Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1902 — ALONG THE YUKON. [ARTICLE]

ALONG THE YUKON.

A Rose Lawn Boy Describes His Experience in the Klondyke. MY FIRST STAMPEDE. I was cutting ice from the Yukon to melt for water for supper, when Dave came round the island, followed by “Bud,” and Cook, drawing a hand sled. They were bound for a reported quartz <edge some twenty miles below us “where the ledge is eighteen hundred feet wide, two hundred feet above the river, and don’t know how deep, and a mile long. A hundred million tone in sight that will run SIOO to the ton,” so Dave said. “Sounds big and we are going down to see what has caused all this talk; come along.” They stayed at our cabin over night and in the morning we started out with a sled on which were four blankets, some grub, an axe, a frying pan, etc. It was 18 degrees below zero and clear, an ideal day, for traveling. The trail was fine and later on the rising sun made the sky glorious. At noon we lunched at the ledge. Bud, our quartz man, examined the rock carefully, broke off several pieces, looked disgusted and said, “Wish I had this in lowa.” “What would you do with it?” asked Cook. “Make tombstones of it,” said he, “and it’s not much good even for that.” We went on down the river a few miles to where the steamer Sue Marie was laid up for the winter. Capt. Hursley, the head of the “Alaska Mammoth Lode Quartz Mining Association,” as the company who had staked the ledge called themselves, told us how they had written outside for stamp mills, etc., and had written hie friends to sell out their business at any sacrifice and come in. We ate supper here, tnen about eight turned in on the steamer’s deck,Jour of us to four blankets, to sleep. The thermometer shrunk down to 36 degrees below zero. We didn’t sleep well. Every little while my teeth chattered so loudly that the noise waked me up, then after a time I’d shiver myself to sleep again. Some time after midnight we got up and hugged the little atove in the galley, but the four of us couldn’t keep it warm! The Aurora was flue but some way its beauties didn’t appeal to us As eoon as there was light enought we started for our cabin, more than twenty miles up river. We made another careful examination of the ledge and took samples with us. We lunched here. In trying to take & drink of water from a tin cup it froze to my lips. We rested around the camp fire for a while then pulled for home. Cook, who weighed two hundred and twenty pounds gave out and Dave and I pulled him home on the eled. At night fall four, tired, hungry prospectors trailed into the cabin where we rested in peace while the “kid” filled us up with buckwheat cakes, ham and coffee. A careful assay of our samples failed to show a trace of gold. Later it developed that an Indiana man named Padgett had “salted” the quartz. The captain and his party re turned to the states in the spring, broken in spirits and purse, while the last we heard of Padgett, he was in the guard house at Rampart, a prisoner under the charge of “salting a claim ” A Prospector.