The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-19
ONE OF THE NEGUS PARTY
J. BOYLE OF NEJP HAVEN WRITES
 FROM ALASKA,


 Hunt for Gold-The Dangerous Work
 of Going Up the Rivers Many Men | Returning Home.
 l The following letter is from a New Haven man, J. Boyle, who is well re- membered here, he having been propri- etor of the grocery store at 124 Colum- bus avenue, which is now conducted by his son. MT. Boyle was one of the New Haven party who sailed from here on the schooner Negus last November for the Klondike region:
 1 Tyonic, Cooks Inlet, Alaska, June 23, 1S9S.-The tide of humanity which has been pouring into Cooks Inlet all summer long has finally reached the flood, and already the current has l turned and day by day grows broader and swifter The first to set the tide homeward bound are those who have come with scant outfits and little or no plans, and for practical work the ma- | jority belong to this class. The condi- | tions are so vastly different from what they were pictured in the newspaper re- ports thatnine cases in ten of those who have come here find that they have | improperly provided themselves either for living in the country or for pros pecting it. Even the most carefully laid and well regulated plans have fallen through, and company after | company have broke up, leaving their dredging and hydraulic machinery lay ing on the beach or selling 1t for next to nothing. The great majority have come prepared to prospect through the summer and return home in the fall, but when they arrived here and began to learn some of the facts about the country from some of the old timers l they find that there are only three months in the year during which suc- cessful prospecting can be done, and that is from the first of October until | the first of January. In the early summer they must wait about two | months for the snow to melt away, then another two months for that melt ed snow to run out, of the creeks so they can be travelled. Even if they could get into the interior sooner the water would be to high in the creeks to allow of prospecting. Absolutely nothing can be done here, or ever has been done, according to the old time miners report, except from the time the ground freezes until the snow is too deep to work through, but of course no one who is busy hurrying hither and thither to get their outfits ready and their passage secured on | ,c ,et ob +o after which there will be no earthly chance to secure passage on any boat CD. Such a crowd of busy, hopeful prospectors have no time to stop and think of a little bit of detail like this. | They know that the summers up here are fine and long and that the gold is here waiting to be washed out, and all they want is chance to get on the ground and they will find means to prospect, etc, etc. But just the same, 1t is the failure to keep close &C., count of these little details that has misled so many. And great Is the suf- fering from loss and disappointment. know personally of many cases of men who have mortgaged their homes, sold out lucrative businesses or made other great sacrifices in order to outfit them selves and get here, only to turn back and sell their outfits for enough money to get home on, after less than a months stay in the Inlet. Some have even gone back home without even getting off the boat they came on. Those returning home now are1 called towards, weak hearted, etc, but are they towards after all. What else can they do. They have miscalculated and are utterly unprepared for stay through the coming winter and in order to stay for the short prospecting season they must stay through the winter But some are showing less good sense and are staying and trying to get up the dangerous rivers at blind hazards The big Shushetna river IS the center of excitement now. It is a great Whirl- ing torrent ten miles across in places and narrowing down to rushing rapids at other places It leads back from the head of Cooks Inlet into the moun- | tains over toward the Copper river country, going through swampy val leys, winding around rolling hills and mountain peaks, splitting into thou sands of small tributaries and larger ! 1 shed to the north and northeast of Cooks Inlet like the Yukon river. The Shushetna is full of islands and shift ing sandbars. At this season of the year it is swelled to it's utmost and the banks are continually caving in, bring ing great spruce trees crashing into it's . swift current. As this drift goes down and passes through some narrow , channel, between two islands, it jams and shifts the current to another chan nel Bye and bye 1t will break loose and go tumbling down the river, carrying everything before it. There seems to be an underground current at places, for at times, where the stream is flowing along comparatively smooth, there vii suddenly burst up from the sandy bot tom roaring spring that sets the wa ter to boiling and swirling like the NJ agara river. These are the odds to be . met by those who go up the river now The method for ascending is for two men to walk along the beach or scram- ble along the preeipitous and marshy banks as the case may be, towing a small boat, while third sits in the boat and steers. The farthest up any '