The following letter from Skaguay gives a graphic idea of the situation at that camp:
SKAGUAY (Alaska) August 12 - I have been ashore in the rain, tramped through the camp and three miles up the trail and back again.
There seem to be some 2,500 men on this trail of thirty miles between here and Lake Bennett, on the Yukon, and I can obtain no evidence that they possess 100
horses in all. Yet they should have - I might add must have - not less than 4,000 horses if they would get over the pass and down the Yukon before they freeze to death.
Every man I questioned answered eagerly: "Tell the boys not to land here
at all unless they have two horses apiece, and they ought to have three apiece. For God's sake, tell them not to come here without horses!"
When they learned that the Queen was in the first question asked was: "How many horses?" My answer, "Not one," was dismally disappointing, and they looked dejected on hearing it, but they said: "The Willamette will fetch 300, and the Topeka
a lot." And they toiled on.
They are a cheerful, plucky set, these argonauts. "We'll get there," was written on almost every face.
A man showed me five $20 gold pieces which he said he had received for his horse, the animal to be delivered after he should successfully drag the seller's goods to Lake Tagish! The desperate buyer took the entire risk of the horse's getting back alive. In fact, horses are scarce as hen's teeth here, and more precious then money. The voyagers on the Chilcoot pass can get along with Indians, if those porters do not bankrupt them by raising prices, but horses are indispensable at Skaguay and White's pass.
Some gold-seekers have perforce turned porters and taken up their packs. I asked a tall young fellow who was leaning his load against a kindly stump this morning
if he expected to get there. "Certainty," he said. "I am strong and I tote this seventy-five pounds as if it was a chicken."
But he can carry that seventy-five pounds only twelve miles a day through this jungle, and it is thirty-eight miles to Lake Tagish, and as far back again. To carry 1,000 pounds will take him till October 20th, and then lakes and river will be frozen up, his provisions much reduced and 700 miles still to go!
The "camp" deserves that name only by courtesy. It is simply an unorganized and scattered aggregation of men in a hurry to be rich. One of the most masterful of them, for he had a house and two boats ready to put together, and five
horses, said to me an hour ago:
"They act like fools or children, these men. They refuse to organize or co-operate. A few score who are on the trail well ahead have gone at work corduroying the swampy tundrum on the summit where both men and horses mire out of sight, and I have been trying to get every third man drafted to go ahead and help, but all sorts of obstacles are put in the way of it. A thousand men ought to be sent to-morrow, but everybody hangs back. If things stay this way we shall never get through. Two have volunteered from my party, and I start to help them to-day. I tell you, it is hard when men won't look out for their own lives and property," and he turned away with a great snort of disgust.
Besides the tents in front of the evergreens, there are scores hidden in the forest in the first half mile and hundreds more are passed this side of the bridge. One log cabin has gone up, and two were begun before breakfast this morning. There are also three frame houses here, brought from Seattle or San Francisco, one a large storehouse. It is sadly needed, for there is on every hand a lamentable exposure of perishable goods. There are great piles - tons and tons - of bags of flour, half covered with canvas and being slowly saturated with rain. A good deal of stuff seems to be already half ruined.
Indeed, the peaceful invaders of this region have become conscious that they have brought too much. "Tell the boys not to bring more than 1,000 pounds apiece," said a man to me. "It is quite enough, including food, outfit and everything."
So it happens that many are already "unloading." While horses bring an extraordinary price, canned goods are very cheap, so cheap that a good judge could outfit
here at Skaguay to-day as cheap as at Seattle. Flour was offered this morning at 60 cents a sack and bacon at 4 cents a pound.
This valley is a bad spot to camp in. It is the wettest place I ever saw - everything soaked through and through. Moss covers the ground two inches thick, and
broad-winged iichens hang from the branches and coat all the trunks a pestilential yellow. The path is a trail of mud, deep and crooked, over tangled roots and fallen trees and through a dense undergrowth of tenacious shrubbery. Along this go slowly stumbling men and horses - some men moving little wagons, two and a half feet wide, one carefully drawing and another attempting to keep it upright.
Let me add that no more boats ought to be brought here for transportation over to the Yukon. The Skaguay pass is so narrow and so difficult that they cannot be
borne across. Scores have already been flung away in this wilderness within a mile of shore, and their component parts are being used to root in the new sawmill.
There is another pass not yet much known, which promises to attain prominence this winter - the Stickeen pass, approached along the Stickeen river from
Fort Wrangel. We paused here on our way up and interviewed Mr. Caulbrett, the exploiter of this particular trall. The road to the Yukon is a little longer than the others, but is alleged (by him) to be much easier. "My steamboat," he said, "now runs 140 miles up the river, and the portage across to Lake Teslin is 145 miles. We are building a new road through and are putting 100 men right on it now. Shall pay $2.50 a day and board. With the $3,000 which the Canadian Government has appropriated we shall have a first-rate road
through before spring."
Making this round trip on the Queen is "the Vanderbilt party," so called. It consists of Mr. and Mrs. Sloane, Mr. and Mrs. Twombly, three daughters and several friends and retainers. Mrs. Sloane and Mrs. Twombly are daughters of William H. Vanderbilt, and received in his will some ten million dollars apiece, I believe. They try to see everything. Two of the girls walked up to the bridge this morning and came back looking like beggars who had been exposed to very inclement weather. The whole party walked to the top of the Muir glacier - a feat which even the youngest and strongest climbers find difficult. There is no royal road to Nature's choicest vistas.
What is to be the end of this Klondyke delirium? It is absolutely certain that this host cannot get to the Klondyke this fall. I doubt if a quarter of them can. It looks now as if half of them would have to go home on the steamers that brought them up, or go to work in the Treadwell mines. We hear that a thousand more are on their way here. For them to come will be suicide or reckless waste of money, or both.
In the face of these obstacies neither courage nor skill avails anything. Some already see this and are quietly fortifying for the winter. Log cabins will sheiter
some. Others are entrenching themselves on and under the precipices along the cove, where they hope to survive ike the cliff dwellers.
But what will they do when January's fierce legions sweep up the inlet, and when the meraced thousands on the trail rush down to the cruel sea for safety?
Do not let any more come. It is madness to court the doom that seems inevitable.
W. A. CROFFUT.
