The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 13, 1898, Page 20

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 1898. A 2 NN \\\\ N \\\ NN 0 WISE man once remarked: “Gold is wher- ever you find it.”” And when you come to look into the matter you find there is a great deal of truth in the sentiment. Nature has been so lavish in her distribution of the pre- cious etal that no continent or climate is without its re. To-day men are digging for gold under the burning gun of the tropics and amid the deathly cold of the long, long Arctic night. te is sufficiently and once the 1 formidable to deter the adness is upon them men down their lives in plague-stricken larious New Guinea. Even now, it is, boats are loading up in b. nd the who but a few shed across the arid deserts of Western wing a long line of plodding camels, of the de: * as the Arabs call them, will guiding g sled over the snows of the g a flat-bottom boat down men ago r illustrates : life. All the alia famous as’a gold- the eastern side of near the seacoast. watered, there is a nd railways intersect the Jven during the be- nd New South Wal ince from the seaco: Ticult to manage for the From Melbourne it was , and from Sydney, though the crossed, there was a well- to Bathu . e conditions which met The center of now it i n and spin st shallow lake, but ‘salt bush which the Kion- n ranges you must ds dust storms and c E ack trains. 11 these obstacles, an intrepid pros- d out into the desert from South- st of the Western Australian 1l mining township, South- shortly afterward for an- the place to which Deeming, one arkable murderers of the century, fled burying a wife in Melbourne. Deem- , it will be remembered, was to quietly ith his w se her in cement un- . repbated this op- B rested at Southern dered a quantity of cement, so as > whom he was shortly to thing to do with the great Cool- s the plucky Bayley who made > difficulty through the trackless nnot travel forever without journeys were restricted. from Southern Cross he met with ch alluvial patch, and after some covered the outecrop of the reef. artz which he brought away with hly, and with the news one of the of the century set in. Bayley, in mining laws of the colony, re- s the name which the mine still 2 diggings. Though ly rich alluvial, there ter with which to wash it. Dry blowing resorted to. success, and some blowers were invented to meet the de- 3 the early days the cost of living was ly high; everything had to be brought from N MINER the seacoast on the backs of camels, and even water, that most necessary of all fluids, cost $2 a gallon. The saloonkeeper, when you asked for a drink of whisky, would hand you the bottle to help yourself as freely as you but if you exacting as to demand water with it. he would measure out the precious fluld with the most niggard hand. Despite all these drawbacks, thousands of poor prospectors essayed to make their way to the diggings. Carrying their “swags,” as the Australians call a man’s roll of bedding and clothes, they toiled painfully along the dusty track, already clearly defined by the whitening bones of those who had lain down by the wayside to die. The stages between water were ex- ceedingly long, often a couple of days' journey, and to fall on the road meant the most terrible of all deaths—by thirst. How many perished miserably in the desert will never be known; no record is ever kept of the nameless dead who have fallen by thousands in all parts of the world while madly seeking for gold. Gradually, of course, the rush began to organize it- self, and the danger of the journey was in some de- gree lessened. A favorite plan was for a number of miners to combine and hire a cart, in which they placed their luggage, while unencumbered they walked be- side. The great drawback to this method was that at the worst part of the road the horses generally broke down from lack of feed and water, and then the un- fortunate prospectors, themselves suffering from thirst, had nothing for it but to carry their own burdens, and hasten to the nearest water hole, thankful if they might get even a mouthful of muddy, fetid water. Another and more successful method was to use a vheelbarrow, and hundreds cf men pushed their be- ngs in this way to the diggings. One ingenious ividual evolved a new scheme. He placed his outfit in a cask, through which an axle was run, thus en- abling the curious contrivance to be drawn along the road after the fashion of a garden roller. But none of these contrivances would have enabled men to live at Coolgardie, had it not been for that wonderfu! beast. the camel. The use of this animal is not a new thing in Australia. For many years it has been employed amid the sheep stations of the “back blocks” which fringe on the desert center of the conti- nent. At Bourke, in New South Wales. some 500 miles from the coast, the camel-carrying business is quite an extensive industry. It is undertaken entirely by Af- ghans, and therefore meets with the most bitter oppo- sition from the white carriers, who, with horse or bul- k teams, formerly monopolized the carrying trade. e are over a thousand camels at Bourke, and ev- ery day you can see a long string start forth, led by a white-robed Afghan, for a journey of perhaps several ndred miles to some outlying station. They take up food and supplies of all kinds, and return with great bales of wool, slung one on each side of the camel. HE conditions of travel whichprevailinicy Alas- ka are so utterlydifferent