He may, however, take an hour's walk up Bonanza Creek and see the great dredges at work and the steam-pipes thawing the frozen gravel; and if he should voyage on down to Nome, he may take an hour's run by railway out on the tundra and see thirty thousand dollars sluiced out any day. Almost anything is preferable to the "graft" that is worked by the stage companies upon the helpless cheechacos at Dawson.
The British Yukon is an organized territory, having a commissioner, three judges, and an executive legislature, of whose ten members five are elected and five appointed. The governor is also appointed. He presides over the sessions of the legislature, giving the appointed members a majority of one.
The Yukon has a delegate in parliament, a gold commissioner, a land agent, and a superintendent of roads. Three-fourths of the population of the territory are Americans, yet the town has a distinctly English, or Canadian, atmosphere. In incorporated towns there is a tax levy on property for municipal purposes.
Order is preserved by the well-known organization of Northwest Mounted Police, whose members might be recognized anywhere, even when not in uniform, by their stern eyes, set lips, and peculiar carriage.
The first station of mounted police in the Yukon was established at Forty-Mile, or Fort Cudahy, in 1895, when the discovery of gold was creating a mild excitement. Although so many boasts have been made by the British of their early settlement of the Yukon, not only was Mr. Ogilvie compelled to cross in 1887 under protection of the American Commander Newell, but in 1895 the members of the first force of mounted police to come into the country were forced to ascend the Yukon, by special permission of the United States government, so difficult were all routes through Yukon Territory.
There are at the present time about sixty police stations in the territory, as well as garrisons at Dawson and White Horse. The smaller stations have only three men. They are scattered throughout the mining country, wherever a handful of men are gathered together. Between Dawson and White Horse, where travel is heavy, a weekly patrol is maintained, and a careful register is kept of all boats and passengers going up or down the river. On the winter trail passengers are registered at each road house, with date of arrival and departure, making it easy to locate any traveller in the territory at any time. In the larger towns the mounted police serve as police officers; they also assist the customs officers and fill the offices of police magistrate and coroner. A police launch to patrol the river in summer has been recommended.
Dawson is laid out in rectangular shape, with streets about seventy feet wide and appearing wider because the buildings are for the most part low. In 1897 town lots sold for five thousand dollars, when there was nothing but tents on the flat at the mouth of the Klondike. The half-dollar was the smallest piece of money in circulation, as the quarter is to-day. Saw-mills were in operation, and dressed lumber sold for two hundred and fifty dollars a thousand feet. Fifteen dollars a day, however, was the ordinary wage of men working in the mines; so that such prices as fifty cents for an orange, two dollars a dozen for eggs, and twenty-five cents a pound for potatoes did not seem exorbitant.
There are rival claimants for the honor of the first discovery of gold on the Klondike, but George Carmack is generally credited with being the fortunate man. In August, 1896, he and the Indians "Skookum Jim" and "Tagish Charlie,"—Mr. Carmack's brothers-in-law—were fishing one day at the mouth of the Klondike River. (This river was formerly called Thron-Dieuck, or Troan-Dike.) Not being successful, they concluded to go a little way up the river to prospect. On the sixteenth day of the month they detected signs of gold on what has since been named Bonanza Creek; and from the first pan they washed out twelve dollars. They staked a "discovery" claim, and one above and below it, as is the right of discoverers.
At that time the gold flurry was in the vicinity of Forty-Mile. The first building ever done on the site of Dawson was that of a raft, upon which they proceeded to Forty-Mile to file their claims. On the same day began the great stampede to the little river which was soon to become world-famous.
The days of the bucket and windlass have passed for the Klondike. Dredging and hydraulicking have taken their place, and the trains and steamers are loaded with powerful machinery to be operated by vast corporations. It is certain that there are extensive quartz deposits in the vicinity, and when they are located the good and stirring days of the nineties will be repeated. Ground that was panned and sluiced by the individual miner is now being again profitably worked by modern methods. Scarcity of water has been the chief obstacle to a rapid development of the mines among the creeks; but experiments are constantly being made in the way of carrying water from other sources.