The Trail of the Goldseekers: A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse Read online

  THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS

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  THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS

  A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse

  by

  HAMLIN GARLAND

  Author of Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Main Travelled Roads Prairie Folks Boy Life on the Prairie, etc.

  New YorkThe MacMillan CompanyLondon: MacMillan & Co., Ltd.1906

  Copyright, 1899,by Hamlin Garland.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1899. Reprinted January,1906.

  Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I. Coming of the Ships 3

  II. Outfitting 11

  III. On the Stage Road 21

  IV. In Camp at Quesnelle 33

  V. The Blue Rat 37

  VI. The Beginning of the Long Trail 45

  VII. The Blackwater Divide 53

  VIII. We swim the Nechaco 63

  IX. First Crossing of the Bulkley 73

  X. Down the Bulkley Valley 81

  XI. Hazleton. Midway on the Trail 97

  XII. Crossing the Big Divide 107

  XIII. The Silent Forests 119

  XIV. The Great Stikeen Divide 131

  XV. In the Cold Green Mountains 139

  XVI. The Passing of the Beans 151

  XVII. The Wolves and the Vultures Assemble 163

  XVIII. At Last the Stikeen 175

  XIX. The Goldseekers' Camp at Glenora 185

  XX. Great News at Wrangell 195

  XXI. The Rush to Atlin Lake 207

  XXII. Atlin Lake and the Gold Fields 217

  XXIII. The End of the Trail 231

  XXIV. Homeward Bound 241

  XXV. Ladrone travels in State 251

  XXVI. The Goldseekers reach the Golden River 259

  POEMS

  Anticipation 1

  Where the Desert flames with Furnace Heat 2

  The Cow-boy 9

  From Plain to Peak 19

  Momentous Hour 31

  A Wish 32

  The Gift of Water 35

  Mounting 35

  The Eagle Trail 36

  Moon on the Plain 43

  The Whooping Crane 51

  The Loon 51

  Yet still we rode 61

  The Gaunt Gray Wolf 79

  Abandoned on the Trail 80

  Do you fear the Wind? 95

  Siwash Graves 105

  Line up, Brave Boys 106

  A Child of the Sun 117

  In the Grass 118

  The Faithful Broncos 129

  The Whistling Marmot 130

  The Clouds 137

  The Great Stikeen Divide 138

  The Ute Lover 147

  Devil's Club 150

  In the Cold Green Mountains 150

  The Long Trail 159

  The Greeting of the Roses 161

  The Vulture 172

  Campfires 173

  The Footstep in the Desert 182

  So this is the End of the Trail to him 190

  The Toil of the Trail 193

  The Goldseekers 205

  The Coast Range of Alaska 215

  The Freeman of the Hills 229

  The Voice of the Maple Tree 230

  A Girl on the Trail 239

  O the Fierce Delight 249

  The Lure of the Desert 258

  This out of All will remain 262

  Here the Trail ends 263

  ANTICIPATION

  I will wash my brain in the splendid breeze, I will lay my cheek to the northern sun, I will drink the breath of the mossy trees, And the clouds shall meet me one by one. I will fling the scholar's pen aside, And grasp once more the bronco's rein, And I will ride and ride and ride, Till the rain is snow, and the seed is grain.

  The way is long and cold and lone-- But I go. It leads where pines forever moan Their weight of snow, Yet I go. There are voices in the wind that call, There are hands that beckon to the plain; I must journey where the trees grow tall, And the lonely heron clamors in the rain.

  Where the desert flames with furnace heat, I have trod. Where the horned toad's tiny feet In a land Of burning sand Leave a mark, I have ridden in the noon and in the dark. Now I go to see the snows, Where the mossy mountains rise Wild and bleak--and the rose And pink of morning fill the skies With a color that is singing, And the lights Of polar nights Utter cries As they sweep from star to star, Swinging, ringing, Where the sunless middays are.

  THE TRAIL OF THE GOLDSEEKERS

  CHAPTER I

  COMING OF THE SHIPS

  I

  A little over a year ago a small steamer swung to at a Seatt
le wharf,and emptied a flood of eager passengers upon the dock. It was anobscure craft, making infrequent trips round the Aleutian Islands(which form the farthest western point of the United States) to themouth of a practically unknown river called the Yukon, which emptiesinto the ocean near the post of St. Michaels, on the northwesterncoast of Alaska.

