CHAPTER XLIV

The two great commercial companies of the North to-day are the Northern Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company. The Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company were the first to be established on the Yukon, with headquarters at St. Michael, near the mouth of the river. In 1898 the Alaska Exploration Company established its station across the bay from St. Michael on the mainland; and during that year a number of other companies were located there, only two of which, however, proved to be of any permanency--the Empire Transportation Company and the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company.

In 1901 the Alaska Commercial, Empire Transportation, and Alaska Exploration companies formed a combination which operated under the names of the Northern Commercial Company and the Northern Navigation Company, the former being a trading and the latter a steamship company. Owing to certain conditions, the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company was unable to join the combination; and its properties, consisting principally of three steamers, together with four barges, were sold to the newly formed company. During the first year of the consolidation the North American Transportation and Trading Company worked in harmony with the Northern Navigation Company, Captain I. N. Hibberd, of San Francisco, having charge of the entire lower river fleet, with the exception of one or two small tramp boats.

By that time very fine combination passenger and freight boats were in operation, having been built at Unalaska and towed to St. Michael. In its trips up and down the river, each steamer towed one or two barges, the combined cargo of the steamer and tow being about eight hundred tons. It was impossible for a boat to make more than two round trips during the summer season, the average time required being fourteen days on the "up" trip and eight on the "down" for the better boats, and twenty and ten days respectively for inferior ones, without barges, which always added at least ten days to a trip.

After a year the North American Transportation and Trading Company withdrew from the combination and has since operated its own steamers.

Of all these companies the Alaska Commercial is the oldest, having been founded in 1868; it was the pioneer of American trading companies in Alaska, and was for twenty years the lessee of the Pribyloff seal rookeries. It had a small passenger and freight boat on the Yukon in 1869. The other companies owed their existence to the Klondike gold discoveries.

The two companies now operating on the Yukon have immense stores and warehouses at Dawson and St. Michael, and smaller ones at almost every post on the Yukon; while the N. C. Company, as it is commonly known, has establishments up many of the tributary rivers.

As picturesque as the Hudson Bay Company, and far more just and humane in their treatment of the Indians, the American companies have reason to be proud of their record in the far North. In 1886, when a large number of miners started for the Stewart River mines, the agent of the A. C. Company at St. Michael received advice from headquarters in San Francisco that an extra amount of provisions had been sent to him, to meet all possible demands that might be made upon him during the winter. He was further advised that the shipment was not made for the purpose of realizing profits beyond the regular schedule of prices already established, but for humane purposes entirely--to avoid any suffering that might occur, owing to the large increase in population. He was, therefore, directed to store the extra supplies as a reserve to meet the probable need, to dispose of the same to actual customers only and in such quantities as would enable him to relieve the necessities of each and every person that might apply. Excessive prices were prohibited, and instructions to supply all persons who might be in absolute poverty, free of charge, were plain and unmistakable.

Men of the highest character and address have been placed at the head of the various stations,--men with the business ability to successfully conduct the company's important interests and the social qualifications that would enable them to meet and entertain distinguished travellers through the wilderness in a manner creditable to the company. Tourists, by the way, who go to Alaska without providing themselves with clothes suitable for formal social functions are frequently embarrassed by the omission. Gentlemen may hasten to the company's store--which carries everything that men can use, from a toothpick to a steamboat--and array themselves in evening clothes, provided that they are not too fastidious concerning the fit and the style; but ladies might not be so fortunate. Nothing is too good for the people of Alaska, and when they offer hospitality to the stranger within their gates, they prefer to have him pay them the compliment of dressing appropriately to the occasion. If voyagers to Alaska will consider this advice they may spare themselves and their hosts in the Arctic Circle some unhappy moments.

Yukon summers are glorious. There is not an hour of darkness. A gentleman who came down from "the creeks" to call upon us did not reach our hotel until eleven o'clock. He remained until midnight, and the light in the parlor when he took his departure was as at eight o'clock of a June evening at home. The lights were not turned on while we were in Dawson; but it is another story in winter.

Clothes are not "blued" in Dawson. The first morning after our arrival I was summoned to a window to inspect a clothes-line.

"Will you look at those clothes! Did you ever see such whiteness in clothes before?"

I never had, and I promptly asked Miss Kinney what her laundress did to the clothes to make them look so white.

"I'm the laundress," said she, brusquely. "I come out here from Chicago to work, and I work. I was half dead, clerking in a store, when the Klondike craze come along and swept me off my feet. I struck Dawson broke. I went to work, and I've been at work ever since. I have cooks, and chambermaids, and laundresses; but it often happens that I have to be all three, besides landlady, at once. That's the way of the Klondike. Now, I must go and feed those malamute pups; that little yellow one is getting sassy."

She had almost escaped when I caught her sleeve and detained her.

"But the clothes--I asked you what makes them so white--"

"Don't you suppose," interrupted she, irascibly, "that I have too much work to do to fool around answering the questions of a cheechaco? I'm not travelling down the Yukon for fun!"

This was distinctly discouraging; but I had set out to learn what had made those clothes so white. Besides, I was beginning to perceive dimly that she was not so hard as she spoke herself to be; so I advised her that I should not release her sleeve until she had answered my question.

She burst into a kind of lawless laughter and threw her hand out at me.

"Oh, you! Well, there, then! I never saw your beat! There ain't a thing in them there clothes but soap-suds, renched out, and sunshine. We don't even have to rub clothes up here the way you have to in other places; and we never put in a _pinch_ of blueing. Two-three hours of sunshine makes 'em like snow."

