The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-08-15
A STORY FROM ALASKA.
A Former Montana Man Tells of
Many Dangers.

The Great Falls correspondent of the
Anaconda Standard writes:
/ Many stories of the now famous realm
of gold in far off frozen Alaska have
been passed along the line. but the
boss of 'em alg'' has just made its ap-
pearanee and comes from Texas The
hazardous trip to Klondike has been
pictured with all the dark shadings
/ Imaginable, but the latest dangers have
been left to be told by S. P. Panton,
/ formerly a Great Falls man and at
one time a partner of II. F. Collett in
the reaS- estate business in this city,
/ but OF ecent years editor of the Aran-
sas Pass (Tex-) Herald, and should
prove a warning 70 the boys of Mon
tana who intend to follow tickle fortune
in Alaska. Mr.. Panton will be remem-
bered throughout the state as the gem
tleman who once conceived the bril-
liant idea of making Great Falls a
seaport town by digging a, great canal,
wide and deep enough to allow the
passage of ocean vessels from the CO.
lumbia river to Great Falls. His truly
original scheme was outlined in an ar
ticle published here in 1890, and few if
any of the newspapers of the state or
the northwest failed to give the propo-
sition prominence at the time. For
reasons never fully explained or made
public the canal was not dug, and Mr.
Panton passed into history by remov-
ing from Montana to the Lone Star
state.
In the issue of the Herald OF July 20
Mr.. Panton editorially calls attention
and points out dire dangers in Alaska,
as yet untold, in the following article:
80 far most of the reports of the
Yukon gold fields have been of such an
alluring character that in every COM
munity men lie awake at nights figur-
ing out WAYS and means to Join the
stampede TO Klondike. The crowds go
ing in this year and next viii have to
spread over the wilderness looking for
new diggings and few have any concep-
ton of the dangers to be encountered.
1t has been briefly stated that the up
per Klondike is infested by grizzly
bears that become so ravenous after
subsisting by sucking their paws
through the iong winters, that they |
don't waste any available prospectors. |
But grizzlies are mild and inoffensive I
compared with the monsters that roam /
the moorland inside OF the Arctic cir J.
Gle The EsquimauX inhabiting the
villages OF Nig-a-lek, Shiningrua, and :
Nunuak, on the north coast of Alaska, +
furnish such minute descriptions of the 1
monsters that range the interior that I
heretofore supposed to have
to the triassic. jurassic. and
other remote periods In 1895 the cap
tain of a whaler (whose name has
ESCAPED our brief memory landed at
Nik-a-lek and found the natives feast
ing on the jowls Of a colossal head,
which they had, with infinite labor,
dragged down from the interior. They
explained that they found the carcass
from which the head was taken, sur
rounded by signs of a frightful conflict
with others OF its species.
The skull was eight feet long and
i've feet two inches across. 1t was
armed in front by a sharp cutting beak,
l strong horn on the nose, had pair
q very large and sharp horns on top
# the head, and a row of sharp pro-
ections around the pOsterior crest. 1t
vas unquestienably the head of
riceratops prorsus, the most formid-
lble Of the terrible dinosaur family.
rhe mature triceratops is 80 TO 60 feet
ong, has body and tail like those of
huge alligator, mounted on long,
hick and clumsy legs When the
eptile rears up kangaroo fashion to
ZEE what is going on in the next
county, he stands So to 40 feet high, ]
md would be taller If there was not
% much Of him hung over for tail. The
atives describe a smaller species, iden-
fled as the hypsilopbodon. Another /
imilar to the triceratops, but without