is hardly fair, however, to lay the entire spree to the credit of the stampeders. The population of Edmonton, in the late nineties, consisted of fifteen hundred people, and all the male portion of it used their utmost endeavours to prevent any good liquor going to waste. The gentry of the community were invited to partake, but the hewers of wood and drawers of water who had been engaged to exercise the pack-horses by walking them up and down, these, and the disorderly arrant idlers who hung on the borders of the camp, helped themselves. Their motto was the same as Lord Nelson's—"Touch and take." Indeed, the speedy manner in which they relieved the expedition of any encumbering wealth was truly most astonishing. They have a theory in the North that everything belongs by right to the man who has the greatest need. Now, the need of the North is a very big pocket and there are holes in it.
Ultimately, the party got away. They took the Swan Hill route that leads to the Old Assiniboine Crossing, but spring had already set in so that the trails were deep with water, and the muskegs were bottomless pits.
The leader of the expedition (by which they meant the foreman as distinct from the director) was Mr. Matthew Evanston O'Brien, an Irish solicitor and erstwhile Chief of Police in Australia. It is also said he was an English secret-service man. He died in April of this year at Wetaskawin, Alberta, where he was practising law.
The breeds and other packers who accompanied the party became insolent and purposely lost their loads. One man smashed the camp stove and dropped it into a river; others lost tents; while some found hay and oats as hard to hold as quicksilver. Being badly sheltered and underfed, nearly all of their hundred horses died, so that long afterwards teamsters coming to the south picked up wagon loads of harness besides other useful gear. In a word, like the man who tried all the rheumatism cures, the members of the Helpman Expedition were "done good."
Some of the party got as far as Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River, but in the end every man, greatly chastened in spirit, turned back to Edmonton, where some of them were stranded for several months before money came to take them on to England.
Do not laugh at their misfortune. It is not seemly so to do, for, in all this wildly-warring world, there are few more bitter cups than the failure of a big financial coup in the which you have invested your own (and alas!) other people's money.
Besides, few of the scores of parties who started fared any better, while many faced worse. Some of them, like the Moody Expedition, returned because they could not make over two or three miles a day, they having to fell the impeding timber. At this rate of travel, the journey would have occupied five years.
Other crusaders returned because they had no food or money, a condition that scarcely makes for progress or health.
Still others came back because they had fallen out by the way, for the trail has the satanic peculiarity of developing all that is surly, selfish, or yellow in human nature. People who are tired, ill, and hungry lift the curtain of their character and forget to let it fall, so that the result is disillusionment to all concerned. Not a few men who started in on pronouncedly amicable terms, eating from the same plate both actually and figuratively, came out brimful with umbrage, hatred and pique. Murder on the trail may be almost a natural impulse.
But all the derelicts who returned had one well-defined peculiarity (albeit a negative one), they came in quietly by the back trails—they who had gone forth full-fed and wanton as young gophers. The North had rolled out their individuality like one might roll out dough. They were "the bitten;" gaunt-eyed starvelings; tatterdemalions who might have posed for Rip Van Winkle or The Ancient Mariner. The North is a goodly country and attracts goodly men, yet, even here, one may lose both his sense and his competence.
"Did no one succeed?" I ask.
"Oh yes!" replies a jocund old gentleman who has lived here these thirty years. "One man got through by hook or crook—chiefly crook. He was a real-estate agent and insurance broker."
Further questions elicit the fact that this broker was not so much a stampeder as an absconder. He was short in his returns to the insurance company and took this means of avoiding arrest. At least, so it was rumoured. He left Edmonton in the late winter with no money, no food—nothing but a small hand-satchel containing collars and blank premium forms. All the way along he insured the trailers on the straight life, endowment, or accident policies, or for sick benefits. They were far enough on the trail to realize that there was a distinct possibility of their requiring one, if not all these premiums, so our broker found fat pickings. Resides, each trailer had begun to think lovingly and longingly of his family at home, and of what a comforting compensation a ten-thousand dollar policy might be to them in the event of his death. Indeed, it seemed almost like swindling the company to take out a policy on this journey. But what would you? Here was their properly certified agent with the requisite papers to boot. One must take what the gods send.
At Athabasca Landing, our broker man stole a boat and made his way down the river. He fed at each camp he encountered; related how he had become separated from his party, and how he was hurrying forward to rejoin them. Under the circumstances, it was only natural that his hosts should supply him with enough food for a day or two. Besides, it would never do to let him die of starvation and he carrying their good money and insurance policies in his satchel—the little black hand-satchel wherein he kept his collars.