"But how is it in winter?"

She laughed again.

"Oh, that's another matter. We bleach 'em out enough in summer so's it'll do for all winter. Let go my sleeve or you won't get any blueberries for lunch."

This threat had the desired effect. Surely no woman ever worked harder than Miss Kinney worked. At four o'clock in the mornings we heard her ordering maids and malamute puppies about; and at midnight, or later, her springing step might be heard as she made the final rounds, to make sure that all was well with her family.

We were greatly amused and somewhat embarrassed on the day of our arrival. We saw at a glance that the only vacant room was too small to receive our baggage.

"I'll fix that," said she, snapping her fingers. "I just gave a big room on the first floor to two young men. I'll make them exchange with you."

It was in vain that we protested.

"Now, you let me be!" she exclaimed; "I'll fix this. You're in the Klondike now, and you'll learn how white men can be. Young men don't take the best room and let women take the worst up here. If they come up here with that notion, they soon get it taken out of 'em--and I'm just the one to do it. Now, you let me be! They'll be tickled to death."

Whatever their state of mind may have been, the exchange was made; but when we endeavored to thank her, she snapped us up with:--

"Anybody'd know you never lived in a white country, or you wouldn't make such a fuss over such a little thing. We're used to doing things for other people _up here_," she added, scornfully.

Miss Kinney gave us many surprises during our stay, but at the last moment she gave us the greatest surprise of all. Just as our steamer was on the point of leaving, she came running down the gangway and straight to us. Her hands and arms were filled with large paper bags, which she began forcing upon us.

"There!" she said. "I've come to say good-by and bring you some fruit. I'd given you one of those malamute puppies if I could have spared him. Well, good-by and good luck!"

We were both so touched by this unexpected kindness in one who had taken so much pains to conceal every touch of tenderness in her nature, that we could not look at one another for some time; nor did it lessen our appreciation to remember how ceaselessly and how drudgingly Miss Kinney worked and the price she must have paid for those great bags of oranges, apples, and peaches--for freight rates are a hundred and forty dollars a ton on "perishables." It set a mist in our eyes every time we thought about it. It was our first taste of Arctic kindness; and, somehow, its flavor was different from that of other latitudes.

Dawson is gay socially, as it has always been. In summer the people are devoted to outdoor sports, which are enjoyed during the long evenings. There is a good club-house for athletic sports in winter, and the theatres are well patronized, although, in summer, plays commence at ten or ten-thirty and are not concluded before one. As in all English and Canadian towns, business is resumed at a late hour in the morning, making the hours of rest correspond in length to ours.

Two young Yale men who were travelling in our party had been longing to see a dance-hall,--a "real Klondike dance-hall,"--but they came in one midnight, their faces eloquent with disgust.

"We found a dance-hall _at last_," said one. "They hide their light under such bushels now that it takes a week to find one; the mounted police don't stand any foolishness. Then--think of a dance-hall running in broad daylight! No mystery, no glitter, no soft, rosy glamour--say, it made me yearn for bread and butter. Do you know where Miss Kinney keeps her bread jar and blueberries? Honestly, I don't know anything or any place that could cultivate a taste in a young man for sane and decent things like one of these dance-halls here. I never was so disappointed in my life. I can go to church _at home_; I didn't come to the Klondike for _that_. Why, the very music itself sounded about as lively as 'Come, Ye Disconsolate!' Come on, Billy; let's go to bed."

No one should visit Dawson without climbing, on a clear day, to the summit of the hill behind the town, which is called "the Dome." The view of the surrounding country from this point is magnificent. The course of the winding, widening Yukon may be traced for countless miles; the little creeks pour their tawny floods down into the Klondike before the longing eyes of the beholder; and faraway on the horizon faintly shine the snow-peaks that beautify almost every portion of the northern land.

The wagon roads leading from Dawson to the mining districts up the various creeks are a distinct surprise. They were built by the Dominion government and are said to be the best roads to be found in any mining district in the world. A Dawson man will brag about the roads, while modestly silent about the gold to which the roads lead.

"You must go up into the creeks, if only to see the roads," every man to whom one talks will presently say. "You can't beat 'em anywheres."

Claim staking in the Klondike is a serious matter. The mining is practically all placer, as yet, and a creek claim comprises an area two hundred and fifty feet along the creek and two thousand feet wide. This information was a shock to me. I had always supposed, vaguely, that a mining claim was a kind of farm, of anywhere from twenty to sixty acres; and to find it but little larger than the half of a city block was a chill to my enthusiasm. They explained, however, that the gravel filling a pan was but small in quantity, that it could be washed out in ten minutes, and that if every pan turned out but ten dollars, the results of a long day's work would not be bad.

Claims lying behind and above the ones that front on the creeks are called "hill" claims. They have the same length of frontage, but are only a thousand feet in width. In staking a claim, a post must be placed at each corner on the creek, with the names of the claim and owner and a general description of any features by which it may be identified; the locator must take out a free miner's license, costing seven dollars and a half, and file his claim at the mining recorder's office within ten days after staking. No one can stake more than one claim on a single creek, but he may hold all that he cares to acquire by purchase, and he may locate on other creeks. Development work to the amount of two hundred dollars must be done yearly for three years, or that amount paid to the mining recorder; this amount is increased to four hundred dollars with the fourth year. The locator must secure a certificate to the effect that the necessary amount of yearly work has been done, else the claim will be cancelled.