The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-02-12
BAD DAYS IN DAWSON
0ne-flalf the Men Are PennileSS and
the Rest H0meSick.
ALL HOSPITALS ARE FULL
FOOD SUPPLIES PLENTIFUL
BUT MONEY SCARCE.
BARRIERS and Restaurant Men Bewail-
ing Their Misfortunes-Stampedes
to New Gold Fields-Some Tales
of Misfortune to Deserving Min
ers-Gold Output For 1898.

This winter, the same as last winter,
the outside world is hearing more about
Dawson than Dawson is hearing about
the outside world, writes a cOrrespon-
/ dent Of the New York Press. We read
the Klondike Nugget and the Midnight
/ Sun for the gossip of the creeks and
! the camps, but, though we know of the
protocol, we do not know whether or
not a treaty Of peace has been signed.
The latest newspaper in town is of a
( September date. Our latest mail was
sent from Dyea in August. The postal
arrangements Of both the Canadian and
! the United States governments seem
| to have fallen through, and the pros
! pect is that while some of the winter S
mail may be brought through by dog
| teams later in the season, the bulk of
it will not reach Dawson until next
! spring. Any one who is sending an
! important letter to the Klondike ought
to intruSt it-along with the necessary
dollar-tO some Of the private messen-
gers going from Seattle or Victoria and
then duplicate his letter by post.
Not all the messengers viii reach
! here. The feet Of some of them, once
they have the dollar, become leaden.
Most of them, however, are reliable,
and in the course of the next month
we expect the arrival of numbers OF
men who have Travelled over the ice
from the outside. Never to the knowl
edge of the old-timers has the river
frozen so evenly as it has this winter.
A man just down from Pelly says that
from here to Fort Selkirk it is as level
as the Hudson. Beyond the Pelly for
twenty miles the cakes are piled up in
the regulation style. For this and
other reasons the incoming traveller
will have an easy time Of it compared
with last winter. The transportation
of food for men and dogs hitherto has
been the great obstacle. This winter
it can be bought at the police stations
along the route, and there is no need
of worrying about starvation once one
is in Dawson.
PLENTY OF FOOD; NO MONEY.
There is plenty of food here; the
difficulty is to get the money TO buy
it. What stories of distress are circu-
latinG on the outside it is impossible
to say. The fellows who are every
day starting out over the ice imagine
strange things during their long jour-
ney, and they tell remarkable lies when
they reach Seattle. Dawson has now
population of about 5000. There are
probably $4,000 men between Circle City
and Stewart river. More than half of
these are homeSick. a quarter of them
are too homesick to do effective work.
AlnOSI dS udly are pSllllIl6SS, anu DIT
least 1000, or one out of every fifteen
of the pilgrims of last summer, is fiat
on his back in his tent, his cabin, or
the hospital. The Drawer ones of the
detected and the pennilesS are going
out over the ice to SkagWay, whence
s. will give them a secOnd-class pas
sage to Seattle, where they may tele-
graph home for railway fare. But the
sick cannot go.
Both hospitals are full. The Cana
dian government is doing nothing in
the matter of relief. The leading citi-
zenS, mostly Americans, have eXpend-
ed nearly 100000 in charity. Canadian
physicians are overworked and earn
ing big incomes, although they do not
expect pay from more than half their
patients. American physicians are not
allowed to practice if they accept fees.
With their systems weakened by
their hardships on the passes and
poorly cooked food, the detection that
has followed their awakening to the
fact that there was no fortune wait
ing for them unless they could find it
has accelerated the ailments of men
who will be quite we'll as soon as they
see home and mother. Every day four
or five poor fellows are buried on the
hillside above the town, and so many
"pardnerS" have an unpleasant letter
to write friends and relatives. Probably
not one-fourth of the pilgrims have
gone to work for wages, which aver
age about 81 for day of eight hours.
1t is the men who secureed employ
ment as soon as they arrived and did
not hang about the river front waiting
to hear Of some big strike that are the
healthiest.
ROUNDUP OF THE DESTITUTE.