School education plays as yet little part in the morals of the Dawsonites. The greed of fortune has left scant time for the consideration of educational matters, and what little of school training is imparted to the youth of tender years comes largely in the shape of a beneficence from private hands. If the issuance of newspapers be properly classed as belonging to education, then Dawson has made material advances during the past year, for, in addition to the three weeklies which more than supplied all the information that was needed to the inhabitants of 1898, it has now a daily (the Dawson Daily News) and a Sunday paper (The Gleaner), while the pioneer Nugget has been converted into a semi-weekly. Some of these journals, which in typographical detail stand fully equal to many of the foremost journals of the United States, are devoted largely to a vilification of the Yukon government, and secondarily to the nonpartisan interests of the community. But little space is given over to murders and daring deeds of robbery, since occurrences of this kind, thanks to the continued vigilance and efficiency of the Northwest Mounted Police, are all but unknown, and the safety of possessions is as well established as that of the person. The shooting of an actress by her lover, followed by the suicide of the murderer, furnished the sensation for the year; but previous suicides, also in the ranks of the theatrical profession, had already paved a way to this form of excitement.
Two or more lines of telephone unite Dawson with the nearer mining region, and a partial city service has also been established. The city remains as yet without an electric-light plant, but it is by no means unlikely that before the present season has passed the darkness of the winter night will be lifted by the arc light, and much of the oppressiveness of the closed season thereby removed. After two winters of experience, the Dawsonites continue to think lightly of the “terrors” of the cold, and to but few apparently is the extreme of temperature a deterrent to exercise. Sleighing continues to be a pastime, with the temperature marking 40° to 50° below zero, but only with this season does it enter into the category of a fashionable recreation. Hitherto dog-sled teams performed the full service of winter travel, and divided with skating and “ski”-ing the winter exercise; but this year the snow causeways will be lively with the jingling of cutter bells and the rapid pacing of the horse.
One can not help remarking the vast improvement in the general tone of Dawson society, if by that term we may include all that constitutes the population of the city. More particularly is this marked in the case of women, among whom it is no longer a rarity to meet with strict refinement and culture. Musical soirées register among the events of the week, and literary recitals are not exceptional. The male portion of the population has also undergone a refining process through the departure of hundreds or even thousands of “bums,” who only too late for their comfort discovered that their presence was neither a necessity to Dawson nor a mainspring to the extraction of gold from the soil. By their departure the city has probably suffered a decrease in its population of some three thousand to four thousand, but has more than received compensation in that stability of purpose which such elimination always insures. As a city of about thirteen thousand inhabitants, it enters upon its history in the year 1900 with principles cast largely upon a pure business basis, and with a future that is bound in with the product of the soil.
Midnight View of Dawson, June 21, 1899.
The gold resource of the Klondike region seems fully to sustain the anticipations which had been put forth touching the product of 1899. The better-known creeks, such as the Bonanza, Eldorado, and Hunker, have kept well up with their record of the previous year, and give indications of continuing as important factors in the calculation of output for some time to come in the future. The introduction of a certain amount of mining machinery, such as steam drills, thawers, and powerful pumps—applied more particularly to the deposits of the benches and hillsides—coupled with a more definite method of conducting extensive operations on a comparatively economic basis, has given fresh impetus to the work of mine holders, and made largely remunerative that which had promised to be little profitable. A more just administration of the mining laws has helped to a considerate feeling among the miners, and reduced very materially the grievances which formerly fell with thick force upon the offices of the Recorder and Gold Commissioner. Access is now easily had to the records of claims, and individual “cases” receive an early and proper hearing. Electric plants have been introduced on some of the claims, so that there need be no interruption in work for the full twenty-four hours of the day.
Apart from the discovery of rich pay-dirt on creeks and gulches, such as Last Chance (tributary to Hunker), Gold Bottom (tributary to Sulphur), and American, Magnet, and Adams (tributary to the Bonanza), concerning which much skepticism was expressed last year, the filling in of assumed barren gaps in the general line of creeks has done much to inspire the feeling that more of the broad area is gold-bearing than the first surveys and explorations “indicated”—a feeling to which particular confidence has been given by the surprising wealth which has been washed out from the hillsides. For a nearly continuous four miles of the “left limit” of the Bonanza, extending northward from Gold Hill at the confluence of the Eldorado to the “forties below discovery,” the crests of the hills at an elevation of some one hundred and eighty to two hundred feet above the creek are laid bare with the work of the shovel, pick, and drill, and the same or a corresponding stratigraphical height is pierced elsewhere along the stream. Gold Hill (and French Hill, on the Eldorado side), Skookum, Adams, Magnet, and American Hills, and Monte Cristo, all have their summits capped by what is now familiarly known as the “white layer”—a feature in the landscape as interesting to the casual tourist as the construction is important to the more fortunate claim holders who are located here.
Up to this time no quartz locations determined to be of positive value have been located, although a goodly number of “quartz reefs,” “lodes,” and kidney masses have been staked, restaked, and recorded. Some of these have shown gold in small quantity, but in by far the greater number of cases they have proved absolutely barren, and are without promise of yielding anything. The anticipation of many, naturally fostered by individual wish and hope, that an originating or “mother” lode must be present and found somewhere rests without any geological support so far as evidence has been accumulated up to the present time, and there is nothing that looks like a promise to the geological eye. At the same time, it would be premature to assert that such a reef or series of reefs may not be discovered in the future. The hill crests that have furnished so much of the white material of the high benches of the Bonanza and the Eldorado may perhaps be searched with best advantage in this direction, and thence extended to the water parting which surrounds or incloses the upper waters of Gay Gulch.
The Columbian and the Eldorado starting from Dawson, July 4, 1899, on a Race to White Horse Rapids.