Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

A little later he struck out for the West, where he became trainer and manager for Frank Slavin, the bare-knuckle champion prize fighter. The two staked their all on Slavin’s success in a big fight, which was lost. They had exactly fifty cents between them when they decided to go up to the new gold mines of the Yukon. They “mushed” it from Dyea over the mountains, and got to the Klondike shortly after gold was discovered. For a time they worked together, and then Boyle engaged in placer mining with Swift-Water Bill Gates.

At one time he and five or six companions ran out of supplies. They had started for the “outside” through Chilkoot Pass, where a blizzard caught them. Swift-Water was overcome, and Boyle carried him back into camp on his shoulders. After that the party came to a stream that only Boyle had the strength to cross. He took over the others one at a time and they went on their way. When at last they reached San Francisco they were given a big banquet and on the menu cards was printed the story of what Boyle had done.

At this time Boyle was not doing as well as he had hoped at his mining. He looked over the ground of the Klondike Valley and conceived the idea that there was a fortune to be made in the earth the miners had left. Boyle stood on a little hill above the Klondike River, and determined to lease all the land within sight. This was when the mining in the creeks was at its height and the valley was so lean it was thought worthless.

Joe Boyle also staked a timber claim ten miles in length and extending through and beyond the area of his mining claim. Everyone laughed at his mining proposition, but he had to fight for his timber. As soon as news of his application got out his competitors at Dawson saw the authorities and had them require him to stake out the whole ten miles of his claim. This stipulation was made at three o’clock on the afternoon before the last day in which the title could be perfected. Boyle started on foot that afternoon and tramped all night, wading through swamps, blazing trees, and driving stakes to define limits. The work was exhausting, but he kept on until he thought he had marked out not less than fifteen miles. He got back to Dawson at nine o’clock the next morning, only to find a number of men ready to jump his claim if it had not been staked. When the area was measured according to law, it was found that his stakes fell short only twenty feet of the ten miles allotted. Boyle put in saw-mills and made money out of his lumber and wood. He got from this same claim the timbers needed in his gold dredging.

His lumber profits gave Boyle the money he needed to approach capitalists about financing his mining concessions. He first formed an alliance with the Rothschilds, by which he was to have one third and they two thirds of the stock. The understanding was that they were to furnish the money, amounting to some millions, and that Boyle was to manage the property and superintend its development.

Then the Rothschilds tried to squeeze out “J. W. B.” They questioned his title and planned a reorganization. Boyle carried the matter to Ottawa; he fought them in the courts, where he got a judgment in his favour for more than six hundred thousand dollars. The Rothschilds then offered him a million dollars for his share of the stock. He refused and in return made them an offer of four hundred thousand dollars for the two thirds they held. At first they laughed, but they finally reconsidered and accepted his proposition. Boyle then formed another corporation, the Canadian Klondike Mining Company, by which name the property is known to this day.

This company owns leases from the government of Canada that give it the right to work the lower valley of the Klondike up to the crest of the mountains on both sides of the river. The greater part of its holdings lie in the wide bed between the hills through which runs the swift-flowing river. At a distance it looks like farm land and when the concessions were granted much of it was covered with gardens. It had been cleared of woods by the first miners, who, it was generally believed, had stripped the soil of its gold.

Joe Boyle thought otherwise. He reasoned, “If so much gold has come from the valley there must be quantities of gold dust and grains in the bed-rock underneath.” Working upon that supposition, he became a rich man by handling gold-bearing earth carrying values of only about twenty-six cents to the ton.

And this brings me to another of the wonders of engineering in the Far North. It is a device invented by Boyle for keeping the hydro-electric plant running throughout the winter, notwithstanding the fact that the temperature at times falls to seventy degrees below zero. That is so cold that if you should attempt to run a sprayer such as is used in an orchard the water would turn to ice before it fell to the ground. At such times some of the streams have seven feet of ice over them and many are solid. Nevertheless, Boyle turned a branch of the Klondike River into a ditch six miles long and dropped it down upon turbines with a fall which he said would generate electricity to the amount of ten thousand horse-power a day all the year through.

Joe Boyle knew that the waters of the Yukon and the Klondike flow under the ice all winter long and that there is an air space between the water and the ice overhead. He concluded that, on the principle of the double walls of an ice house or a thermos bottle, it was this dead air space that kept the running water from freezing. The only thing necessary was to make Nature furnish the thermos bottle. This Boyle did. He filled his ditch to the top and allowed a sheet of ice to freeze a foot or so thick upon it. He then lowered the level of the water two feet, leaving a running stream four feet deep, with an air space above. He next installed electric heaters underneath to help keep the water from freezing. In this way he made the water warm itself, for the stream thus kept moving generated the electricity for the heaters, each of which required current equal to one hundred horse-power.