Through the Yukon Gold Diggings: A Narrative of Personal Travel

by Josiah Edward Spurr

Everybody was hospitable along the gulch. I had five different invitations to dinner,—hearty ones, too—and some were loath to be put off with the plea of previous engagement. They were all eager for news from the outside world, from which they had not heard since the fall before; keenly interested in political developments, at home and abroad. They were intelligent and better informed than the ordinary man, for in the long winter months there is little to do but to sleep and read. They develop also a surprising taste for solid literature; nearly everywhere Shakespeare seemed to be the favorite author, all nationalities and degrees of education uniting in the general liking. A gulch that had a full set of Shakespeare considered itself in for a rather cozy winter; and there were regular Shakespeare clubs, where each miner took a certain character to read. Books of science, and especially philosophy, were also widely sought. It has been my theory that in conditions like this, where there are not the thousand and one stimuli to fritter away the intellectual energy, the mental qualities become stronger and keener and the little that is done is done with surprising vigor and clearness.

Down the creek I found a Swede, working over the gravels on a claim that had already been washed once. He had turned off the water from the sluice-boxes and was scraping up the residue from among the riffles. Mostly black heavy magnetic iron particles with many sparkling yellow grains of gold, green hornblendes and ruby-colored garnets. He put all this into a gold pan, (a large shallow steel pan such as used in the first stages of prospecting), and proceeded to "pan out" the gold yet a little more. He immersed the vessel just below the surface of a pool of water, and by skillful twirlings caused the contents to be agitated, and while the heavier particles sank quickly to the bottom, he continuously worked off the lighter ones, allowing them to flow out over the edge of the pan. Yet he was very careful that no bit of gold should escape, and when he had carried this process as far as he could, he invited me into his cabin to see him continue the separation.

Here he spread the "dust" on the table and began blowing it with a small hand-bellows. The garnets, the hornblendes and the fragments of quartz, being lighter than the rest, soon rolled out to one side, leaving only the gold and the magnetic iron. Then with a hand magnet he drew the iron out from the gold, leaving the noble yellow metal nearly pure, in flakes and irregular grains. As the material he had separated still contained some gold, he put this aside to be treated with quicksilver. The quicksilver is poured into the dust, where it forms an amalgam with the gold: it is then strained off, and the amalgam is distilled—the quicksilver is vaporized, leaving the gold behind.

This man had his wife with him, a tired, lonely looking woman. I asked her if there were no more women on the creek. She said no; there was another woman over on Glacier Creek, and she wanted so much to see her sometimes, but she was not a good woman, so she could not go. She was lonely, she said; she had been here three years and had not seen a woman.

From some of the miners I obtained a pair of Indian moccasins, which I padded well with hay and cloth to make them easy for my chafing feet; then I slung my own heavy boots on top of my pack and the next morning bade the gulch good-bye, feeling strengthened from my rest. As I climbed out of the gulch I met the miners who had gone as a committee to escort the whisky, arriving with it, white and speckled with fatigue, speaking huskily, (but not from drinking), yet triumphant. The day was cool and when one is alone one is apt to travel hard; but the unwonted lightness of my feet and the freedom from pain encouraged me, so I set my Indian moccasins into a regular Indian trot, and by noon had covered the entire fifteen miles that constituted the first half of the journey. This brought me to a locality dignified by the name of the "Half-Way House," from a tent-fly of striped drilling left by some one, in which the miners were accustomed to pass the night in their journeys over the trail. Here I found Schrader, who had arrived late the night before and was preparing to make a start. We lighted a fire and made some tea, which with corned beef and crackers, made up our lunch. While we were eating, our old companion Pete, with two more miners, came in from the opposite direction to that from which we had come; he was on his way to visit his old claim on Miller Creek. Afterwards we got away, and kept up a steady Indian trot till we reached our camp on Forty Mile Creek at about six o'clock.

We found Goodrich already arrived and wrestling with the cooking, with which he was having tremendously hard luck. This travelling thirty miles in one day, carrying an average of thirty-five pounds, I considered something of an achievement; but the tiredness which came the next day showed that the energy meant for a long time had been drawn upon.

"Tracking" a Boat Upstream.

For four days after that we worked our way up Forty Mile Creek, making on an average seven or eight miles a day. Mosquitoes were abundant, and the weather showery. We used the same method of pulling and poling as before,—a laborious process and one calculated to ruin the most angelic disposition. The river was very low and consequently full of rapids and "riffles," as the miners call the shallow places over which the water splashes. On many of these riffles our boat stuck fast, and we dragged it over the rocks by sheer force, wading out and grasping it by the gunwale. Again, where there were many large boulders piled together in deep water, the boat would stick upon one, and we would be obliged to wade out again and pilot it through by hand, now standing dry upon a high boulder, and now floundering waist deep in the cold water at some awkward step—maybe losing temper and scolding our innocent companions for having shoved the boat too violently.