He reached Dawson early in the rush, but we do not know how it fared with him there—-whether he crushed his money from stones or bones—for it was probable he took a new name, and, needless to say, he did not return via the overland route to Edmonton.
Two others who reached the northern Eldorado were Jim Kenealey and Jack Russell. It took them two years to get in. Russell struck pay-dirt in the Cape Nome District, but Kenealey, after abandoning several claims, came out penniless. He died recently at the Cameron House, Strathcona, of which hotel he was proprietor. Kenealey, who came from Peterboro', Ontario, in the early eighties, was a clever sleight-of-hand artist and one time had an encounter with an Indian, it being natural and entirely reasonable that the Indian should demand the fifty cents that Kenealey claimed to have taken from his ear.
"But there were others who reached the gold zone," explains a lawyer who was, in those days, a cub-reporter, type-setter, and I know not what besides. "I have forgotten their names, but you may find them in the files of The Bulletin."
One of these parties comprised four men, Martin McNeeley from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, George Baalam, W. Schreeves and W. J. Graham.
Schreeves and Baalam reached Dawson safely; Graham was drowned on the way, and McNeeley, who injured his foot, was left behind by the others somewhere near the Devil's Portage.
Some months afterwards, Mr. E. T. Cole of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, with his party, stumbled upon a small tent in which they found a terribly decomposed body. It was McNeeley's. By his side there was a knife, a compass, a rifle, twenty-five rounds of cartridges, twenty pounds of flour, some meat, matches and wood. The following excerpts are from his diary—
"December 28, 1897—My partners deserted me and tried to cripple me further by taking my grub.
"January 5, 1898—Walked eight miles on my awful foot and am crippled on an Island alone. The pain of my foot is terrible."
The files reveal another tragedy in which two men from Brantford, Ontario, were the principals—the Strathdees.
Mr. A. C. Strathdee was one of the early stampeders. He went north with sixteen pack-horses. His only companion was his son, aged twenty-two, W. Harvey Strathdee, a member of the Dufferin Rifles. They camped one night beside the Taylor Trail that leads to Nelson. In the morning, while cooking breakfast, Harvey sighted a moose and, straightway, started in pursuit. At noon he had not returned and his father, becoming anxious, tried to follow the trail, but unsuccessfully. At night, the now frantic man lit a fire and shot off his rifle in the hope that Harvey might see or hear them. He did this for eight terrible days and eight more terrible nights, till he realized that further delay would endanger his own life. In these eight days, half of his horses died from lack of food, the man being afraid to shift camp in case Harvey might find his way back.
Further on, he met James and John Fair of Elkhorn, Manitoba, who returned with him to spend yet eight other days in unavailing search. At Dunvegan, Mr. Strathdee engaged a white man, an Indian, and a dog-train to go in and make quest till spring. Then he came back to Edmonton, where he exacted promises from the journalists to forward to him at Brantford any report that might come in from the trails regarding the lost youth.
For a long time nothing came but, one day, some Indians brought in word how on their way north nearly a year before, they fell on the fresh trail of a lost white man and had followed it up. They knew he was white for he wore boots, and that he was lost because of his uncertain, round-about course. They found his body on a mountain between two logs. His arms were outspread and his cartridge belt and rifle lay by his side. The trees around had been burned, and the Indians were of the opinion that he had set them on fire to try and attract his father's attention.
That the public of Canada and the United States had little idea of the hardships to be endured on the overland trail was evidenced by the fact that a number of women attempted to take it. Some of them wore ordinary clothes with plumes in their hats, but the more knowing ones were attired in jaeger skirts and jerseys, also they wore jaeger caps that covered the face except for the nose and mouth. In their belts they carried six-shooters.
Letters were received here asking if the writers could get through to the Klondyke on bicycles; if there were good boarding-houses on the way, and if the Indians were troublesome.
For the instruction of the stampeders, the Honourable the Minister of the Interior, then Mr. Frank Oliver, issued a special number of The Bulletin, which was the farthest north newspaper, mapping out the route and the distances between the points.
By the shortest and best travelled trails, the entire distance from Edmonton to the Klondyke was 2,728 miles. This route was via the Athabasca, Great Slave, Mackenzie and Peel Rivers. From thence it crossed to Summit, La Pierre House, and down the Porcupine River to its junction with the Yukon River. From this point to Dawson was the home-run.
There are said to be sixty-eight roads to heaven, but this road to Dawson is not one of them.
Each man had six pack-ponies to carry in his supplies, which consisted of 900 lb. of food and 150 lb. of clothing and hardware, making in all, 1,050 lb. The ponies cost from twenty-five to thirty dollars, and it was conservatively estimated that the supplies cost $250.00.
