The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 23, 1897, Page 1

R SAN FRANCISCO, FRIDAY " PRICE FIVE CENTS, GOING TO SCOOP UP THE GOLD Departute of the Portland With Passengers for the Far North. \ WOMEN AMONG THOSE BOUND FOR THE KLONDYKE. No Abatement in the Excitement Caused by the Yukon---There Wondetful Discoveries on the May Be a Clash Over Customs. SEATTLE, Wasg., July 22.—There were l 6000 people down at Arlington dock o see the steamer Portland depart Michaels carrying the first of the cers who have left Puget Sound for rdyke by the steamer route since s of the great discoveries came | capacity of the Portland was | 5 passengers, and every berth apied. She wasdeeply laden, car- rying 1100 tons of a cargo, every pound of | which, outside of the limited personal | gage silowed the passengers, was | account of the North Ameri- | ,ortation and Trading Company own stores in the Yukon coun- No passenger was allowed to carry | er provisions or hardware as a por- tion of his baggage. The Portland was scheduled to sail at | noon, but it was 4:30 before she finally 1 her wharf, but the crowd waited to see the departure of the gold-seekers. The delay was.caused in the first instance by the slowness in getting the freightaboard. After the freight was fairly aboard the local inspectors interfered and required a good portion of the deckload to be dis- | charged, deeming it unsafe for the vessel 10 provedd w Some « venty tousof potatoes in boxes were discharged and | considerable other freight, largely con- | sisting of picks, shovels and other mining tools, which was likewise left on the dock. | Among the passengers on the Portland were a number of women and young chil- dren. While the male passengers had ar- rayed themselves in rough clothing, caps and stoga boots, befitting the country to which they were going, the women pre- sented a singular contrast. They were clad in dainty summer costume, shirt waists and sailor hats and nearly every one wore flowers profusely. As they stood on the deck of the vessel, gayly waving adien 10 their friends, they looked more | like & pariy going to & picnic or a sum- | mer excarsion, rather than emigrants to | proceed to make a home for an indefinite | period thousands of miles away, up on the very verge of the Arctic circle, there to face the oftep-painted terrors of Arctic wiLter. All the passengers, male and female, e apparently in the most buovant spir- | and this was to a great extent true of | the spec'ators, save the few women in the crowd who were there to bid a long adien to the husbands or sons who were going from them to seek their fortunes. With | cheers from the crowd and amid a salute | of whistles from the steamers lying at ad- | joining docks, the Portland, at 4:30 o’clock, cast off her lines and nheaded for the Straits of Fuca to enter on her long voyage to Bering Sea. The excursion steamer Queen leaves for | Dyea Iilet to-morrow. She takes with | ber 250 passengers bound for Dyeu [nlat | and the overland route to the Klonayke. In connection with the sailing of the Queen it may be noted that she sails | again from Seattle for Dyea on August 7. | The Associated Press dispatca, under a New York aate line, which appeared in the morning papers having that news sery- ice to-day, contains an error in this mat- ter, which may cause some inconvenience unless corrected. The Associated Press dispaich says the Queen sails from Ban Francisco on August 7. The Queen is not likely to return to San Francisco until this rush is over—if it ever will be. A desperate effort is beinz made by the people of British Columbia to divert a portion of the travel and especially the | outfitting to British Columbia poris. They have alreadv sent agents to Seattle, who are publis: ing broadcast the news that the Canadian authorities propose to put in customs officers at the point where the | trail from Dyea Inlet crosses the inter- | national boundary and will endeavor to | collect duty on all goods brought in by persons whose outfits are purchased in the United States. This is a matter which will work both ways. The United States already has a Deputy Collector of Customs located at Juneau, and if goods from sh Columbia are brought to be landed in Ala:ka, except in bond, they will most certainly be compelled to pay duty fully as high, and in some insiances rather higher, than the Canadian duties proposed to be collected. Whether this customs officer is really 10 be put on the ground or whether the matter is a bliuff has not yet been determined. I it is done it will bring at once to a sharp issue the question s to Where the present boundary between British Columbia und Southeastern Alaska really is. It will be remembered that the British Columbia