fromthoseofany tem- perate clime that eventhemeost experienced Cali- fornian or Australian traveler will find himself utterly lost when he lands at Dyea or Skaguay. Just now, as the beast of burden, the dog is all the craze, for the parties leaving fhus early T the season expect to get over the passes and well on the way to Dawson before the snow melts. And as the dog is the only beast of burden used by the Alaskan Indians, everybody wants dog, no matter what kind of dog; anything will do, so long as it is dog. The demand for the useful canine has been so great that California has been pretty well stripped of its big dogs. Every steamer takes away scores of these ani- mals; the steamer Natlonal City carried over 100, while the Australia carried even more. During the past few BY CAMEL TRAIN OVER THE. BY DOG SLED OVER THE FROZEN SNOW TO KLONDIKE. a St. Bernard or a Newfoundland has any number of dogs months to own been a serious responsibilit have been stolen, and the departure of each steamer has witnessed some amusing scenes between irate dog owners and Klondike adventurers. In most cases the dogs were honestly bought by the prospectors from well-known city dealers. But the real owner ¢f the animal appezred on board with a search warrant, and there was no resisting the strong arm of the law. The dog had to be landed, pending judicial inquiry, and the miner, having no time to bother with lawsuits. had to let the matter drop and submit patiently to his loss. Almost every kind of dog has been taken to Alaska —St. Bernards, Newfoundlands, Great Danes, mas- tiffs, retrievers, bird dogs of indescribable breeds, have been bought and shipped at prices often rang- ing as high as $150. Yet in the face of all this the latest reports from Skaguay inform us that any num- ber of dogs can be had there for $10. As this is ex- actly the freight which the steamers charge for tak- ing the dogs up, it seems likely that many of the prospective millionaires, when they land at the head of the Lynn Canal, will rather regret their expensive investment in dog flesh, the mor¢ so as it is highly probable many of the dogs, either through ill-treat- ment or constitutional weakness, will perish beneath the rigors of this Arctic clime. It is one thing to own a team of real Eskimo. dogs, inured by generations of breeding to every form of hardship, and quite another to deal with the delicately bred city dog, who has never done an hour’s work in his life. Of course, the St. Bernard and the New- foundland come of a cold-resisting stock; they have the thick, furry coats necessary to protect them from the frost, and as long as their feet hold out they may be of some use. But what the poor short-haired dogs, such as the Danes and the mastiffs, are going to do in the Arctic it is hard to imagine. A city butcher, who has had some Alaskan expe- rience himself, made a remark the other day which illustrates the ignorance and inexperience of many Klondikers. “A man came here.” he said, “and or- dered six barrels of corned beef to feed his dogs on. Corned beef! Why, the poor brutes will have their tongues hanging out and be parched with thirst be- fore they have done half a day’s work.” The butcher knew what he was talking about; it is as necessary to provide water as meat for dogs who are working hard. And everybody who has been in the Arctic regions know that you cannot eat snow; it only increases instead of diminishing your thirst. You must stop and light a fire and melt the snow before you can get a drink. To melt enough snow to satisfy the thirst of a team of dogs fed on corned beef would be a Herculean enterprise. Still, putting corned beef on one stde, the difficulty of feeding dogs is the great obstacle to their use on long jourreys. A team will only drag enough food to last it for thirty or forty days, so a month's journey is the outside limit of their utility. Of course, you can do as Nansen did, and eat the dogs when there \is nothing more to feed them upon, but the plan hardly sounds satisfactory. @ Probably the best feed for dogs, because of its com- pact nutritiousness, is the dog biscuit, made of a mix- ture of meat and meal. The one drawback is the ex- pense—the biscuits cost about 15 cents a pound. As a cheaper substitute the butcher recommended Indian cornmeal mixed with crackling, a compound sufficient- Iy heating for this rigorous clime. Before any work can be expected from these im- ported dogs it will be necessary to carefully shoe them, for their tender feet will never stand work over the ice-clad rocks of the passes. It is estimated that three good-sized dogs will draw an ordinary seven- foot single sled, such as is commonly sold in the city. Some prospectors, going in large parties, propose to use two sleds, fastened together, and hauled by a team of seven. This is more after the Indian fash- ion, who harness up their dogs in teams of from seven to eleven, according to the weight of the load and the size of dog. But each full-grown dog is supposed to be able to draw a hundredweight for his share. The method of harnessing is very different from that used for horses or other larger beasts ot burden. The dogs are fastened to a single yoke line by a breast strap, and have no guide reins, the animals having sufficient intelligence to obey the voice of their BURNING DESERT TO COOLGARDIE. master. But, to make sure, a leader of known sagac- ity is usually selectéd, and, obeying his master’s voice, he takes care that the team moves in the right direction.