The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1897-09-29

| uue aDOul IulS MlH1uS SOClely. 1uele
are no snobs in it, no liveries except
the livery of toll; no very rich men
and few extremely poor; no thieves
except those who practice the permit
ted theft of the gaming table. One
man is in literal truth as good us an.
other; there is chivalrous regard for
women, kindness for misfortune and
ready courage for emergencies. 1t is
primitive society with its faults and its
virtues, which are not the faults and
virtues of the fostering towns. There
is manliness, at any rate; and there
are genuine human women, with the
charm that comes of open air living
and plenty of exercise.
The curse of the country-as of any
gold region-is it's instability. There
is no use making pleasant homes in a
mining camp. If it succeeds, the resi-
dents all expect to ''make their pile"
and "mosey for the States" If it
fails, every one will be off for fresh
diggings and leave the shacks pathet-
ically deserted. At one time the finest
| house Ill I'LL hldShd WIS LII vi ClC O1pJs
T. cost $4,000 to build, but its owner
was probably as ready as any one else
to desert the place when the news OF
Klondike came.
There can be almost no books or
pictures in the Klondike, or the Yukon
fields generally. Freight charges are
high on the St. Michaels route, and
weight is eliminated as far as possible
from mans pack when he tackles the
dread Chilkoot pass. The dreary land.
scape, the almost perpetual sunshine
of winter, which compels the resident
to use snow glasses, if he would not
be blinded, makes life weary and lack.
ing in variety. There is some relief
when the magic summer brings out the
scanty vegetation at a bound, further
up the Yukon, but in its middle
stretches the forms of flower and tree
are monotonous, indeed, almost be.
ginning and ending with moss and
scrubby little trees. Natures poor
attempts at landscape painting are, OF
the best, soon marred by man. There
is no occupation that spoils a country
faster than mining. The great heaps
of "slickens" or tailings disfgure
every stream, and the face of nature
is all cut and gashed and hacked with
prospect holes.
Mosquitoes are the plague Of life
throughout Alaska and the Northwest
Territory. Schwatka says they sting
the bears 80 as to drive them crazy.
When the poor animals are driven by
hunger down to the river in mosquito
time they are so bitten about the eyes
as to BECOME blinded, when they die
of starvation.
The late E. J. Glave wrote of the
pests: "a liberal daubing of bacon fat
and pitch around the eyes and ears OF
our animals kept those sensitive parts
free from the pests, and when my own
head grew so bumpy I could not get
my hat on I applied the remedy to my
own anatomy with good deal Of sue
cess. When not feeding, our horses
would leave the sheltered places and
seek the open stone to avail themselves
of whatever breeze was blowing; they
would then stand in couples, so that
each would have the benefit of the
others tail as q switch.
Cattle are so maddened by the mos.
quitoes that they will gallop half a
mile at top speed against the wind in
an endeavor to shake them off, and
then Craze until the mosquitoes force
them to make another dash for life.
As the miners camps are necessarily
always in lowlands along the creek bot
toms the suffering from these pests is
considerable.
Slavery and human sacrifice were
common among the Chilkoot Indians
generation ago. These people remain
savage, brutal race, and the average
miner has more direct dealings with
them going in or out over the pass than
he is apt to have afterwards with the
Yukon tribes.
These coast Indians are the fellows
that pack miners outfits over the Chill
koot Pass at twenty cents pound.
They are tricky and dishonest, and
make use of all sorts of devices to
cheat the traveller, and they lord it
numerically over the Indians just be-
yond the divide.
The Indians of the middle Yukon
are more friendly and humane, if not
more intelligent lot of people. The
miners see much of them. They will
sometimes hire out to do day labor in
the placers, but prefer fishing, and
stolidly keep on in their old ways, in
spite of the rush and furry of the gold
fever. They are very superstitious
and believe that in parts of the coun-
try distant from them dwell superhu-
man monsters who eat people and are
very fierce and cruel. These Indians
are now generally fairly well-behaved
and contented under the Canadian
Government.
A perennial charm of Yokon society
is the fresh and youthful vigor of the
men found there. Probably the aver
age age is less than thirty-fve. "An
old miner does not need to be an old
man. A pioneer in the region may
have had but ten years experience and
be but little past thirty. The few wo-
men in the mines average even younger.
The unfortunate there are, but not the
aged, and poverty takes its ills philoso-
phically, having seen too many of the
ups and downs of life to despair of q
turn in the luck.-New York World.