authorities have within the past LWO years put out several maps rep- resenting this boundary as being nearly | fifteen miles farther west than it is repre- | sented on mavs which bad heretofore | gone unquestioned. If the Canadian au- thorities undertake to establish any cus- toms officers on, the international | €. w | ceived boundary line, as they now claim it ex- ists, there will most certainly be trouble. According to this new claim the whole of Chilkat In'et is in British Columbia. The reason why the story is considered asdoubtful, and as put forward solely for the purpose of endeavoring to divert trade to the British Coinmbia side, is that on the northern boundary of this State, where Canadian customs officers are al- ready established, no attempt !:as ever been made to collect duty on the supplies and mining tools brought across the line by working miners. However this may be, there is considerabie excitement here over the story. The Seattle police department is rap- idly pecoming demoralized through the Klondyke rush, and the fire depariment threatens a like demoralization. The force has in the past faw years been cut down to forty men, owing (o hard times. It is under civil service rules, the require- ments of which, especially the physical ones, bave bean high. Asa resuit the force, while small, has been remarkably efficient. Now ten of the best men on the force, including one of the captains and one of the best detectives, have rexigned and joinea (Lr Klondyke rush. A special meeting of the City Council was called last evening and the question of raising the salaries in both the police and fire de- partments was brought up. The matter was referred to a special committee, but the Council rather despairs of being able to offer wages which will compete in at- tractiveness with the Klondyke. Another meeting was held to-night for the same purpose, but no conclusion was reached. The labor market 1s already feeling the effects of the Klondyke excitement. To- day the knot-sawyers and packers in four of the largest shingle-mills in Ballard, a suburb of Seattle, struck for higher wages, They had been receiving $2 a day and de- manded $250. They were offered $2 25, but declined. The West Manufacturing and Investment Company’s mill, Don- aghue & Kellogg’s mill and Stimson’s shingle-mill shut down, and the mill of the Seattle Cedar Lumber Company ran up tillnoon and then shut down. These | four mills ure the largest shingle-mills in the State and employ some 300 men. There are four smaller mills at Ballard, which have remained unaffected by the strike. In these mills payment is by jlecework, and the men have as yet made no comnlaint. The full aftermath of the Kiondyke sto- ries has not yet been gleaned. From the country districts letters are coming in, recerved from friends in the Klondyke, which are even stranger than those re- in this city. For example, S. 8. a, manager of the Postal Telegraph Comvany’s office at Whatcom, has re- ceived a letter from his brother, Warren Shea, dated at Dawson City June 20, from which the following is an extract: “Things are booming and the country is immensely rich—much better than is re- ported. Anything you hear bank on it. I'saw coalcil cans full of gold at one claim, and there are about 500 just like it. The claims would average about 500 feet square, with about 5 to 8 feet of pay dirt. I saw'them clean one sluice-box and the gold was visible in piles. A fel- low ran Lis shovei-handle through it and poked the gravel and sand out, and when bie got through he had a pile the size of my hat; but this is a hard country and it is no pudding for anybody, and generally when a mun strikes it he geis out of the country. The boat left two days ugo, and one store closed to make ready to ship the old. There was so much they shipped it in barrels. Well, I don’t expect to get many barrels, but I do expect to get one small one. The wages are $15 for miners and $10 at ordinary work per day.” When it is remembered that in nearly every one of the towns around Puget Sound such letters as this have been re- ceived from well-known former citizens who are now in the Klondyke, it can be understood that the mining fever is now raging intensely in every hamlet in the country. Parties are being organized everywhere and are coming in to Seattle to take the steamers scheduled for Dyea. As the writers of letters from Klondyke have, asa rule, beea very explicit in their statements as to the requirements of the trip, these parties are uniformly well equipped. A typical pariy is one which is nere from Kent, a town in this county. It consists of Charles Guiberson, the post- master, who has resigned; Albert Smith, proprietor of a saw-mill and a man named Stepich, a hop farmer, who