Others had gathered in and took part. Preferences were pretty evenly divided, the general opinion being that it would be more comfortable to live on board a battleship but more agreeable to do our fighting on land. The talk drifted to personal experiences on ships and when I said that I had once been "a sailor before the mast" on the Yukon "the fat was in the fire," and it was up to me to tell this story of my first trip on a scow four hundred miles down the Yukon River to Dawson. Before I started Clarke asked me to wait a few minutes till he rounded up the fellows in the other huts. When I began our hut was full.
* * * * *
I had been nine months in the Atlin Gold Camp at the head waters of the Yukon and had gone out in the fall of 1900 to Kingston, where I spent the winter. Next spring the command-request came from Dr. Robertson to go to the Yukon again, this time to the Creeks back of Dawson City. I had got a taste of the North in Atlin and I was eager to go. I followed the usual route from Vancouver to Skagway, then over the Pass to White Horse, a relay camp just below the rapids.
It was early in June, but the ice was not yet out of Lake Lebarge, an expansion of the river some miles below White Horse. I had to wait ten days before it was clear. This forced stay used up my funds so that I couldn't pay steamboat fare. The only other method practicable for me was to work my way down to Dawson by getting a job as one of the "sweep-men" on a scow. I heard that Mike King had three twenty-ton scows ready to load and was looking for a crew, so I applied and was taken on as an "able-bodied seaman." There were eighteen of us in all, including the cook who was a southern darky. We were a queer mixture. You didn't ask too many questions of chance acquaintances in those days but I know that in our crew there was a doctor, a gambler, a sky-pilot, a Mormon, and a carpenter or two. The others I couldn't figure out. My profession wasn't known at first for I wore no clerical uniform. Sweater, rough pants, and heavy boots served my turn, and the others were dressed much the same. Each of us had to sign an agreement not to mutiny against the pilot, to obey his orders, and to accept fifteen dollars at Dawson, with our food on the way, as full payment for all we might have to do, loading, unloading, and on the river. First we had to get our cargo aboard, baled hay and sacks of oats, sixty tons in all, so the first work I did in the Yukon was longshoring.
We were ready to go about ten in the morning and shoved out into the current. We had no self-propelling power, simply floated with the stream using "sweeps" to keep in the main channel. These "sweeps" were about fourteen feet long, heavy, roughly-shaped oars, two at bow and stern of each scow. We stood up to work them at the command of our pilot. He was a good river-man from Ottawa, and I can hear him yet singing out his orders as he looked ahead and with practiced eye noted shoals or eddies that we could not see, or if we saw, did not know their meaning. It was "Hit her to starboard forrard," "Starboard all," "Port all," and "Steady all," when we got into good water again. We made a good get-away and soon were floating swiftly and silently onward in mid-stream. This great river, five hundred yards wide twelve hundred miles from its mouth, was brimful from the spring thaw and the three big, heavily-laden scows lashed side by side were carried along like a feather. You could feel the rhythmic surge and heave of the mighty flood almost as if the swell of some far-off ocean storm had crept up-stream to us. So in very truth a great river has a throb of life in it, a pulse beat in unison with the deep life of the Universe.
We didn't need to tie up at night because of darkness. There is no darkness there in June and you could hear the singing all night long of innumerable birds among the trees on either bank and see them flying about. I wonder when they slept! On the scows we had an easy task. It wasn't constant work. After getting safely past some shoal or rocks we would pull our sweeps in and lie down beside them for sleep or rest until aroused by the captain's voice. When we tied up to the bank it was usually that all hands might be assured of a right good sleep and not because of darkness or exhaustion.
By morning we had reached Lake Lebarge and were towed across to the outlet where our scows were soon again in the grip of the river. This part was called "Thirty-Mile," a rough, rapid, winding stretch, dangerous even to steamboats, demanding skill and vigilance. Our pilot took a long chance in risking the three scows abreast. We nearly made it, but, when there was only another ten miles to go and travelling at a tremendous pace, he gave the order to "put her to starboard all" at one of the curves a trifle too late. We all saw the danger, a jagged bank angling into the stream, and put every ounce we had in us on the sweeps. It was in vain. The port scow crashed against the rocks. We held for a few minutes, barely time to get a line ashore and round a tree when the current caught us again and commenced to swing us out into mid-stream. The tree bent, held a moment, and then came tearing out by the roots. Things were looking bad. Two sweeps were broken and we were circling round with the broken scow filling fast. We had to try for another landing or it would mean a complete wreck, with loss of the cargo and some of the crew as well. The next ten minutes were extremely interesting, to put it mildly, but fortune favoured us in the shape of a back eddy, these strange currents that circle up-stream near shore. We worked furiously towards it and at last made it although the momentum of the almost unmanageable scows crashed us again on the rocks, there was no strong current to drag us off. We got a line ashore to a good stout tree and so made fast.
The injured scow was settling and the only thing to do was to unload it as quickly as possible, and then seek to repair the damage done. Otherwise the owners stood to lose heavily with hay and oats selling at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton. We had a strenuous time emptying that scow. First the twenty ton of fodder had to be taken out a bale and a sack at a time, averaging dry over one hundred pounds each, and every minute getting wet and wetter. They had to be carried on our shoulders across a rickety make-shift gang-plank of sweeps to the rock shore and there stacked up somehow. Next we rigged up a Spanish windlass and dragged one corner of the scow into the shallows and worked up to our knees in ice-cold water at what seemed an endless task of baling. At last, with baling and the pull of our windlass, we got the broken part clear so that it could be mended.
Only two or three could work handily at that job so after a rest several of us climbed the bank and went into the woods to explore. There were evidently miles of good spruce timber on extensive mesas running back to the low rolling mountains. The ground was sprinkled with flowers among the blueberry and cranberry bushes and we found several clusters of very pretty wild orchids. But what surprised us most was to literally walk into numerous coveys of willow grouse. They were so unafraid that we easily knocked over a good score of them with sticks. When we got to the scows with our "poultry" our story of the tame grouse would hardly have been believed if we hadn't been able "to deliver the goods." When Sambo, our cook, saw us, his eyes rolled and all his ivories were displayed in a full-sized grin of welcome, and we surely did have a feast of fried grouse next day in which "all hands and the cook" took leading parts.
During our absence one of the carpenters was nearly drowned. We noticed when we returned that his face was scratched and that it had an unusual thoughtful expression. In examining the extent of the damage from the inside of the scow, to get a better look he poked his head down the splintered hole, lost his balance and slipped through to his waist, with his head under water and unable to move further in or out or to shout for help. He would soon have drowned had not someone happened to notice the frantic waving of his feet in the air. One of them said they had seen dumb men talking with their hands but they had never seen any man make such an eloquent speech with his feet. When he was got out he had imbibed about all the Yukon river he could accommodate.