Wrangel, Alaska, May 13. - The opening of navigation on the Stikine river
is an event of great importance to Wrangel and to those who favor the Stikine-Teslin route into the Yukon. After the ice went out a few days ago, the sternwheel steamer Monte Christo and the Courser started up the river. An accident to the machinery of the latter disabled her about one hundred miles from the coast. The other boat carrying a good load of supplies reached Glenora and made a clean run down again.
The Canadian Pacific railway's steamer Hamlin, which had arrived from Vancouver, went up the river in a couple of days, tying up at night, spent a day unloading at Glenora, and made the down trip in a lttle over twelve hours. She made the up trip without any assistance, but her own wheel. She proved to be a fine river boat in a strong current. Her length is 140 feet, gross tonnage 514 tons and will carry one hundred passengers. Her commander, Capt. Insley, is a veteran in river navigation.
The sternwheeler Elwood was the next arrival from Victoria and took a load of supplies up to Glenora. She is 165 feet long and has a speed of 14 miles per hour. Tho Ogilvie, the flagship of the C. P. R. river squadron, is the last to arrive and is an elegantly furnished vessel. She is larger than the Hamlin and speeds along at the rate of 16 miles per hour when hurried. More of the Siikine fleet are expected daily and when all are in there wil be over a score of them in commission on this run.
The present rates quoted from Wrangel to Glenora, 150 miles, are freight $40 per ton; passengers $20. It is a pity that the success of this route should be jeopardized by such rates, but no doubt they will shortly be cut in two. As to rates from Glenora overland to Teslin Lake, there are practically no available transport animals there as yet and until they begin to arrive, freightage will be done to speculative prices. Orders are said to be in for more than a thousand horses for the wagon road.
The provincial government engineer at Glenora was endeavoring to hire
two hundred men to bridge the Tal Tan river, 25 miles north of Glenora, and a smaller one farther on, where it crosses the trail. He has a force of men improving the latter as fast
as possible. The manager of Mackenzie, Mann & Co., has as many men as he can secure at the work of cutting cut the right of way along the new railway line. There is every confidence that the line will be built this summer. The trouble is that it is late in being opened for traffic. There is little doubt that it will be much travelled as soon as the summer is well on. Snow still lies on the higher parts of the trail, but in the valleys the grass is already springing up. There is a good deal of feed along the way in seaspn, but grain will have to be brought in from the coast.
Most of the argonauts who built small boats at Wrangel and undertook to go up the river in them with their outfits, have had to give up the task and wait for steamers to take them on. The water is too high for the present to make successful poling
and tracking a possibility. Dozens of these boats have been abandoned along the way and will be left to rot or be picked up by the natives. The wood choppers on the Stikine formed a combine and asked $10 a cord for wood. The steamtont men heard of it and started in to use coal. The price of wood will tumble to five or six dollars per cord.
Everything in Wrangel is at a stand-still awalting the outcome of the railway negotiations now pending between the government of British Columbia and MacKenzie, Mann & Co., except in cases where the parties seem to have a sure feeling that the line will be bullt. The Dunsmuirs, of Victoria, are having a large pile wharf built northwest of the town. Other people are carrying on the work of construction on buildings, etc. The
"shell men" who remember the rich harvest reaped from the innocents this spring, are returning by twos and threes. It is said, and let us hope it is true, that the new United State marshall will not allow them to operate here.
The spirit of patriotism has sprung up in this far off spot and a company
of volunteers is being organized to defend home and country against the Spaniard foe. It is raised by Lieutenant Powell, who served with the British army in the Soudan, and later with the Illinols National Guard in 1893. The course of the war is watched with intense interest by these self-exiles from their natives states. It is of more interest than the latest rumor of a find.
If Canadians wish to get and to hold any of the trnde of their own Yukon
territory, they must have an all-Canadian route into the interior. It is perfectly true that the customs rings at Dyea and Skagway are making it so irksome and costly for those
who buy their outfits in Canada that those who have an experience with them tell me frankly th at it will pay to buy the American goods at the same duty into Canada, than to pay the convoys and custom charges which the officials make on Canadian goods bonded across the strip of Alaska. They have every means of evading the spirit of the customs laws. Americans themselves will tell you that these officials are perfectly corrupt and can only be placated by bribes. I have no doubt it is perfectly true. It is said that the same vexatious regulations are now to be put in force in Wrangel, over the Stikine route.
A railway from Port Simptan to Glenora and on to Teslin Lake is the only remedy. If Canada cannot build it she may as well drift out of the Yukon trade at once and hand it over to the Americans.
H. J. WOODSIDE.