attained some notoriety here a few vears ago by killing Tom Blank, @ murderer and desperado, who made a general jail delivery by hold- ing up the jailer with a wooden gun. Stepich overtook Blank near Kent and killed bim after a desperate fight, in which he himsel/ was badly wounded. This party is equipped with 2500 pounds Sh Y, OVERLAND TO THE KLONDYKE. N — SHooTING FIZEYINSERS e = SAILING LAKE LE BALCE o) == P b V4 E o~ > = N A\ F/VER =/ PELLY RIVER W o i < 2 N AR Y < _') R xRS ) R NrR/wvK RAar/DS ; = N " 6% rrires 4 ( . { N\ F7vE FIvGE. SN o2 flda:é - E=E N U e o M WHITE HORSE RAP/DS PoRTAGE () s ~{;\\ g/:/v von % time N R Q = ) == - LEAVING JUNERy, &, B/6 SaLrion Kiver T = \ 37 res \ 00T ALINQUA z N RIVER \ N LAKE LEBARGE 3 MTLES . \ CLIIBING 7HE S o LK Cor oS N \ N HEAD oF ) LAKE LE BaRGE IESTLES ‘ \ TAHNEENA RIVER /6 MILES — STARS 1y LAKE 1P/ ES | R/IVER 6 /1/1.ma ) £cor oF TAG/s M Lasxs 49 es CAR/IBOO « \ CRoss/ NG 2/ ES [ CHLAD0T R4y e Es EAD OF canom NAVIGATI00 67/t s of clothing and provisions each. They have three horses and a boat thirty feet long, built on the lines of a Canadian bateau, which is all ready to be put to- gether as soon as Luke Lindeman is reached. The party .eaves here on the Mexico Sunday for Dyea Inlet. Here they will disembark and commence pack- ing over the trail. The material for the boat will go first and one man will go to work putting it together wbile the others pack the outfit over. The boat will be finished about the time the packingis completed. Then they will sell the horses, embark with their outfit in the boat and start down the lake and river to Dawson City. This instance is given be- cause it is identically the programme which will be followed by all well- equipped parties who thoroughly under- stand the conditions which they have to meet and who have received and followed the advice of experienced Yukon miners. ————— BACK WITH A FORTUNE. Luck of a Longshoreman That Has Increased the Excitement at Tacoma. TACOMA, WasH., July 22.—James Mc- Mahon, until three years ago a long- shoreman on the Tacoma wharves, re- turned to this city from the Klondyke country yesterday with $65,000 in virgin goid. McMahon lived for a number of years at Old Tacoma and is better known as “Jimmy, the diver,” an ‘appellation McMahon went to San Francisco on the Excelsior. He was a married man when he left Tacoma for Alaska, but while he was gone hi+ wife secured a divorce for desertion, and now the erstwhile hus- band has the $65,000 to spend himself. He began spen (ing it last evening by gather- ing his old longshoremen comrades in an old Tacoma resort and acting the gener- ous host. McManon had cleared up but little after three years’ hara work on Glacier Creek in the Forty-mile disirict, when he heard of strikes on the Klondyke. He took the first steamer for the new d ggings and secured claim No. 31 on Adams;Creek, ten miles above Bonanza Creek. He spent last winter working a richer claim on Bonanza on a lay with three others. His share was $65,000, which he says he sold to a smelter in San Francisco for $17 83 per ounce. He saw a big colony of Tacomans on the Klondyke, including Ben Everett and ex-Cuief of Police Dav.s, and all were doing well. McMahon will return to Alaska next spring to look after his claim on Hunker Creek, where he has two men working in his absence at $15 per day. The gold excitement in the far north has stirred up the business men of this city. For a long time it has been ap- parent that Tacoma was badly in need of a line of steamers for the Alaska trade to accommodate the enormous traflic be- tween here and Juneau and Dyea, us well as to the mouth of the Yukon.’ A move- ment is now on foot to establish a new gained by diving from a wharf for a truck. | line of steamers, prominent members of the Chamber of Commerce and mining men being particularly active in the mat- ter. Negotiations are now pending be- tween Tacoma and New York cavitalists, who have large interests in the Yukon basin, with the object of effecting the pur- chase of the Northern Pacific steamer City of Seattle if possible and if she can- not be procured to put another boat or more on the run as soon as possible. Such an investment and undertaking, it is thought, will materially increase Taco- ma’s importance as a shipping point and provean immensely profitable investment besides. If the negotiations can be closed quickly the new company’s steamer will make several trips th:s fall to Dyea, and st least one more steamer will be added in the spring. ——— LEASE OF THE ELDER. At Portland There Is a Great De~ mand for Passage to the North- ern El Dorado. PORTLAND, Or, July 22.