Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

While I was cashing a draft at the Bank of British North America the other day, I had concrete evidence of the wealth being won, grain by grain, from the Klondike. I saw a shipment of gold ready to be sent out. It had come to the bank in the form of dust and nuggets and had been melted down into bricks. There were fifty thousand dollars’ worth of these bricks lying on the counter, covering a space about three feet square. They were of a light yellow colour, and some were almost white on account of their high percentage of silver. Some were the size of a cake of laundry soap while others were only as big as a cake of milk chocolate. I lifted one of the larger ones. It weighed a little more than twelve pounds and its value was two thousand dollars. Later I saw the bank clerk put the bricks into canvas bags and label them for export by registered mail.

Leaving the bank, I dropped in at the offices of the Northern Commercial Company, where I watched gold dust and nuggets being made ready for shipment to the States. The gold filled two satchels and was worth in the neighbourhood of one hundred thousand dollars. It was put up in little sacks the size of a five-pound salt bag. Each sack was worth from five to ten thousand dollars.

All gold that is shipped out of Canada pays a royalty or tax to the government, and everyone who leaves the Klondike is examined to see that he has no gold upon him. Once a woman succeeded in smuggling out a large quantity of nuggets and dust. She was examined by the inspectors, but they took no account of a big flower pot containing a rose bush that she was carrying with her. Not until she got safely away was it learned that the soil with which the pot seemed to be filled was only half an inch deep and that underneath were hundreds of dollars’ worth of almost pure gold.

CHAPTER XXXVI
ROMANCES OF THE KLONDIKE

Sit beside me on the top of King Solomon’s Dome and listen to some of the romances of the Klondike, true stories surpassing the fiction of the “Arabian Nights.” King Solomon’s Dome is the very centre of the Klondike gold region. It is a mountain higher than the average peaks of the Alleghanies, rising three thousand feet above Dawson, and I have climbed to its top in an automobile. There at the west is Bonanza Creek, where, twenty-five years ago, gold was first found, and running into it is Eldorado Creek, where Swift-Water Bill Gates and Charlie Anderson, the Lucky Swede, as well as scores of others, made their fortunes.

The man who first discovered gold in the Klondike was George Carmack, a New Englander who had come to Alaska from North Adams, Massachusetts. He married an Indian and he had three Indians with him when he was prospecting on the ground just below us. As the story goes, one of the Indians who had gone to the creek for some water saw the gold shining there in the sand. Taking up some dirt on the edge of the creek, the men washed it, and within a half hour had recovered twenty dollars’ worth of gold. Carmack then laid out claims for himself and his three companions, each of which brought a fortune that all too soon slipped through its owner’s fingers. The news of the discovery spread like wildfire over the North. It was telegraphed to all parts of the world and by the next year men were rushing to the Klondike from every direction. They staked both sides of the Bonanza. They set up claims along Eldorado, Dominion, and Hunker creeks, and dug out gold all along the valley of the Klondike River.

Although the earth contains only a few cents’ worth of gold to the ton, the use of giant dredges to scoop up the gravel from the beds of the Klondike and Yukon rivers enables the mining companies to operate at a profit.

With all the force of a shell from a big gun, a giant stream of water is played against the hillside, washing the earth into sluice boxes, where a layer of mercury catches even the most infinitesimal particles of gold.