The Seattle Star
Saturday, May 6, 1899
NEW YORK, May 6. - William Jensen, who was the proprietor of a delicatessen store on Ave A and who went to the Klondike region in a search for gold a year ago, returned to New York yesterday with 60 cents. He started for the Klondike with a complete miner's outfit and $1800 in cash. When he got back he said he never would have been able to get back to New York if a man in Skagway hadn't lent him $500. The man was a stranger to him, but was from his native town in Sweden. Jensen intends to go to work on Monday morning in a South Brooklyn factory at $12 a week. Sitting at a table yesterday in an Avenue A saloon, surrounded by many of his friends, Jensen summed up his Klondike experience in the following words:
"I been a damn fool. I been twenty year in New York an' I save much money. I been crazy like a damn fool to do dat for to go to Klondike."
Jensen said that he was buncoed all along the line to the Klondike and all the way back. He said that he paid $550 to a man who sold him a piece of paper that purported to be a deed to a valuable claim near Mynook creek. Then he said he was "bled" by the Canadian customs officers between Tagish lake and Marsh lake and was compelled to give them $250, although he had paid duty on his outfit to the customs officers at White pass. Jensen said that, after being buncoed on all sides by transportation companies, Canadian customs and ordinary bunco men he had a few hundred dollars left. This he lost learning the American games of draw poker.
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