At the breakfast table on February 8, 1898, my father announced, "Well my boy, I have decided to take you with me." As he had been preparing for more than four months to go to the Klondike, I had no difficulty in guessing what he meant.
We were then in our home near Aldershot. I had just left school and was working as a very junior reporter on an Aldershot paper. Little did I realize that I was to be transplanted for the rest of my life some 7000 miles away,
On February 11 we sailed from Liverpool on the Numidian, an old cattle boat renovated to take those prepared to rough it. There were some 300 passengers, all
heading for the Klondike. The crossing was rough, but the old boat wallowed its way across in 11 days.
Vancouver we found to contain some 26,000 people, of whom at least 8000 were transients heading for the far north. We tried to buy our outfit here, but were unable to buy enough of anything, as the stores all said they were sold out. The Hudson's
Bay claimed they had been sold out five times in three months.
We were advised to go to Victoria, which we did. There were supposed to be 19,000 people in Victoria, including transients. Although we did complete outfitting there we experienced difficulties, as stores were unable to cope with the demand. They
had very good salesmen in those days, too - I remember three men were persuaded to buy a 90-pound retort full of quicksilver.
After 10 days in Victoria we boarded an old China tea trade boat called the Ningchow. If the old cattle boat had been uncomfortable, it was nothing to this
small vessel. We had 500 men and women aboard, 30 or 40 mules tethered on deck, and
countless dogs. Notwithstanding discomforts, the passengers were happy, and at times quite boisterous. One woman made a point of walking the backs of those mules daily. At Wrangell we debarked although most passengers went on to Skagway.
Wrangell consisted of a small dock and one street, the dock piled high with boxes, bales, sleighs, bundled tents and tools. Men stood by their goods, most of them armed. The one street was almost a mile long and had 14 feet of snow covering it. High narrow sidewalks were jammed with men and dogs. Sometimes a man or dog would be pushed off, and as there was absolutely no traffic on the street itself, it was quite a job to get back on the sidewalk. Interspersed with stores and restaurants were dance halls, "enquiry bureaus," totem poles and Indian cabins.
The enquiry bureaus generally had two rooms. In the front room a man would sit, dressed in the gentleman-gambler style with long black coat and black fedora with wide brim. The walls were covered with hand drawn maps showing creeks and claims, all rich in gold and waiting for an owner - at a price.
A potential customer would enter, and the speiler would start his line. Then he would suggest the customer go to the back room where a partner had good buys on proven ground. In the back room the sucker would be seized by two men, robbed of his money belt or pocket book and dumped into the deep snow at the rear. By the time the victim had waded to the sidewalk he wouid find the building locked, its owners gone.
Later it would be open again, with three other occupants. They were supposedly part of Soapy Smith's gang who periodically came down to Wrangell when Skagway got too hot.
There was one city marshall, a very busy man. He made several arrests while we were there, but never got to the calaboose with his man, as invariably some
confederate would hold him up and- force him to free the prisoner.
The dance halls, filled with semi-nude women, inspired me to write my first despatch to the paper I had left. I mentioned among other items that some lady
gold-diggers allowed their claims to be jumped for a certain fee. The item got by the copy reader and created quite a how-do at Aldershot.
My father stayed in Wrangell to have a large flat-bottomed boat built, with mast, large sail and centre board. We anticipated reclining in the stern, the boat
loaded with supplies, whilst fair winds would waft us up-river. And we did sail to the mouth of the Stikine River five miles distant, and made camp on Cottonwood Island.
On the shores the ice was still thick, but large ice floes were coming down, a sure indication we might expect open water shortly. There were probably 200 people on the island. Mackenzie and Mann had a camp of 60 men and several draft horses, and another party were building a stern-wheel steamer.
After two weeks we tried out the boat. The wind was favorable, but even with empty boat we never got higher than 17 miles, where we would lose the wind and drift back, so we decided to catch the first steamer that would take us off. After eight weeks the first steamer went by, a small one, but it held 20 tons of liquor - no passengers. The steamer was well named Monte Cristo.
Several steamers went past, then at the end of the ninth week the Skagit Chief picked us up - $200 for the two of us and freight. We waved farewell to less lucky inhabitants of the nearly inundated island.
Then we came to the Grand Canyon - every northern river seems to have a grand canyon. The river had risen seven feet, which meant almost 22 feet of extra water in the canyon. The skipper made two attempts to go through, but after 60 yards or so the boat would drift back. He became incensed with the engineer and the two men stoking cordwood, and after a lengthy harangue from the wheel house he rushed down to the engine room, berated the engineer and tied down the safety valve. Once more he headed up and had made
about the same distance when somebody yelled "Man overboard!"
We rushed to the rail and saw the engineer, a very fat man, whirling around in the white water and fast disappearing down stream. The captain let the boat drift back to the large eddy at the mouth of the canyon, where we picked up the engineer, extremely scared but not much the worse. He had dived overboard and risked drowning rather than possibility of death by scalding.
We were tied up there eight days, completely out of food, so that the captain had to broach cargo. Then a large steamer, the Stickine Chief, took all passengers off and next evening we reached Glenora, 12 miles below Telegraph Creek. We found 4000 men and a few women there, all very irate. The dominion government had cancelled building of a wagon road on to Teslin Lake, and substituted a four-foot trail.
