The San Francisco call., 1897-07-19

1te routes for parting with golddnst, OF
course. You can hear of regular games
With $50 ante and $50 to call the blind,
and winnings of $1,000, $4,000 or $4,000.
They don't have any money in circuia-
ton to speak OF. What goes in gets TO
the trading companies safes and stays
| there. You weigh out your golddust just
as you used to up around Red Dog and
hangtown.
when you go in yo1 just leave your
sack at the bar and say Give me hve hun
dred' or Give me a thousand and get
your chips" explained one OF the Excel
siors yesterday. Then If you lose you
can call for what you want, and it's Just
put down. and when you get through
| they weigh out what you owe. I've seen
fellows go in with $4,000 they'd cleaned up
and 90 out with an empty sack and go to
work again"
The Jack Hamlins and lower order OF
sure-t thing men and professional tln-horn
gamblers had not struck the Yukon yet
when navigation opened - but dont
worry; they'll get there with the tide.
The elderly wild women with red faces
and regulations that have drifted in from
| the coast recently got an odd setback from
Captain Constantine of the territorial
police, the ruler OF the diggings. The
women naturally put on bloomers in COM
ing over the mountains and making the
wild ride down the streams, and when
they got there they began the fashion of
wearing bloomers altogether. Boomers
were more than Captain Constantine
would stand, and he gave orders that if
the bloomers did not go, the wearers
would.
The Yukon is good place to go to for
mosquito stories. The Yukon mosquito
is the king of beasts. He actually hunts
and kills bears along that mighty river.
This is told and pictured by no less an
authority than Lieutenant Schwatka, in
his well-known published account of his
exploration of the Yukon a number of
years ago.
Bears under stress of hunger sometimes
come down TO the river in the mosquito
season, he relates, and are attacked by
swarms of these insects, which sting
them about the eyes so that they
go blind, rage blindly around awhile
and die OF starvation. He tells of seeing
one bear SO attacked. The beast clawed
about his head for a time and thrust it
arose on his hind legs in rage and struck
wildly at the swarm. This bear was not
tracked but he undoubtedly died.
A Yukon miner said yesterday that the
Yukon mosquito had been known to bite
through thick mooseskin mitten that
was put on for the experiment. The Yu-
kon mosquito comes with the glory OF
the brief simmer and the sluicing of
golden ground, but he is gone in six weeks
and he is not so bad away from the Yukon
itself. So it is that in summer many wear
mosquito netting over their heads.
They say that it is healthy enough up
there. The most prevalent trouble is
often the scurvy, which results from the
scarcity of vegetables and fresh meats. A
diet of beans, salt pork and bad bacon,
with -four at $50 sack, brings troub BILE.
Canned and dried vegetables and fruit are
| a considerable part of the greatly varied
cargoes the trading companies are crowd
| ing in, but there is likely to be shortage
of vegetable food again this winter. Fresh
meat is always scarce. The moose and
caribou have been killed off and scared
away pretty well, as have the mountain
sheep, and the chase would not supply
fraction of the population, even if many
men left their claims or their SIS day to
go hunting. There are graylings and
other fish in the Yukon and they can be
hooked through the ice, but who is going
to stand out on the middle of the -iver at
sixty degrees below zero. with time worth
SIS day? Last winter quarter of beef
was sIedded into Circle City with dogs.
1t was viewed with wonder al store for
while, and then raff1ed off for $400 for
the benefit of a projected miners hos
pital. This spring IN enterprising Juneau
man drove forty head of cattle in from the
coast. 800 miles, and the beef went at so
and then 70 cents pound like free
lunch at Sunday picnic. II anybody
gets sick there are patent medicines at
the stores and four or five doctors, who
diagnose a patients claim before present.
ing the bill.
There has been no newspaper published
there because, although there are type
settlers and diminutive printing press in
the country, no printer could be hired to
leave gold digging for SIS a day. There
are no roads in the country, and hardly
any horses, which are nearly useless and
very costly 10 keep. Boats, Eskimo dogs, |
sledges and packs on ones back are the
transportation methods. Good dogs have |
been commanding 500 to $150 Apiece. |
Some day the slowly multiplying reindeer |
the Government is experimenting with |
may bless the Yukon country.
Even Americans are glad that the new |
diggings are in British territory, owing to |
the difference in governmental methods. |
Most of the mining and population has |
been on the American side until |
this year, and the region has never |
been able to get the slightest care or at |
tention from the Federal Government. |
There has been no mail service, no court, |
constable, marshal or other shadow of
authority except Deputy Revenue Col
Iector, and walls have been long and |
strong. A mail contract has just been |
signed, however.
When the miners rushed to the Klon-
dyke they found an efficient force OF
twenty-five police there, and govern
mental care of law, order, private rights
and the good OF the mining industry so
zealously and literally fostered by all the
British colonies. Some of the Americans