EARLY KLONDIKE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 689, 15 November 1933, Page 2

EARLY KLONDIKE

; sfiRRLN^ TIMES I U REMINISCENCES OF LIFE* IN THE NORTH OF FIFTY-THRER 1 • » ». C. . i t> . : • A SOURDOUGH OONVENTION. 1 - ■ • . 1 , ,{ ,f .. tyancp(avvei;,. ^eptem.bev, J74 The " Alaska and Yukon sourdoughs ; are .hqldinj^ their convention this yean in.. Caljfo.rnia, , as. a tribute , to J;hs Forty-Niners, pioneers of goid stam-i pedes, , Their rqminiscences , recall stirringi deeds .north of fifty-three. . ; '"With two friends, Happy Jack and Bill, the HorseJ: I-set out fr.om Gircie City for the Yukon," says Ross Moulton, who lives in retirement in this city. "Jack broke his false teeth'. Well, sir, that saime day, Bill the Horse shot a hear. (We skinned the bear, and Jack cemented its teeth;into his plate with copper rivets. Then he helped eat hear meat with the bear's own teeth." ! : _;They tell their.-. individuaUvexperiences in the famous disaster that took 63 lives on the Chilkoot Pass on Aprll 3, 1898,, in the midst of' the first stampeje. "The nigh.t .before, an Indian. warned me not to pack over," says George Driv.er. "His word was good e'nough for me, and it saved- my life. Fourteen, .in.ches of snow, fpll. in a few hours that night, and the top of the snow" froze.; We ♦ heard the avalanche and " went up there, and heard the people groaning under the snow, and started digging them out. I don't remember how ma,ny got out, but the fellow who wias digging the hardest was the husband of the woman caught in that snow slide, and sfte'd left him, several months before, back in Illinois." : * ■>. Rush for a Doctor. Elwood Brown—it was "Buster" Brown in those days — jwas born in Nom.e,. /'right on a bed of gold, too," he said.* "The night I .wias born we had .a iblizzard. . Had gqt word. to the famous Seotty, Allen to,feteh a doctor, and, the winner of the first All-Alaska Dog Derby made the tl:ree-mile trip with his teaimi in fifteen minutes. Rightunder the cabin where I was born they took , out 4,000,000 dollars in. gold. ... M!y dad owned. the cabin, but, no, he didn't own the mine under it." The girls who catered to the entertainment of the miners that followed the Trail of Ninety-eight contrihuted their share . of the reminiscences. Klondike Kate, who was known a& the Queen of the Yukon, and who went there fresh from a Southern convent. said she earned 750 dollars one night, "as easy ias falling off a lo.g." . A gentleman admirer bought 1500 dollars .worth of champagne, and her share for entertaining him was half that amount. The Nightingale of ihe Yukon, Beatrice Lorne, gave her testimony: — ''I was working at Monte Carlo; in Hawson City. One of my friends pointed out a miner who was giving nuggets to the .girls. I asked him for one. He turned up his nose. Hearing that he was a Scotsman, I went to th'e piano and siang 'Comin' Through the Rye.' Well, that Scots,man started to weep, and presently walked over and dumped 500 dollars worth of nuggets in my lap, and asked ,me to marry him. DidT aceept him? No! He wore squeaky hoots and they igot on my nerves!" The Cold of the Yukon. Business sessions of -the eonventi'on* were interpsersed with the prevaricators' lunch'eon and . annual . hall, at which the sourdoughs' anthem was sung:r-r-("Their hop.es and prayers are all with thee Northern Land, O Northern- Land." , The annual trophy awarded at th'e prevaricators' luncheon went to a prospecton who wound. up some "tall" comments on the cold of the Yukon. He said' he just saved his dogs and himself from freezing to death by yelling "Mush, Mush" to them when they were about to -give .in. • They reached the cabin, a-nd dared not move out for the whole winter. When, six months later, he opened the cabin door, he had to chase his dogs fifty miles down the river before he could round them up. "Those 'mush' orders I had yelled during winter had frozen and then thawed out and the dogs heard them as they came outside." The ■ newly-elected president, in his acceptance speech, said. "This organisation shall- continue to he a group of , real sourdoughs, without money, religion or politics."