The Saint Paul globe., 1897-10-26
COL, PAT IS BREEZY
AN INTERVIEW ON THE FxLONDIKE
THAT IS PICTURESQUELY
DONANESQUE.
ABOUT BOOMERS AND LIARS.
LATTER, THE COLONEL
ADMITS,
When 1t Comes to the Newspaper
Correspondents and the Gold
Fields of Alaska.

Col Pat Donan, just from a long
ride from the coast, was a little tired
Sunday, and with the added difficulty
Of not having yet become Injured to
the summer weather he found here,
was averse to an extended interview.
But when, yesterday, he found his old
North Dakota cOmpatriOt, Maj. A. w.
Edwards, who made the Fargo Argus
famous through it's profuse use of
dashes a fame that the new Forum
now inheritS to some eXtent-When Col.
Pat found the heavyweight major and
they dropped their slippers in front OF
one of Boniface Barker's CRATE fires
at the Metropolitan, the Donanesque
fund of rhetoric loosened little, and
when a G o b reporter presented the
compliments of the day, it was a matter
of only a moment for the man who has
fostered and promoted more schemes
than Henry Willard, and still presents
the not undeceptive appearance of SOL
vency, morally, mentally and financial
ly, to say:
81 see the o b of this morning sets
me up, the boomer par excellence. 1t
could pay no higher compliment. Our So
ignorant disreputable and worse than worth
less lot-blackguard crosses between imbecil-
ity and knayery. Even our alleged great
editors are too often mere panders to popu-
lar ignorance, prejudice and passion, if not
actual propogandists of Generalization and
crime. A genuine Boomer, with the b blown
in the bottle is always and everywhere
self-sacrifcing patriot and 'philanthrop1St. tie
is the comrade-in- arms of the prospector and
the pioneer in every new land and region
He is a Jealous and untiring worker for any
,r,I;a I,n hnTar To hn
thrown; faithful laborer for his state or
territory, county city; promoter of ev-
erybody's interests more than his own. The
boomer came to the new world with Colum-
bus Cortez De Soto and La Sale, with
Hendrick Hudson, Raleigh, Capt. John Smith,
Winthrop and John Alden. He crossed the
Rockies with Lewis and Clark, Kit Carson
and the Argonauts of 1849. He has borne
glorious share in the settling and development
of your own magnificent region of the Upper
Mississippi-land of Hiawatha and Mime
haha, Saint Anthony and No. l hard. When
die, if l ever do, want no nobler epitaph
chiseled on my tombstone-(which the county
will probably have to pay for)-than the
simple words: He Was Boomer
''Speaking of booms and boomers, your
distinguished literary fellow citizen, E. Y.
Smalley of The Northwest Magazine, made
a strangely bad break eight or nine months
ago. In an elaborate article in The Forum
magazine for last March he declared that
the day of the boom in this country was for
ever past In a little book on the mines
and mining possibilities OF the Great racine
Northwest issued Immediately afterward oy
the Oregon Railroad and Navigation COM
pany, 1 ridiculed his statement as the wild
est absurdity, and predicted that If he lived
to the end of 1897 he would see one of the
greatest booms-if not the greatest one-that
had ever been known in this country or She
world. 1 guess he has seen 1T! was a
boom prophet and the son OF a prophet.
NV boom intutions never deceive me or any
body else. The boom l foretod has come
like a cyclonei
1.-THE country and the world have gone
KIondike-mad. New Orleans yellow fever Is
nothing as an epidemic compared with ma
tional and international Klondicitis. And the
craze is not to be wondered at. The simple
facts surpass all the dreams of enthusiasts,
and the fairy tales of romancers. Claims of
mud and moss paying from $1,000 to $4,000
a day for each sluicing. One pan OF
gravel on Eldorado creek yielding 2,1OO, and
a weeks shove1ing on the same stream pro-
ducing 1000 ounces of gold dust and mug
gets worth s51 900. Frank Dinsmore, on
Claim 26, Bonanza creek, taking out ninety
pounds of solid gold, or SA,48O, in single
dav One man on Aleck McDonalds Ell
dorado creek claim shoveling in $4,000 in
twelve hours; and Mcdonald himself, big
raw-boned. hard-working prospector and min
er- having over S150,0O0 at one time to a
Yukon transportation company, and saying to
Mrs. Alice Henderson, a little newspaper
woman we'll known in st. Paul and Minneap-
oIis as he handed her a huge earthernware
howl of nuggets: Help yourself to some of
these nuggets Take some of the bigger ones
-as many as you please; they're nothing
to me- Barkeeper Harry Ash taking in
from So 900 to So 000 day; common laborers
earning from s15 to $40 day; John kayan-