  The passengers on this boat were not distinguished citizens, nor fairto look upon. They were roughly dressed, and some of them were paleand worn as if with long sickness or exhausting toil. Yet this shipand these passengers startled the whole English-speaking world. Swiftas electricity could fly, the magical word GOLD went forth like abrazen eagle across the continent to turn the faces of millions ofearth's toilers toward a region which, up to that time, had beenunknown or of ill report. For this ship contained a million dollarsin gold: these seedy passengers carried great bags of nuggets andbottles of shining dust which they had burned, at risk of theirlives, out of the perpetually frozen ground, so far in the north thatthe winter had no sun and the summer midnight had no dusk.

  The world was instantly filled with the stories of these men and oftheir tons of bullion. There was a moment of arrested attention--thenthe listeners smiled and nodded knowingly to each other, and wentabout their daily affairs.

  But other ships similarly laden crept laggardly through the gates ofPuget Sound, bringing other miners with bags and bottles, and thenthe world believed. Thereafter the journals of all Christendom had todo with the "Klondike" and "The Golden River." Men could not hearenough or read enough of the mysterious Northwest.

  In less than ten days after the landing of the second ship, alltrains westward-bound across America were heavily laden withfiery-hearted adventurers, who set their faces to the new Eldoradowith exultant confidence, resolute to do and dare.

  Miners from Colorado and cow-boys from Montana met and mingled withcivil engineers and tailors from New York City, and adventurousmerchants from Chicago set shoulder to shoemakers from Lynn. Allkinds and conditions of prospectors swarmed upon the boats atSeattle, Vancouver, and other coast cities. Some entered upon newroutes to the gold fields, which were now known to be far in theYukon Valley, while others took the already well-known route by wayof St. Michaels, and thence up the sinuous and sinister stream whosewaters began on the eastern slope of the glacial peaks just inlandfrom Juneau, and swept to the north and west for more than twothousand miles. It was understood that this way was long and hard andcold, yet thousands eagerly embarked on keels of all designs and ofall conditions of unseaworthiness. By far the greater numberassaulted the mountain passes of Skagway.

  As the autumn came on, the certainty of the gold deposits deepened;but the tales of savage cliffs, of snow-walled trails, of swift andicy rivers, grew more numerous, more definite, and more appalling.Weak-hearted Jasons dropped out and returned to warn their friends ofthe dread powers to be encountered in the northern mountains.

  As the uncertainties of the river route and the sufferings and toilsof the Chilcoot and the White Pass became known, the adventurers castabout to find other ways of reaching the gold fields, which had comenow to be called "The Klondike," because of the extreme richness of asmall river of that name which entered the Yukon, well on toward theArctic Circle.

  From this attempt to avoid the perils of other routes, much talkarose of the Dalton Trail, the Taku Trail, the Stikeen Route, theTelegraph Route, and the Edmonton Overland Trail. Every town withintwo thousand miles of the Klondike River advertised itself as "thepoint of departure for the gold fields," and set forth the specialadvantages of its entrance way, crying out meanwhile against thecruel mendacity of those who dared to suggest other and "moredangerous and costly" ways.

  The winter was spent in urging these claims, and thousands of menplanned to try some one or the other of these "side-doors." Themovement overland seemed about to surpass the wonderfultranscontinental march of miners in '49 and '50, and those who lovedthe trail for its own sake and were eager to explore an unknowncountry hesitated only between the two trails which were entirelyoverland. One of these led from Edmonton to the head-waters of thePelly, the other started from the Canadian Pacific Railway atAshcroft and made its tortuous way northward between the greatglacial coast range on the left and the lateral spurs of theContinental Divide on the east.

  The promoters of each of these routes spoke of the beautiful valleysto be crossed, of the lovely streams filled with fish, of the gameand fruit. Each was called "the poor man's route," because with a fewponies and a gun the prospector could traverse the entire distanceduring the summer, "arriving on the banks of the Yukon, not merelybrowned and hearty, but a veteran of the trail."

  It was pointed out also that the Ashcroft Route led directly acrossseveral great gold districts and that the adventurer could combinebusiness and pleasure on the trip by examining the Ominica country,the Kisgagash Mountains, the Peace River, and the upper waters of theStikeen. These places were all spoken of as if they were closebeside the trail and easy of access, and the prediction was freelymade that a flood of men would sweep up this valley such as had neverbeen known in the history of goldseeking.

