We have just returned from an evening at the first annual show of the Dawson or Yukon “Horticultural Society.” The name itself is a surprise; the display of vegetables particularly and flowers astonished me. The biggest beets I have ever seen, the meaty substance all clear, solid, firm and juicy. Potatoes, Early Rose and other varieties, some new kinds raised from seed in three years—large, a pound or more in size. And such cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce as you never saw before! Many kinds, full-headed and able to compete with any produced anywhere. All these raised in the open air on the rich, black bottom and bench land of the Yukon. Squashes and also tomatoes, but these latter, some of them, not fully ripened. Also a display of fine strawberries just now ripe. We bought strawberries in the markets of Cristiania and Stockholm upon the 12th and 13th of September, last year, and now we find a superior ripe fruit here at just about the same degree of north latitude. The wild currants, blueberries and raspberries with which these northern latitudes abound are notorious. And the show of oats, rye, barley, wheat and timothy and native grasses, as well as of red and white clover, was notable, proving beyond a doubt that this Yukon region is capable of raising varied and nutritious crops necessary for man’s food and for the support of stock, horses and cattle. Already a good many thrifty mortals, instead of losing themselves in the hunt for gold, are quietly going into the raising of vegetables and hay and grain, and get fabulous prices for what grows spontaneously almost in a night. And the show of flowers grown in the open air would have delighted you. All of these products of the soil have been grown in sixty or seventy days from the planting of the seed, the almost perpetual sunlight of the summer season forcing plant life to most astonishing growth.
September 11th.
Day before yesterday I took the six-horse stage up Bonanza Creek of the Klondike and rode some thirteen miles over the fine government road to “Discovery” claim, where a Cleveland (O.) company is using a dredge and paying the Indian “Skookum Jim,” whose house we saw at Caribou, a royalty that this year will place $90,000.00 to his credit, I am told.
DAILY STAGE ON BONANZA.
DISCOVERY CLAIM ON BONANZA OF THE KLONDIKE.
The Klondike is a large stream, about like Elk River of West Virginia, rising two hundred miles eastward in the Rockies, where the summer’s melting snow gives it a large flow of water. The valley is broad—a mile or more. The hills are rolling and rounded, black soil, broad flats of small firs and birches. Bonanza Creek, on which Skookum Jim and “Dawson Charlie” and the white man, discovered the first gold in 1897, has proved the richest placer mining patch of ground the world has ever known. For a length of some twenty miles it is occupied by the several claim-holders, who are working both in the creek bed and also ancient river beds high up on the rolling hill slopes, a thing never known before. Here the claims are larger than at Atlin, being 1,000 feet wide and 250 feet up and down the creek. The claim where a discovery is made is called “Discovery Claim,” and the others are named “No. 1 above” and “No. 1 below,” “No. 2 above” and “No. 2 below,” etc., and so entered of record. I had seen the dredge being built on Gold Run at Atlin. I wished to see one working here. I found a young American named Elmer in charge, and he showed me everything. Then he insisted that I dine with him, and took me up to his snug cottage, where I was cordially greeted by his American wife, and taken to the mess tent, where a Japanese cook set a good dinner before us. Then Mrs. Elmer said that if I would like she would be delighted to drive me still further up Bonanza, and up the equally famous Eldorado Fork, and show me the more noted claims. Her horse was a good one, and for nearly three hours we spanked along. At “16 Eldorado below” I saw the yawning gravel pit from which $1,200,000 has already been taken out by the lucky owner. From “28 Eldorado above” I saw where the pay gravel yielded another enormous sum. And all along men were still digging, dumping, sluicing and getting gold. At “18 Bonanza above,” yet another particularly rich strike was shown me, and at “28 Bonanza above,” working in the mud and gravel, were men already enormously rich, who in 1897 owned nothing but their outfit. And up along the hillsides, too, near the tops, were other gashes in the gravel soil where gold in equally fabulous sums has been taken out and is still being got, for all these rich sands are yet far from being worked out or exhausted. The first mad rush is over. Men do not now merely pick out the big nuggets, but are putting in improved machinery and saving the finer dust. Along the roadside we also saw many men digging and “rocking” for gold, who have leased a few square yards or an acre or two on a royalty and who are said to be “working a lay.” After our drive, I caught the returning stage and came home in the long twilight.