The San Francisco call., 1898-06-24

grims, foot sore, Sunburned and weary, arrived here tonight from a futile search for the golden fleece. They look more tanned and tough than the men who came up the Yukon River in the dead of winter. They came from Val dez and the Copper River country and are going home mo more to roam."
 They have had enough and to spare. The steamer Wilcott, which was char tered by the party, brought them down from Valdez. Copper City and Orca at an average expense of SIS each. Some have no more money, and must try to find work here before they can go a mile farther toward home. Accord ing to the stories told, the Valdez glacier, which must be scaled and crossed before getting into the Copper River Valley, is about the toughest stretch of scrambling that can be found in Alaska to pack outfits over. The Chilcoot summit is about as green and inviting as the Berkeley campus as compared with it. Several men, names not preserved, never got over, for the reason that they slid down into awful crevasses, black and bottomless. There were snowsEdes, too, in the spring, from which many were rescued, but not all, and again names are missing. E. w. Hoag, who published a newspa per fourteen years at Poplar Bluff, Missouri, near St. Louis, one of the energetic men of the party, said:
 We are coming back because we got tired, sick and disgusted. We were de- ceived, and l hope the truth will be told. Thirty of us who went up on the steamer Albion last spring were told at Portland that we could get over the glacier in two days and that it was easy work It is high time the news papers were given the facts about that country, so that they can be published. If there is any tougher territory on the face of the earth than you meet trying to get to and up the Copper River l would like to see it through the Lick telescope. It took a large party of men eight weeks to get thousand pounds of outfit fifty miles; everything must be packed over the glacier. Sleds cannot be used.
 About 2500 men succeeded in getting over the glacier and into the Copper River valley. Some of the cracks in the glacier are frightful-enough to turn a mans hair white to give them pass ing glance. There has been some sick ness and a few deaths from over eXer- tion and exposure. Nearly every man was rescued from the snow slides so far as known, but it is really impossi- ble to tell how many were caught in the snow. The current of Copper River is swifter than a mill race. It runs from ten to fifteen miles an hour. One hundred and seventy-five miles is the farthest any man got up the river. This party finally lost their outfits and returned nearly starved. I do not think a color of gold was found. There were reports that colers had been discovered, but nobody was able to find the man who made the discovery. It is a marshy country on each side of the river for miles and miles. Outfits can not be sold. They are not worth any thing. Many men have lost their out fits. are dead broke and stuck at Val dez unable to get home. The great majority of the three or four thousand men who have gone to Copper River are doing nothing now and don't know what they are going to do. Hundreds will not get back this season and must camp in this country through the win ter. Many finding no gold on Copper River will prospect the tributary streams, and others will try to work their way up the river and over the divide to the head waters of the Panama and into the Yukon country. The boats taken in are not suitable for navigat- ing the swift current of the upper river. You have to wade through marshy country up to the knees or hips before reaching the Copper River"
 "Is there any copper in the country?''
 No doubt about that" MT. Hoag exhibited a piece of very heavy copper ore which might also carry some gold. He said but few Indians are met with on the river and they are friendly.
 Since so many lives have been lost in White Horse Rapids and in the par ticulaTly swift places of the Lewis River before those rapids are reached the Canadian police have interested themselves to minimize the dangers. It is estimated that about forty persons have been drowned in the rapids and not less than sixty boats wrecked and outfits lost. Narrow escapes from death are even more numerous. The one corpse that was taken to Seattle a few days ago on the steamer Discov- cry is the second body that has been recovered. When once a man goes down in White Horse Rapids his body seldom comes to the surface. The po- lice have taken a hand in the super vision of boats constructed all along the river from the head of Lake Linder- mann to the foot of Lake Marsh. Many have tried to build boats with as much success as if they had at tempted to construct an auxiliary cruiser for service off the coast of Cuba. All shapes, kinds and conditions of things" have been produced with the whipsaw and hammer. Some of them hardly possess the common merit of wood on the water-the capacity to float They are the craziest, crankiest things imaginable Many have per- pendicular sides and are shaped like collins Others are modelled on the casket style. Some are mere cata- maran, and it is an exception when one of them rests steadily and we'll balanced in the water even when load ed. Klondikers by the score load these unstable craft to the gunwales, and climbing on top of the cargo of beans. bacon. baking powder, sugar and flour, start down toward the land of gold. ex- pecting to shoot in safety the White Horse Rapids, where the water runs so swiftly in the tortuous channel that its surface is convex, six inches higher in the middle than on the sides, boil ing, roaring, tumbling mass. The po- lice will now not allow any more of these kinds of boats to put out from shore. A catamaran is safer.
 The reported discovery of ground near Lake Teslin which went $500 to the pan is denied by parties who have recently arrived here from that lake