The San Francisco call., 1897-11-30

SUNDAY. State Senator Range ana son
of Washington were among those who
arrived Yesterday and passed on to-day,
and Fort Yukon to which they 60 IS not a
fort. 1t is simply trading post. There
is a log store and log house in which
the storekeeper lives, and another little
log house in which d missionary lives,
and there are four other log houses that
make part of an Indian village. That
is all. The region is bare of timber. and
the surrounding country is flat and bleak.
1t is within the Arctic circle, the most
northern point on the Yukon. The near
est settlement is Circle City, eighty miles
south or up the river, but it is separated
from that place by the terrible Yukon
Flats, labyrinth of islands among which
even the Indians get lost, and to pass
through which, with experienced guides,
cost me nine days of toll from dawn till
dark.
To carry provisions to Circle City will
be very expensive. 1t will not be done
by the dispensing agent, that is, the
Government. Those who have no means
to buy provisions atthe high figures asked
will, so far as present arrangements go,
be compelled to stay where they are, at
Yukon.
1t is possible that parties may be scat
tered along the river where timber may
be found, there to buiIi cabins and saw
wood for the steamboats, in the spring.
Here at Dawson the arrival of seventy
I'VE more mounted po ice within the week,
n charge of Inspector Walsh, denotes
struggle. Here are gathered little city
full OF people of individuals without ties.
Every man in this community. without
even the exception of the police, feels that
his safety against starvation during the
period extending from to-day until the
18th of June next depends upon his own
vigilance and ability to defend what he
has. Every man is his own watchdog at
the door of his own cache. This applies,
of course, to those who have caches, as
every man claims to have. But the vigi-
lance is called forth by the knowledge
that very many who insist upon remain
ing here and taking chances" have no
caches and will depend for their subsist-
ence until June upon what they expect to
be able to secure from the more provident.
No mans love for his neighbor extends
beyond the subsistence mark for that
day. The first great question before alli-
ances of any kind are made is, 'What
have you got to eat?"
There are no invitations to dinner, or
if conditions be such as to compel the
asking the decent always decline. 1t is
a city full OF people who are strangers to
each other, coming together from all quar-
ters of the country and bent upon the quick
acquisition of fortune, many with noplans,
but all ceRterei in self and thrown wholly
upon their individual resources, warned
on every hand to expect no sympathy if
they find themselves unprepared to meet
or unequal to the conditions of darkness,
cold and hunger that confront them.
The city of Dawson has been growing
with rapidity those weeks past that per-
haps has no parallel on the continent.
Cabins have sprung up along the sur
veyed lines Of the streets until they extend
from the bluffs on the southern side of
the Klondike River, where is the Indian
village, to where bluffs stop their progress
again on the northern side, that of the
city proper, and from the water front far
Up the hillside. The water front is deeply
fringed with the tents of late arrivals, and
they number more than the number of the
cabins.
The great rush now is TO get housed
against the coming of the lasting cold.
Tie break in the weather these past few
days has been a godsend to the great
number who are still out in it. Most of
the cabins being erected are, substantially
built of logs and can BE- made warm.
Many, however, are built by inexperi-
enced people and are little better than the
rude shacIls and holes in the ground in
which the Indians i've Their inhabi-
tants will certainly suffer. A very great
number of these now in tents will be COM
PEELED to live in them through the winter,
and their number will be added to daily
here so long as the river allows the boats
to come down. When it closes those who
are stopped where they may be at that
time and those who arrive thus late may
be in position to toss copper to see which
Is in the worst lutk.
Things have been happening in rapid
sequence since my dispatch of Septem-
Der % with the news of The failure of the
steamer Hamilton and the steam barge
Marguerite to get over the bar with their
cargoes at Fort Yukon. Every man who
had a cache of provisions set a watch
upon it and every man who had not be-
gan an anxious and often desperate quest.
1t was then that the price of flour leaped
from So 50 to 500. The two company
stores were besieged. The managers of
them repeated over and over again the
statement that they not only had nothing
in the provision line to sell, but that the
failure of the boats to get up would pre-
vent their filling many of the orders for
which they already had received pay. A
feeling of panic spread through the whole
district. arrived Saturday night. On