The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1898-12-24
XMAS IN KLONDIKE.
One Day Of Good Cheer During
Dreary Winter.
At so Degrees Below Zero, and While thu
Bitter Winds Were Roaring. Dawson
City Celebrated In . Crude
and Joyous Manner.

The December days and nights,
according to one of the miners who
came back from the Yukon diggings
with plenty of gold, are the most
trying of the year in the Klondike
region, especially at Christmas time.
"If I live to the age of Methusaleh, "
he says, II don't believe shall ever
forget Christmas. 1t was Dawson
City's first. Dawson City was three
months and half cid, and had set
tied down to be permanent town.
All the miners who had made good
locations had by this time housed
themselves in pine-board shanties.
A few had built shanty frames about
tents to secure greater warmth with
in. All of us who made any strikes
of gold at all had done so by Octo-
Der, SO we were we'll along with our
gold digging; but we could do less
in December than in any month in
the year. From the latter part of
November to early in January there
is only four hours of practical day
light in any day. Many days, when
the wind blew hardest-in fact, it
blows a gale there all the winter
long, and snow and pellets of ice
were blown along-candles were
kept lighted all day long. In winter,
candles and lamps were always
lighted between l and 2 in the after
noon. The mercury ranged from 26
degrees below zero to IS degrees
below. So we could not make sat-
isfactory Roadway even in the rich
est of the diggings. All through
December about half the miners
used to spend days in loafng about
McCarthy's saloon at Dawson. The
other half puttered about their
cabins, dug a little now and then,
mended their fur suits and made
shoes from walrus hide.
Sat McCarthy's sometimes $50 or
more men would gather around the
roaring fire and a strange scene it
was. Imagine an assemblage of men
in rough, barn-like structure, fur
nished with board benches, and
illuminated by a dozen Pickering
candles. Some men are dressed in
baggy garments of fur, others in
several coarse, heavy overcoats over
heavy wooden clothes. All have
caps of half-cured, shaggy, rancid
smelling fur, so that only the face
appears. Every man has prodig-
ious growth of whiskers, sometimes
a foot long, and hair that reaches
below the rim of the caps and lies
across the shoulders.
There were but dozen calen-
dars in all that region and very
few men had any idea of dates.
Some did not even know what
month it was. One day as we sat
at McCarthy's, some one suggested
that Christmas was approaching
and we thought of observing the
occasion. A week before Christmas
we all agreed upon celebration,
and, crude though it was, we had a
day that none of US will ever forget.
1t was more remarkable from the
fact that there were in and about
the little hamlet of Dawson City
over 1,lOO men. No one earned
less than SIG a day, and the larger
part had each risen from poverty
to possessions worth several thous-
and dollars in a period of three
months. l suppose the combined
wealth in actual gold in the district
then was nearly 100000, and a
clear prospect of increasing it to
twice or thrice that sum in another
five months. | don't believe that
a community richer per capita has
existed in this world than that was
at Dawson City. Yet we had a
mockery of civilization and hardly
any of the comforts of life of a lot
of paupers.
Every one was informed on
Dec. "a of the fact that next day
would be Christmas. Some 800 OF
us went down to McCarthy's to
celebrate the holiday. Darkness
set in at that period at about 1:3O
p. ~, but we had become accus.
toned tothe 2O-hour nights. When
it got along to about IL: 80 D. M,
we got our watches out and waited
AT exactly II the signal was given.
The whistle at Joe Ladne's sawmill