The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-08-30
WOMEN I'M THE KLONDIKE.
How They Endure TIA Hardships and
Privations.

How They Endure Eta Hardships and
Privations.
In my recent trip through Washing
ton state had the good luck to become
personally acquainted with party of
Klondikers. | arrived in Seattle at the
same time as the steamer Portland and
soon caught the gold fever to the ex-
tent of wishing to meet some of the re-
turned miners, so as to be able to verify
the wonderful tales told of the "ton of
gold" they brought with them and the
fabulous finds made in the placer mines
of Klondike. Fortune favored me, for |
found several of them were on our train
when | left for Vancouver, Englishmen
mostly, travelling to Halifax to take the
steamer for the old country.
While their stories of the richness Of
the icy land lying along the Ell Dorado
and Bonanza mines on the Klondike are
well known, some of the stories they
related were of particular interest to
"omen, and while enjoyed weighing
the precious golden nuggets in my hands
and the peep was allowed to take into
was interested in the stories l heard
Of the women who endure all the hard.
ships and privations incident TO a resi-
dence of years in Alaska in the newly
populated region.
Among our fellow passengers was
Captain Strickland of England, with his
wife AMI baby boy and the regulation
bag of dust and nuggets. l heard him
tell more than once the story of one of
the camps greatest heroines, Mrs. Clar-
ence Berry. whose husband sold out his
claim to Wall street brokers, after tax
ing out the snug sum of $3.50, 900, and
is now on his way with his wife to
their old home in Fresno, Cal, to live
in ease and aflluence the rest of their
lives Few thought who saw Mrs. Ber-
ry, and envied her what was called cher
luck, of the four long years she spent
in bleak cherries Klondike, when. in
stead of luxurious quarters at high
priced hostelry, she lived in squalid
shanty on slim and carefully boarded
grub stake" and helped keep the fires
| burning when the thermometer was 20
degrees below zero to partially tbaw
the frozen ground that her husband
might dig up few inches of the pre-
cious dirt How many women who envy
her would endure, or could endure, the
life at the winch" standing all day
long, raising the buckets as they were
laboriously filed, or would be willing to
go back to the days when she went each
morning in summer to the dump" to
get the "dirt" which she PANIED out at
her shanty?
My own heart ached for the little wo-
man who chung wildly to her husband
the day the steamer sailed from Seattle
to go to the PARKWAY frozen north,
probably never to return. The man was
only one of many others who was will
ing while the gold fever held him to
give up home and wife and little ones
on the chance of striking it rich" but
in the agony of the forsaken wife l read
fate worse than death and her feaI
and foreboding that their parting was
| forever.
But when the suffering in store fol
the hordes of onrushing fortune seekers
is known the world will be appalled,
That suffering has begun already fol
many the picture of that scene upon the
dock at Seattle is a narrowing and liv
ing proof. ALICE LEE MoQUE.