Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899 by Pierre Berton Page B
Authors: Pierre Berton
Ads: Link
companion, who was curiously evasive about what he had found.
When Johns and his three Norwegian companions headed up the new creek the following day, one of them pointed dramatically to the water:
“Someone’s working; the water’s muddy!”
The four men crept upstream, alert and silent – “like hunters who have scented game,” as Johns put it. Suddenly they surprised Stander crouching over a panful of gold with three of his companions crowding about him. They looked “like a cat caught in a cream pitcher,” and Johns and his friends needed no further encouragement to stake. One of the Norwegians who had read a great deal named the new creek Eldorado, more or less as a joke, but, as it turned out, the title was entirely appropriate.
To the newcomers, however, this narrow cleft in the wooded hills was just another valley with good surface prospects. These really meant very little, for gold lying in the gravels on the creek’s edge did not necessarily mean that the valley was rich. Before that could be determined, someone would have to go through the arduous labour of burning one or more shafts down at least fifteen feet to bedrock, searching for the “pay-streak” (which might not exist), hauling the muck up by windlass to the surface, and washing it down to find out how much gold there really was. This back-breaking labour could easily occupy two months. Even then it was pure guesswork to estimate a claim’s true worth. Until the spring thaw came and the rushing creek provided enough head of water to wash thoroughly the gravels drawn up the shaft all winter, no one could really say exactly how rich Eldorado was – if, indeed, it was rich at all.
Most of the men who staked claims on the new creek in that first week had already done their share of prospecting. They had sunk shafts and shovelled gravel on creek after creek in the Yukon watershed without success. To them this little pup looked exactly like any other in the territory. If anything, it looked scrawnier and less attractive. To most men, then, Eldorado was as much of a gamble as the Irish sweepstakes. Some, such as Stander, determined to take the gamble and hold their ground and work it to see whether it really did contain gold. Others decided to sell out at once for what they could get. Still others bravely set out to take the risk and then got cold feet and sold before the prize was attained.
Nobody then knew, of course, that this was the richest placer creek in the world, that almost every claim from One to Forty was worth at least half a million, that some were worth three times that amount, and that a quarter of a century later dredges would still be taking gold from the worked-over gravels.
But in that first winter enormous untapped fortunes changed hands as easily as packages of cigarettes, and poor men became rich and then poor again without realizing it. Jay Whipple, for instance, sold claim One almost immediately, for a trifle. The purchaser, a lumberman from Eureka, California, named Skiff Mitchell, lived for half a century on the proceeds.
Frank Phiscator, on Two , saw fortune slipping from his grasp on two occasions, but in each instance retrieved it. He had scarcely hammered his stakes into the ground when F. W. “Papa” Cobb, known as one of Harvard’s best quarterbacks, tried to seize it from him. Cobb insisted that Phiscator already had a claim on Bonanza, therefore could not legally stake a second one on Eldorado. This was true, but Constantine of the Mounted Police, who always tempered justice with common sense, decided that Cobb was too greedy since he could easily have staked close to Phiscator without causing a fuss. Thus did a fortune elude Cobb. Yet Phiscator thought so little of his claim that he sold half of it for eight hundred dollars, only to buy it back later in the year for fifteen thousand.
Charles Lamb, who had been dismissed from his job as a Los Angeles streetcar conductor and had come north as the result of
When Johns and his three Norwegian companions headed up the new creek the following day, one of them pointed dramatically to the water:
“Someone’s working; the water’s muddy!”
The four men crept upstream, alert and silent – “like hunters who have scented game,” as Johns put it. Suddenly they surprised Stander crouching over a panful of gold with three of his companions crowding about him. They looked “like a cat caught in a cream pitcher,” and Johns and his friends needed no further encouragement to stake. One of the Norwegians who had read a great deal named the new creek Eldorado, more or less as a joke, but, as it turned out, the title was entirely appropriate.
To the newcomers, however, this narrow cleft in the wooded hills was just another valley with good surface prospects. These really meant very little, for gold lying in the gravels on the creek’s edge did not necessarily mean that the valley was rich. Before that could be determined, someone would have to go through the arduous labour of burning one or more shafts down at least fifteen feet to bedrock, searching for the “pay-streak” (which might not exist), hauling the muck up by windlass to the surface, and washing it down to find out how much gold there really was. This back-breaking labour could easily occupy two months. Even then it was pure guesswork to estimate a claim’s true worth. Until the spring thaw came and the rushing creek provided enough head of water to wash thoroughly the gravels drawn up the shaft all winter, no one could really say exactly how rich Eldorado was – if, indeed, it was rich at all.
Most of the men who staked claims on the new creek in that first week had already done their share of prospecting. They had sunk shafts and shovelled gravel on creek after creek in the Yukon watershed without success. To them this little pup looked exactly like any other in the territory. If anything, it looked scrawnier and less attractive. To most men, then, Eldorado was as much of a gamble as the Irish sweepstakes. Some, such as Stander, determined to take the gamble and hold their ground and work it to see whether it really did contain gold. Others decided to sell out at once for what they could get. Still others bravely set out to take the risk and then got cold feet and sold before the prize was attained.
Nobody then knew, of course, that this was the richest placer creek in the world, that almost every claim from One to Forty was worth at least half a million, that some were worth three times that amount, and that a quarter of a century later dredges would still be taking gold from the worked-over gravels.
But in that first winter enormous untapped fortunes changed hands as easily as packages of cigarettes, and poor men became rich and then poor again without realizing it. Jay Whipple, for instance, sold claim One almost immediately, for a trifle. The purchaser, a lumberman from Eureka, California, named Skiff Mitchell, lived for half a century on the proceeds.
Frank Phiscator, on Two , saw fortune slipping from his grasp on two occasions, but in each instance retrieved it. He had scarcely hammered his stakes into the ground when F. W. “Papa” Cobb, known as one of Harvard’s best quarterbacks, tried to seize it from him. Cobb insisted that Phiscator already had a claim on Bonanza, therefore could not legally stake a second one on Eldorado. This was true, but Constantine of the Mounted Police, who always tempered justice with common sense, decided that Cobb was too greedy since he could easily have staked close to Phiscator without causing a fuss. Thus did a fortune elude Cobb. Yet Phiscator thought so little of his claim that he sold half of it for eight hundred dollars, only to buy it back later in the year for fifteen thousand.
Charles Lamb, who had been dismissed from his job as a Los Angeles streetcar conductor and had come north as the result of
Similar Books