—The George ‘W. Elder has been leased irom the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company by the Pacific Coast S:eamship Company. The steamship is to sail from Portland July 30. Already the demands on her passen- ger accommodations have about equaled the space. There is room for 260 cabin passengers and some 300 steerage or second-class pas- sengers on the Elder. OI these bertks 100 Continued on Third Paae NUGGETS AND THE SHADOW OF FAMINE More Lucky Sacks and Ones Bring Stories of Gold. ALL REPEAT A WARNING TO RUSHING FOOLS. There Is a Taunting Fear That the Growing Rush of Fortune-Seekers Wil Proportion Misery to the Gold. More Klondykers came to the Commer- cial Hotel yesterday morning with pockets- fal of gold nuggets and mooseskin sacks | of gold dust. Six of the strikers, who arrived at Seat- tle on the Portland last Saturday, got in by rail. They are not Clarence Berrys quite, but they did very well, and some- how or other they neariy all escaped the interviewers at Seattle. One of them is ail over with romance. | He strucgled for nine years in the Yukon country, made a strike in the Klondyke.\ brought down $24,000 in gold, said he | figures out that there is over a million | dollars in one of his three claims, poured out heaps of gold on a center-table and | said that his smar, little five-year-old | hali-breed boy was going to grow up at San Jose and probably never see his mother again, and was going to be the best that money could make out of him. This was N. E. Picotte. He was a de- terminea adventurer and a prospector up there ,nine years ago, became a saloon- | keeper at Forty-mile three years ago, aiter four years of failure at gold-hunting, and now he is a millionsire, jossibiy. Last year he was secretary of the Grand Lodge of the Yukon Pioneers. Then thare is N. Mercier, who brought down $23,000 and left fine claims to which he will return. The others brought out just a few thousand and didn’t do any- thing sensational. They are just plain, uncultured fellows, who cashed in and quit when they were a little ahead of the game. One of them is French Joe, who has $7000 after twelve years of struggle and toil and famiue, and he is going to one of | the California mineral springs to win back some health. Like the rest of the Yukon miners, they are all after eggs an ‘‘greens.’” When the miners got off the boat at Seattle they fairiy rushed for the eggs, green fruit and vegetables, things they had not eaten for 80 long. “What did you make for first when you got off the boat?” was asked of one. “A drink and then ecgs—eggs and greens,” he said, with smiling prompt- ness. | Mr. Picotte is intelligent, good-looking and 37. He hasa kindly way, especially te Frank, whose bright little eyes and darkish features suggest the pictures of aboriginal life along the far Yukon. “Weil, come up to my room,” he said, and pretty soon a small valise was brought forth. Litt.e Frank never saw brick houses and oranges and the wonderful cars and things of the great, strange worid he has reached, and his determined insistence that another wonder!ul orange be fixed for him delayed further operations, Then a mooseskin sack, cylindrical, a foot long and two incnes in diameter, calne out. Moosehide is nicer than buck- skin, and it must be nice to wear it, it is so soft ana warm—thick, and of a dark- yellowish brown. Mr. Picotte untied one end and dumped out the contents. They were just sample nuggets he was carrying around to show. They were not very big, a flut one being worth about $37 and the pile was worth about $250. They were just samples of the chunks of solid gold that are sirewn thickly along the buried bedrock in the richest parts of the new diggings. Another sack yielded a pile of $1200 worth of the coarse gold-dust of the bed- | rock stratum, the grains ranging in size between mustard-seed and wheat grains. When they get down to bedrock in some of the claims they scrape up the stuff next to the rock, and especially in the crevices, | and it 's these scrapings that provide those wonderful pans of several hundred dol- lars each, and not the stratum of gravel above. Picotte’s Yucon experience before the Klondyke discovery was Iike that of most all of the hundreds of others who pros- pected there. “] went in there in 1888,” he said, “and my headquarters have been at Forly Mile ever since. The first vear I worked on the bars and banks of Forty Mile, and then I went to Franklin Gulch, the first gnich discovered along Forty-mile Creek and worked it two years. “I scratched up a few dollars of course, but I never made anything. I bought some claims on Davis Creek, but didn’t make anything, and then I wentto Mil- ler Creek, where Ididn’tdo very much. The creeks both run into Forty-mile Creek. “A few found good claims—good for those days and worth maybe $2000 or $3000 