The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1897-09-29
LIFE IN THE KLONDIKE.
HOW THE PEOPLE KEEP HOUSE IN
THE GREAT GOLD FIELD.

Winter and Summer Habits and Customs
All Trading Done in Gold Dust-The
Mosquitoes Are There - Interesting
Facts About the Natives of That Region
From all accounts, it would seem
that the Klondike region is sort OF
earthly paradise; no fighting no shoot,
ing, no lynching, no theft.
It's curious, too, for there are in
Forty Mile Post, Dawson, Circle City
and other mining towns, saloons by
dozen, gambling hells, few women and
plenty of men just like those who used
to die with their boots on in California.
No one ever locks cabin door. You
can leave few thousands in gold dust
lying around loose, and no one will
steal it. This forbearance is not SO
remarkable as it seems. If thief did
steal when there is nothing to break
through he couldn't spend his money
or leave the country unsuspected.
The upper circles of the Yukon Val
ley usually dwell in commodious homes
of boards we'll banked up with tail
ings to keep the cold out, and measur-
ing some twelve feet by fourteen. A
common household ornament is hole
in the floor, through which the owner
can descend and dig pay dirt in the
frosty bowels of the earth when he has
time. Cooking is done on sheet iron
stoves, very light and small, lugged
over the Chilkoot with other belong
ings. There isn't generally much to
cook on the stove except the three
"Bs"-bacon, beans and bread. In
summer there is fresh fish; in winter
also, if a man cares to brave cold feet
by standing on the ice to fish through
hole chopped in it. Besides, the
hole has way of freezing up again
rapidly.
The cold is not so terrible bugbeal
as many imagine. The air is very dry,
and it causes no discomfort to work
out of doors with the thermometer at
thirty below. General humidity makes
the cold as we'll as the heat worse tc
bear.
Miners generally wear in winter the
native dress of skin trousers and
parka, with boots of seal or walru:
skin, made by the coast Indians. Tht
skin trousers are made of woodchurcl
pelts or fawn-skin trimmed with white
wolfskins. Women wear the parka, OF
skin coat flched from the fawn OF
wolverine, but they have to deny them
selves the pleasures of dress reform sc
far as to wear light short skirts owe,
their leather breeches and boots. In
summer one can dress as in New
York.
Housekeeping is most primitive.
Men are in vast majority, and it is
customary, as it was in California, fol-
them to select partners and live two in
a "shack," or cabin, to save house.
work and divide expense. In winter
there are no means of bathing without
extraordinary trouble. The snow
seldom lies more than three feet deep,
there are no thaws to make crust on
its surface, and all winter travelling is
done on shoeshoes.
Prices are extraordinarily high, and
vary according to circumstances, so
that one can hardly tell what they will
be next spring, when the new crowd
gets into the diggings. Beef at fifty
or seventy-tive cents pound is per-
haps fair example. Last winter, be-
cause the preceding summer had been
a bad one for salmon, bacon had to
be fed to the sled dogs at o cost of
twenty-five or forty cents pound.
And there have been times when q
dog was worth $500 to kill to keep
some miner with plenty of "dust''
but no grub" from starving.
There are physicians in the Klon-
dixie and there will be hospitals at
several points, established by the Sis
ters of Mercy from Montreal. Last
winter there was a benefit perform
ance in Circle City, when a quarter OF
beef "snaked" into the country on a
dog sled, was raffled off for S400 for
the hospital. Now Circle City is
pretty we'll deserted, and the hospital
will be needed more somewhere else.
There is still a post-office at Circle
City, and mails come and go every
month in winter, by carrier to juneau.
In summer what change there is
The thermometer rises frequently
above ninety. Men work sixteen and
eighteen hours day, slucing out the
dirt they have been digging out all
winter, and drop dog tired into their
hunks at night to dreamless sleep.
They can vary their food only little.
Fresh salmon are usually plenty, but
game is not. Hence the great bane OF
the country is scurvy. It is avoided
by drinking a great deal of lime juice.
A better way would be to get fresh
vegetables into the country, and there
is no doubt that they could be grown
with perfect success, not perhaps al
Circle City or DAWSON, but four or five
hundred miles farther south, on the
Ta9ish or Teslin Lake, and boated
easily down stream towards autumn.
True, the season is short, but growth
is very rapid while it lasts. Many
vegetable crops require but a short
time to mature. The Danish settle.
ments in Greenland, quite as far north
as these lakes, have pretty fair vege
table gardens. The men who first gel
into business as market gardners, sup.
plying the Yukon basin with fresh
vegetables, will need no gold mines.
Surveyor Ogilvie thinks that there