The San Francisco call., 1898-07-04
.Eiqbteen Dawson MiDers
 Reach Sedttle Witb Fortunes.
CIeon-Up in the DiggiDgs !Ths Spring Will Yield Twenty
 Million Dollars.

this season begins.
 "A few days before left Dawson the Yukon rose suddenly until the principal streets of the city were water. This lasted for two days. The Gold Com missioner and his force of clerks were driven to the upper story of the build ing they occupied. The mounted police were driven out of their quarters by the high water and several stores lost something in the way of damaged goods The people went about in high topped boots or boats. Then the river fell again and traffic was resumed as usual.
 Late in May several boats contain ing new corners from the outside reached Dawson. They came at the rate of ten and twelve boats day for week or more. These people sledded their boats and outfits across Lake Le- barge and followed the ice out of the river. One man brought 300 or 400 papers containing accounts of the dis pute between this country and Spain. They sold like wildfire at from $1 to $5 each.
 "On an island above Circle City sev- eral steamers have gone aground. The Weare, Bella, Victoria and St. Michaels were stuck on dry land, but most of them had succeeded in getting off when we passed. The others had gone into winter quarters near Circle City and the ice pack had forced them up onto the beach. The receding waters left them high and dry on the bank. It is problematical whether they will get off uninjured or not. They will have to be blasted off with giant powder. The safes in Dawson are all full of gold left over from last year. There must be at least $5,000,000 in dust which was mined last season and which the companies could not send out on ac- count of the low water. In many cases the trading companies have refused to take the gold of the miners because they have no way to keep it. This con- dition resulted in the calling of a miners meeting in March to provide some way to care for the dust after it was taken out. Arrangements were made with the mounted police to store the dust in their barracks, where it will be under guard and perfectly safe.
 At Dawson, while there has been no starvation or food shortage, prices of all kinds of edibles are high. An ordi- nary meal at a restaurant costs $2 50. | The meal consists of piece of cariboo steak, some dried vegetables, bread, butter and coffee. These, with bacon and beans and canned goods, comprises the list of edibles in the camp. Of course it has grown very monotonous to the inhabitants of the camp. Scurvy is common not only in Dawson, but also in the diggings on the banks Of the gOld-bearing streams.
 Beside scurvy the miners are afflicted with typhoid fever and pneumonia. The only hospital in Dawson, conducted by the Catholic sisters, is full of patients all the time. It has a canacity of per- haps thirty people, and all the accom- .modations are taken. Victims of the diseases I have enumerated are dying at the rate of thre a day. AS yet how 4Ia hno hxy ha begun.
 ''On June the Catholic Church caught fire and was almost entirely de- stroyed. An exploding lamp caused the. confagration, which endangered the Catholic Hospital, it being located near the church"
 George Merwin and Michael Chris jensen, who left San Francisco a year ago, are glad to be among the return ing passenqers. They have been work ing on a lay on Bonanza Creek and claim to have made some good strikes.
 The story of the trip of the New England is full of interest. She left steamers Rock Island No. 1 and Rock Island No. 2. She laid up two days in a bay at Kodiak Island and six days in Chiquik Bay. Otherwise her passage as far as Boring Sea was made success fully and without delay. Some ice was encountered III beIlHS WdIeTS dIlu days delay caused. St. Michael was reached on June 21 without a stop hav- ing been made at Dutch Harbor All the ice went out of the Norton Sound on June 16 and the schooners Bartlett, Watson and Leeds came in shortly after Their trips from Seattle were uneventful The Alaska Commercial and Canadian Pacific companies river steamers had been completed and were awaiting the arrival of steamers with machinery.
 The officers of the tug were much surprised to find some thirty miners at St Michael who had in their hurry to get out of the country risked the trip down the Yukon in small boats. Eigh- teen of them, all the New England had room for, paid big prices to be brought to Seattle.
 About a days run out from Boring Sea the steamer St. Paul was seen rushing toward St. Michael. She was racing against the steamer Roanoke, which was rushing along at full speed dragging a river steamer in her wake The steamer Bertha also was passed in Boring Sea, as well as the steamer Rival with a river steamer in tow.
 The cutter Bear left Dutch Harbor on June 23 on her long trip to the relief of the imprisoned whalers in the Arctic, to whose rescue some of her officers have been working their way overland since last fall.
 ! The New England lowed the bark Guardian and the schooner Norman out of Dutch Harbor and started them through the pass on their way to Kotzebue sound. The United States gunboat Wheeling. the steamer Erik ham and freighter Leelanaw were lying at Dutch Harbor when the New Eng land left.