Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

“But how can you keep track of the people in such a large territory?” I asked. “Your whole land is a wilderness, and for more than half the year it is all snow and ice.”

“Each hotel and road house is required to keep a daily record of all who stop there,” he replied, “and I may say that we know about where every man in the territory sleeps every night. We are informed of all the passengers who start up or down river, and get reports from every telegraph station they pass on the trip. When a steamer leaves White Horse for Dawson the purser hands in the names of his passengers and they are telegraphed here. If any one gets off on the way his name is wired to us, and we check up the list when the boat comes in. If three men set off in a canoe, the report on that canoe as it passes the next telegraph station will show us if one of them is missing. The patrols also send in reports of the names and business of all newcomers in their districts.”

“Give me some idea of the amount of crime committed in your territory.”

“Our record is fairly good,” replied the inspector of the Mounted Police. “Last year we investigated forty-two cases, only eight of which were under the criminal code. Out of this total of forty-two, we secured thirty-seven convictions. Remember that this is for an area as big as France, and for a population made up largely of frontiersmen, miners, Indians, and Eskimos. Most of the time we have so few bad characters in jail here that it is difficult to keep our barracks in order and the lawn properly mowed. Just now we have two women serving terms for picking the pockets of men who were drunk. They work in the jail laundry, so we are sure of help in our washing for the rest of the year.

“We have had but few murders in our territory,” the inspector continued. “The average was less than one a year for the first twenty years after the big rush to the Klondike, and in every case, without exception, the guilty were caught and executed. There are some interesting stories connected with crimes in this part of the world. Take, for instance, one that occurred in Alaska. The murdered man was a miner who had been killed by an Indian at the close of the season when the miners were about to leave for the winter. They had not time to follow the Indian, but they went to the chief of his tribe and told him that he must catch the murderer and have him ready for them when they returned in the spring. When the spring came they went to the chief and demanded the man. He replied:

“‘Me got him all right. You come see.’ He thereupon took them to the back of the camp and showed them a dead Indian frozen in a large block of ice. As they looked, the chief continued:

“‘We got him last fall. We know you kill him in spring, so we shoot him in fall. What use feed him all winter?’

“We had a case of a miner who inveigled two young men with money to go with him in a canoe two hundred miles down the Yukon. From there they were to make their way inland to a gold prospect the miner had located. As they camped, the miner had one of the men build a fire, while he took the other off to hunt game. Within a short time the man at the camp heard a shot and later the miner came in and said they had killed a bear about a mile away and wanted the man at the camp to go with him to bring in the meat. The two started off together, the miner walking behind. The stranger began to think that all was not right. He turned his head quickly and found that his companion had raised his rifle and was drawing a bead on him. He grappled with him and succeeded in getting the gun. He ran away and finally got to Dawson, where he notified us. We watched the river and within a few days the old miner came down in a boat. Our men arrested him and then went back to the camp and found the body of the man who started out to hunt bear. The murderer was tried in a month and hanged two months later.”

“Do you ever have any lynchings?” I asked.

“I do not believe there has ever been a lynching in all Canada,” said the inspector. “Certainly I never have heard of one in the Yukon. Neither do we have hold-ups such as are not uncommon, I am told, in the United States.”