Three Years in the Klondike (Illustrated) by Jeremiah Lynch

Author:Jeremiah Lynch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Americas, Canda, Post-Confederation
ISBN: 9788822830388
Publisher: Jeremiah Lynch
Published: 2016-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

At the end of a week I returned to Dawson, resolved to purchase the undeveloped mine at a reasonable figure. The owner, who had located it just a year before, at a cost of 15 dollars, readily sold it to me for a snug little fortune, and at once left the country. He had been there but a little over a year, and went back blithe and happy to New England, where waited his wife and children. He was one of the lucky ones. I sent a man—not a miner—up there with instructions to employ half a dozen miners. Meanwhile I reduced my affairs in Dawson daily, selling my goods and collecting my accounts. I had seen so many failures of mines in the country for lack of personal supervision that I was fixed in the resolve that, if this enterprise should prove a failure also, why, it should be the fault of the mine, but not of myself.

On May 1 I moved my simple belongings to Cheechaka Hill, and, selling my warehouse in Dawson, settled down to a miner’s life. It seemed at first quite pleasant. We worked about a dozen men, and built a warm dining-room, with an adjoining chamber for the cook and his wife, at the base of the hill, upon the margin of the frozen brook; a small addition as an office, with two bunks like those for steerage passengers on an Atlantic liner, served me very well. The men slept in an old cabin which came with the mine.

One day a ‘sour-dough’ (old-timer) was employed. They used to say that the genuine pioneer never undressed during the winter. In this case, at least, I cannot say, but I do aver that a committee of the miners waited on the foreman after the ‘sourdough’ had sojourned for a week in the sleeping-cabin, and demanded either his or their discharge—for they said the cabin was never asleep, and the new arrivals loved them so much that they accompanied the men even to the mine. The complaint being unusual, though the condition not unknown, the foreman thought it his duty to refer it to the owner. I felt that the miners were somewhat captious, for the ‘sour-dough’ only conformed to the ancient customs and regulations of the North before the ‘cheechakas’ came. Yet, as times change, I could not but acquiesce in their demand, so the ‘sour-dough’ was discharged and left, grumbling at the niceties of the ‘cheechakas.’ The sleeping-bunks and wooden walls were carefully fumigated, but just so soon as the weather permitted, the men left the structure and lived in small tents that they erected on the hillsides and in the valley.

As the summer advanced and the brilliant sunshine sparkled in the west later and later each evening, flowers appeared and grew luxuriantly with mushroom-like rapidity. Presently the hillsides were completely covered with purple and carmine, and one walked through Nature’s garden. Mingled with the daisies and honeysuckles, the violets and geraniums, were sweet grasses. These last made fine provender for the horses.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.