  As the winter wore on this prediction seemed about to be realized. Inevery town in the West, in every factory in the East, men wereorganizing parties of exploration. Grub stakers by the hundred wereoutfitted, a vast army was ready to march in the early spring, when anew interest suddenly appeared--a new army sprang into being.

  Against the greed for gold arose the lust of battle. WAR came tochange the current of popular interest. The newspapers called hometheir reporters in the North and sent them into the South, the Dakotacow-boys just ready to join the ranks of the goldseekers entered thearmy of the United States, finding in its Southern campaigns anoutlet to their undying passion for adventure; while the factoryhands who had organized themselves into a goldseeking company turnedthemselves into a squad of military volunteers. For the time the goldof the North was forgotten in the war of the South.

  II

  However, there were those not so profoundly interested in the war orwhose arrangements had been completed before the actual outbreak ofcannon-shot, and would not be turned aside. An immense army stillpushed on to the north. This I joined on the 20th day of April,leaving my home in Wisconsin, bound for the overland trail andbearing a joyous heart. I believed that I was about to see and takepart in a most picturesque and impressive movement across thewilderness. I believed it to be the last great march of the kindwhich could ever come in America, so rapidly were the wild placesbeing settled up. I wished, therefore, to take part in this tramp ofthe goldseekers, to be one of them, and record their deeds. I wishedto return to the wilderness also, to forget books and theories of artand social problems, and come again face to face with the great freespaces of woods and skies and streams. I was not a goldseeker, but anature hunter, and I was eager to enter this, the wildest region yetremaining in Northern America. I willingly and with joy took the longway round, the hard way through.

  THE COW-BOY

  Of rough rude stock this saddle sprite Is grosser grown with savage things. Inured to storms, his fierce delight Is lawless as the beasts he swings His swift rope over.--Libidinous, obscene, Careless of dust and dirt, serene, He faces snows in calm disdain, Or makes his bed down in the rain.

  CHAPTER II

  OUTFITTING

  We went to sleep while the train was rushing past the lonelysettler's shacks on the Minnesota Prairies. When we woke we foundourselves far out upon the great plains of Canada. The morning wascold and rainy, and there were long lines of snow in the swales ofthe limitless sod, which was silent, dun, and still, with a majestyof arrested motion like a polar ocean. It was like Dakota as I saw itin 1881. When it was a treeless desolate expanse, swept by owls andhawks, cut by feet of wild cattle, unmarred and unadorned of man. Theclouds ragged, forbidding, and gloomy swept southward as if with aduty to perform. No green thing appeared, all was gray and sombre,and the horizon lines were hid in the cold white mist. Spring
wasjust coming on.

  Our car, which was a tourist sleeper, was filled with goldseekers,some of them bound for the Stikeen River, some for Skagway. While afew like myself had set out for Teslin Lake by way of "The PrairieRoute." There were women going to join their husbands at Dawson City,and young girls on their way to Vancouver and Seattle, and wholefamilies emigrating to Washington.

  By the middle of the forenoon we were pretty well acquainted, andknowing that two long days were before us, we set ourselves to thetask of passing the time. The women cooked their meals on the rangein the forward part of the car, or attended to the toilets of thechildren, quite as regularly as in their own homes; while the men,having no duties to perform, played cards, or talked endlesslyconcerning their prospects in the Northwest, and when weary of this,joined in singing topical songs.

  No one knew his neighbor's name, and, for the most part, no onecared. All were in mountaineer dress, with rifles, revolvers, andboxes of cartridges, and the sight of a flock of antelopes developedin each man a frenzy of desire to have a shot at them. It was a wildride, and all day we climbed over low swells, passing little lakescovered with geese and brant, practically the only living things.Late in the afternoon we entered upon the Selkirks, where no lifewas.

  These mountains I had long wished to see, and they were in no sense adisappointment. Desolate, death-haunted, they pushed their whitedomes into the blue sky in savage grandeur. The little snow-coveredtowns seemed to cower at their feet like timid animals lost in theimmensity of the forest. All day we rode among these heights, and atnight we went to sleep feeling the chill of their desolate presence.