The Saint Paul globe., 1900-04-29

counts for little more than poor one.
81 renewed my efforts to save a little
money A miser could not have saved
his pennies with more pinching economy
than l did the roll Of paper money that
1 carried secretly with me. l reached Sc
of gold crazed men, all talking Klondike
and Dawson City. Navigation to Alaska
would not open until the middle of April.
SO for a few weeks l earned enough
| money to provide my livelihood by work
ing in a sawmill. In April, l bought my
| Alaska camp outfit for $130, paid my fare
to Skaguay, and, along with some 10000
| men, all as wild as myself to get to the
new gold fields, 1 sailed northward on the
Portland.
"At Skaguay we encountered the worst
blizzard weather of the whole winter.
realized that my little $40 In cash and
my cheap, poor outfit were not adapted
to ones going to live In an Arctic mining
7 region, where he had to rustic for a liv-
| ing and prospect over an area of some
600 square miles for gold mine. I have
| had a whole lot of tough experiences and
fierce battles with poverty in my day, but
that was the bluest situation l ever faced
There was the Chilkoot pass, reaching
| away up some 1000 feet high, with miles
of snow and Ice, amid a temperature of
about five degrees blow zero, and that
was only a drop In the bucket to the
| hardships and distress that awaited a
klondike traveller between that point and
Dawson City. 1 stored my scanty camp
outfit and provisions in-the loft Of a mer-
chandise store, while I slept on the
| muddy floor of an alleged hotel, waiting
until the weather moderated enough for
me to climb over the Chilkoot pass with
my burden on my back. A fire broke out
| at Skaguay one night and burned all my
| camp outfit.
THE loss almost crazed me- OF course
1 could not go tramping $40 miles to the
| Klondike with nothing to eat and wear.
1 could not get back to Seattle with my
| paltry dollars 1 resolved to stay IN
Alaska and dc anything to live From
| May until August 1 did anything in Skag-
| uay to get living. In August, 1898, one
| of the deckhands on the steamer Bertha
| died on the way from Seattle to St.
| Michaels. 1 was at the wharf when the
| steamer put into Skaguay with the body.
| ] got the vacant job, and II seemed like
a Godsend My fortune dates from that
moment The Bertha reached st. Mich.
aels on Sept. 5, and left on its return trim
to Seattle on the 10th. Winter was draw.
| ing near, and the captain feared the boat
| might be caught in the early ice That
hastened the departure
| cat st. Michaels," continued Belding
Il heard two Swedish Lutheran mission
aries talking about discoveries of gold
that had just been made at Cape Nome
I kev. Mr.. Anderson, one of the mission
aries, had pint can OF gold nuggets that
| had been brought across Norton Bay tt
i st. Michaels direct from the new diggings
| The first mate on the Bertha was excited
| at the news, but he was bound by con
| tract to return to Seattle on the steamer
/ He gave me $500 as a grub stake and
| sailed away down the coast, leaving me
| in St. Michaels with Instructions to go
as soon as possible to Cape Nome and To-
| cate a claim for us, and then to camp on
| the property until he returned on the Ber-
| tha when navigation In the Behring sea
| opened the following spring.
| 81 lost no time in providing myself with
a tent, grub and fur clothes. The $500
| 1t made me a little Croesus IN that Esqui-
| mau whaling port of ST. Michaels, on the
| Alaskan coast. There were seven in our
| party that sailed across Norton sound to
| Cape Nome in September, 1898. Four OF
| the men had been gold prospecting for
| years all over the Yukon country and uL
| and down the Alaskan coast. Two were
| former Whalers and fishermen VINO had
been starved out of Dawson City ans
| were living at st. Michaels until they
| could earn enough money to pay passage
| down to Skaguay. 1t was bitterly cold
| when we reached Cape Nome 1 ha6
thought the most desolate, barren ano
| awful regions on the globe were those