ayear. When I left Miller Creek three years ago I said I was through with min- ing and opened a saloon at Forty Mile. 1 didn’t go to Klondyke until February last. I took in Jim Hall as a parinerand located claim 17 on El Dorado Creek and both claims 14 and 24 on Bonanza Creek above the aiscovery. “On claim 17 we sunk four shafts and drifted frcm all of them. This claim lies across the gulch 500 feet wide the way the creek runs and runs irom rim to rim to a limit of 666 feet. Qur four shafts were in & line on the iower side of the claim and covered a distance of 130 feet. We arifted | 24 feet up the claim, drifting out ali of a section of the claim 130 feet one way and 24 feet the otner. We took out about $48,000. That would make an average of $2000 to the foot across the 130 feet, and at this rate the 500 feet would yield $1,000,000. This is not counting anything that is on the sides of the middle section we are working. “The ground is different in different claims, of course. In this claim there are 16 to 18 feet of black muck, then 3 to 4 of gravel und then the bedrock. The gravel run- 50 cents to $1 and $2 to the pan, but we didn’t figure on the gravel. The rich part 1s the bedrock. It's a slaty rock that was all cracked and broken up as it lay some time in the past when it was at the surface and there was freezing and thaw- ing. “Tne cracks and crevices are filled with a clayey sort of sediment, and it's in this stuff in the crevices that the most gold is found. We pick out the broken rock and put it on the dumps to be sluiced, and scrape up the loose stuff from between the rocks, Of course agreatdeal of gold sticks to the rocks, but it is not in the rock it- self. The most gold is within two or three inches of the top surface of the bedrock, but it goes down four or five feet often. ~When 1 left I hired Mack Lauvreville to take my place for §400 a month, and he and my partner will work ahead until I g0 back in tue spring. “I couldn’t estimate how much was taken out this year, or how much will be taken out next year. It will be a greatdeal more next year, because work was gener- ally started so late this last season. We, for instance, didn’t begin until February. Our ground is so we can drift in summer, but generally they can begin dizging in October and November, and they will work several hundred claims every day possible. “I couldn’t guess how many men there is work for either. On E! Dorado there are forty claims that will run fifreen men each, and that’s 600, and there is Bonanza and the other creeks, There are a good many claims that it won’t pay to work with labor at $15 a day. If too many people get in wages will go down and more claims will be worked. E! Dorado and Bonenza will pay rlch for four miles without a blank.” All this is the sunny side of claim 17 and the Yukon gold. Mr. Picotte isn't worrying himself about the wild rush, but he casts a shadow of wisdom on the situation, as do all the lucky ones who have flashed this gold on the world and given forth the story. Here are some of his quiet remarks: “Many men who have been there years have got nothing yet.” Men are going to get caught there this winter and they can’t get out of the coun- try. There won’t be provisions enough.” “Every man that goes in shouid take a year’s supplv.” ““Wages will go down.” “There seems to be little show for & man on the Klondyke unless he can buy something. Everything is taken up.” Mr. Picotte thinks that there are other diggings to be found, and says that pretty good claims along the Birch Creek and | elsewhere, that were abandoned in the rush, can be bougnt for a song. But these provide just modest rewards for toil. “This rush is going to hurt the country and those who go in,” he said. “It is true the new diggings are rich, but if there is more men than there is room for, wages will go down and everybody will suffer. It's a big country, but few creeks have developed pay. More may be found. A man’s first year 1s apt to be lost, learning the couniry and what to do. He shou!ld go prepared to stay. Mr. Picotte discradits the big stories of what some men have brought out recently. *Cash'’ Amcher, more properly Casper Cassius Amcher, was born in Switzerland, and made $7000 on the Klondyke. He earned it, and no man who went through that Forty-mile famine in the fall of 1889 should be begrudged a measly $7000 from the Klondyke bank. He was asked how it seemed to get back to the world after nine years on the Yukon. «It makes me feel young again,’’ he re- plied. He pulled a yellow thing of hap- bazard shape out of a pocket as he satin the lobby of the Commercial Hotel, and peovle thought it was from Bonanzs Creek, but it wasn’t. 1t was the first nug- get he found in Alaska, and he carried it