The food was calculated on the basis of the Mounted Police rations and was supposed to last a year, being doled out at the following ration per man, per day: flour 1-¼ lb., beef 1-½ lb., bacon 1 lb., potatoes 1 lb., apples 3 oz., beans 4 oz., coffee or tea ½ oz., salt ½ oz., butter 2 oz., sugar 3 oz.
With praiseworthy discretion, many of the Old-Timers opened up depots to supply the parties with outfits, but, on the whole, there was no over-charging or money-grabbing such as one might have expected. On the contrary, the prices that prevailed were from 25 to 75 per centum less than those of to-day. Flour was $2.50 per hundredweight; bacon 11 cents per pound, evaporated apples 8 cents, rolled-oats 3 cents, raisins 10 cents, and black tea from 25 to 40 cents. Pack-saddle blankets cost $2.00 a pair, and large grey blankets $3.25. Long arctic socks cost from 50 cents to $1.00, sweaters from $1.00 to $1.50, and cardigan jackets from $1.00 to $2.00.
Many kinds of costumes were affected. Some men were clad in fur from head to feet; others wore khaki, or sheepskin coats; and in one party every man had a coonskin coat.
Nothing, however, caused so much excitement in the burgh as the various modes of conveyance that were planned and built by the gold-seekers.
"Texas" Smith started alone on the longish trail with all his provisions packed in three barrels. These were equipped as rollers or wheels with a platform on top for sleeping purposes. He calculated that on the rivers the barrels would act as floaters and so could be comfortably navigated.
Texas travelled nearly nine miles before the hoops came off. He was able to retrace his steps to town by the beans the barrels shed on the road. They took his photograph, and that of his conveyance, before he started but, on his return, good-naturedly refrained, for it was distinctly noticeable that Texas had the air of having eaten the canary.
Breneau Fabian, a Belgian, invented a boat which, being intended for all elements, was constructed from galvanized iron. He called it Noah's Ark. It was built in two parts with a hinge in the middle. When open, it could be used on the river, for it had a keel; or on the snow, for it had runners. If he cared to, he could close up his boat by means of the hinge—that is, it would turn over, one part on top of the other, in which shape it was a caravan with wheels attached. His yoke of oxen were to be killed at Athabasca Landing and salted down as food for the journey.
For the information of the curiously inclined, I might say that until recently, Fabian's Ark served as a float at all civic processions such as Labour Day and the Queen's Jubilee, but it has had its day and its scrap heap.
Another man, whose name I could not learn, built an ice-boat on the Saskatchewan River. He had figured out that he could reach the placer-diggings by means of sails, thus acquiring a distinct monetary advantage over the folk and fellows who had horses, in that sails would not require to be fed with hay and oats.
Be it said to the credit of the folk and fellows that they cherished no grudge in their hearts, for, the sails refusing to act, they loaned him fourteen teams wherewith to haul his ice-boat on to the bank.
Considering the length and nature of the trail, perhaps the most bird-witted scheme of reaching the Klondike was that evolved by the "I Will" Steam-Sleigh Company of Chicago. They ought to have known better.
They built a train of four cabooses or cars, the motive power of which was steam. A marine boiler and engine were imported from the United States, upon which they paid $500.00 custom toll. Also, they imported a revolving drum equipped with teeth, similar to those used on the log-roads in the big timber-limits, and sprocket-wheels, band-chains, and other things no mortal woman could be expected to remember. All the cars were on steel-runners. The one behind the engine contained fuel; the second was the living car, while the third held supplies.
Everything was packed and loaded ready for the hour of starting before the builders had tested the machine. All Edmonton was assembled to see the sight, while scores of Indians squatted around and stared like gargoyles. The workmen, with an air of high concern, twisted a bolt here, or a belt there; oiled a hub, or did one of the hundred things a mechanic does to an engine and boiler when he would have you believe he is earning his pay.
It was a proud moment when one of the builders stepped forward and touched his hat to a blue-uniformed official—a moment, too, that was fraught with serious issues, for the blue-uniform said, "Let her go!" All Edmonton ceased to breathe and the Indians looked almost pale.
There was a vast creaking; a shudder as if the caverns of the deep were opened; the wheels turned—and turned—and turned, and with each turn buried the machine deeper into the earth, there to remain till the day that Kenneth Macleod bought the marine boiler and engine for his sawmill. They say he bought it for a song, but no one ever heard the song. Ah! but those were right royal days for the Old-Timers, the like of which can never be.
I nearly forgot about the three cabooses. These stampeders who did not die of scurvy, hardship, starvation, or accident, and who returned via Edmonton, used the cabooses for shelter while they wrote home for money.
It was a long time before they were free of occupants.