Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1898-12-23

fcve shall ever forget Christmas. Ii
was Dawson City's first. Dawson was
three months and half old. and had set
tied down to be n 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 within All of us who
made any strikes of gold at all had done
SO by October. so we were well 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 daylight in any day. Many
days. when the wind blew hardest-in
fact. it blows gale there all the winter
long. and snow and pellets of ice were
blown along-caudles were kept lighted
all day long. In winter. candles and
lamps were always lighted between l and
2 in the afternoon. The mercury ranged
from 36 degrees below zero to 90 degrees
below. SO we could not make satisfactory
headway even in the richest of the dig
gings. All through December about half
the miners used to spend days in loatng
about McCarthy's saloon at Dawson. The
other half puttered about their cabins,
dug little now and then, mended their
fur suits and made shoes from walrus
hide
AT McCarthy's sometimes $50 or more
men would gather around the roaring fire
md n strange scene it was. Imagine an
assemhlage of men in rough. barn-like
structure. furnished with board benches
md illuminated by dozen tlckering can
dies Some men are dressed in baggy gar
ments of fur. others in several coarse
heavy overcoats over heavy wooleI
clothes. All have caps of half-cured. sha 6
gy, rancd-smellng fur, so that only TIT
face appears. Every man has prodlg
ious growth of whiskers, sometimes 700
long. and hair that rea ches below the rim
of the caps and lies across the shoulders
"There were but dozen calendars II
all that region and very few men had an
idea of dGLes. Some did not even know
what month it was. One day, as we sa
at McCarthy's. some one suggested tina
Christmas was approaching and w
thought of observing the occasion.
week before Christmas we all agreed upo
a celebration, and, crude though 1t wat
we had day that none Of us will eve
forget 1t was more remarkable from tn
fact that there were in and about the III
tie hamlet of Dawson City over l,lO
x,sn No one earned less than SIG da!
ana the larger part had each risen froi
poverty to possessions worth several tho'
ss-d dollars in period of three month
I. suppose the combined wealth in actui
gold in the district then was nearly II
O00, 900, and a clear prospect of increasir
Il to twice or thrice that sum in anoth'
five months. ! don't believe that cor
munlty richer per capita has existed
this world than that was at Dawson Cit
Yet we had mockeCs Of civilization al
hardly any Of the comforts of life of i
of paupers.
EVERY or was informed on Dec.
OF the fact that next day would be Chris
mas. Some 800 Of us went down to NJ
Carthy's to celebrate the holiday. Oar
ness set In at that period at about 1:30
M, but we had become accustomed to &
20-hour nights. When II got along
about IL go p. m. we got our watches o
and waited. AT exactly u the signal W