“Uncle Dick has asked me to set down everything I see at Dawson, which is the big gold-camp that caused the Klondike stampede in 1897; so I think I will do that the best I can.”
XVI
DAWSON, THE GOLDEN CITY
Rob’s diary went on as he had promised, for during the time that they lay between boats at the once famous gold-camp there was abundant opportunity for them to get about and see pretty much everything there was worth seeing. Rob’s record runs day by day as previously:
“Thursday, August 14th.—Dawson at 4 a.m. Our boat does not go any farther. We reserved passage on the Norcom for White Pass. She will sail the evening of next Saturday. On British soil again.
“This place has had twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants in boom times, but there are only about twelve hundred people here now, I believe. A good many people are starting off for Chisana district, up the White River, where they say there is a gold strike. All this country has been crazy over gold strikes for a good deal more than twenty years.
“We went to a hotel here and got baths and got barbered up, which makes a change in our looks. We got a few things to wear which the archdeacon could not give us.
“Friday, August 15th.—Went up the famous Klondike River, which comes in here. Half of it is clean and the other half dirty. Saw no more pick-and-shovel work. Everything is run by the big dredges owned by companies, which do the work of hundreds of men. They thaw out the ground now with steam-pipes which they drive down in, and then turn in steam. Then they rip out the ground down twenty feet with the big scoops of the dredges. They just have water enough to float the dredges. Everything is worked and washed right on the dredge. It beats placer mining a whole lot. But a few men can work one of these dredges, and then a few men get all the money they turn out.