As a good many transients had brought heavy horses and wagons, they found themselves stranded. Pack horses and mules were scarce, and would be until pack trains arrived 1200 miles overland from Edmonton. Some of the pack trains wintered en route and took 14 months to make that distance.
Glenora residents were wild, too, because the postmaster had burned all their mail, a large amount of which had collected there. Four-fifths of this was uncalled for, as recipienis had not arrived or had gone on. The postmaster got desperate with the huge collection and, possibly being green at the job, decided to burn the lot.
Many travellers had relied on this point to have money forwarded. Two large indignation meetings were held and there were threats of lynching the postmaster, but friends smuggled him into an Indian canoe, and he escaped.
Glenora was more like a large unwieldy picnic than anything else. As everybody was delayed many went prospecting, heading towards Dease Lake, where gold
had been discovered in the '60s. Green prospectors found colors in creeks, and these finds were exaggerated into real gold strikes which caused several stampedes. My father decided to go on one of these and joined with two other men - three professions being represented: my father an artist, with a doctor and a bandmaster. They were gone three weeks, during which the bandmaster managed to shoot off his index finger. Besides they lost their one pack horse.
After five or six weeks emaciated pack trains commenced to arrive from Edmonton and the price of horses dropped to $5, pack rigging included. We decided to buy two wheels and fit them to an axle cut short for the four-foot trail. We figured one good horse would pull up to 600 pounds of supplies, and by relaying six or seven times we
would reach Teslin Lake before freeze-up. But we were unfortunate in our horse - he disliked going down hill with a load, and nothing would persuade him to pull a load up a hill. In eight weeks we made only 36 miles, covering each portion of the trail nine to 11 times, so we decided to build our first cabin and winter at the Little Tahltan River,
consoling ourselves that hundreds were in the same predicament.
With one exception, pernaps, the only travellers who made good time over the Teslin Trail in 1898 were those who paid 58c per pound to have supplies taken in by professional packers,
The exception was a party consisting of an old man and two small boys, apparently his grandsons. They travelled with bare legs and feet, and handled supplies in one trip on a contrivance built around one democrat wheel. The two urchins pulled with a rope, while grandpa steered and pushed, quite a balancing feat for the old man, over a trail for the most part grades, muskeg and corduroy.
There were 17 of us wintering at the Tahltan, and we passed an interesting time swapping yarns, playing chess, checkers or cribbage. We held a joint Christmas banquet complete with menus which everybody signed. The "turkey" was moose meat.
A Persian doctor with three other men and five mules occupied the next cabin to us. The mules day and night seemed to be continually squealing and kicking, and as there was only a pole partition between men and mules we wondered how the men slept.
Six miles from us was a party of 60 men, known as the New York outfit. Each man had put up $500 towards expenses, and each had a useful trade or profession. They had a president, a secretary, doctor, dentist. They had a portable sawmill and machinery for a_stern-wheeler. However the winter months must have proved too much for them, for they disbanded into groups, leaving heavy machinery behind.
In February, a year after we had left home, we abandoned camp to handsleigh over the rest of the trail. We had heard of another big gold strike at Atlin,
and decided to head there instead of down the Yukon.
If the going in summer had been tough with a balky horse, it was far worse camping out in winter and hauling heavy loads. We found rivers and lakes the hardest going. They were a steady drag, whilst to climb a grade, though it required more energy, generally met its reward in corresponding down-grade. We pulled an aVerage of 250 pounds,
and although we had cut supplies to a minimum we still had to relay five times.
Our worst night was on the Dudidondi River, which we found covered with slush ice although the mercury stood at 44 below zero. We got stuck on the ice in the dark and made camp right there, setting up our small tent and tiny Yukon stove, but we were unable to find brush for a bed.
We reached the head of Teslin Lake early in April. and had actually hand sledded over 1100 miles, almost half this distance, of course, with empty sleigh on
return trips for another load.
Teslin town had 40 or 50 people, with another 12 or 15 men nearby building a stern-wheeler called the Anglican [sic: Anglian]. This steamer, a success, was the first built in northern B.C. of native lumber.
Just before our arrival three lost Lancashire men had turned up. They had gone prospecting up the Jennings River, and dogs and sleigh had fallen through he ice. To save the dogs they cut the sleigh loose, and there they were with no food and only the
clothes they stood in. One man had a shotgun and five or six cartridges. They turned to Teslin, some 40 miles distant, but storms came on and they soon were lost. They used three cartridges to shoot the dogs. Eleven days they wandered with only two ptarmigan to sustain them, then decided to let the smallest man go ahead, as he could make better time on soft snow.
On the 12th day he struck the lake, miles from the townsite. Weary and snowblind, he kept plodding unti] he reached Teslin. Next day the two other men were brought in. Their names were Corn Bell, John Chalmers and Jack Pilling. Pilling was to
become well-known as an organist in Vancouver.
When Pilling recovered my father persuaded him to join us and head for Atlin. Selling or giving away surplus stuff, we made the remaining 96 miles in good time, reachiing Atlin camp early in May. We were worn down, but in good health and excellent spirits. But we found all gold-bearing ground on every creek staked long before we arrived, so my father looked around for a claim to buy.
To be concluded next week.
To Part 2.
