Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1897 — FAMINE AT DAWSON. [ARTICLE]

FAMINE AT DAWSON.

FEAR OF STARVATION CAUSES DREAD ALARM. ' L_—— Officials on the Yukon Urge the People to Flee from Certain Buffering and Disease-Notice with Startling Words Is Posted.' Most Go or Die. Famine and starvation are threatening the people of the Yukon River between Minook Creek, Alaska, and Stewart River, Northwest Territory. There are over 1,000 persons in Dawson City without provisions. An equal number, including women and children, are lying in tents, and a heavy snow has fallen. Men are arriving at the rate of seventy-five a day, many of whom have less than half enough rations to last through the winter. Beans, flour, rice, bacon and other provisions are selling from $1.25 to $1.50 a pound. Jack Dalton of Juneau and one or two other stockmen arrived lately with a few hundred head of live stock and temporarily relieved the situation. Advices from Dawson City via Seattle say that no power on earth can prevent a famine. The people appreciate it to the fullest extent. Caches are being robbed nightly. One man was detected in the act of stealing food and was shot. He was driven to desperation by hunger. A dozen men have been arrested for robbing caches.

The gold commissioner could not get enough provisions to feed his office force and was compelled to send several clerks and assistants down to Fort Yukon, where 1,000 tons of food is stored. The winter has commenced. On the Alaska side of the Yukon River there are fully 3,500 people, and there is less than 1,200 tons of provisions to feed them. The Dominion police are sending scores of men down the river to Circle City and Fort Yukon to relieve the local situation. In Circle City a week or two ago two steamers, the P. B. Weare and the Bella, were stopped by thirty men armed with rifles and relieved of thirty tons of provisions. There is no concealing the true status of affairs. Before spring thousands of men and scores of women and children will be suffering from the pangs of hunger and disease. Provisions will be needed in February and March to prevent great suffering. The commercial companies are doing what they can to relieve the situation by equalizing the division'of food supply. Hundreds of men are in camp with a sack of flour each, forty pounds of bacon, twen-ty-five pounds of beans and five pounds of coffee to last until next June. No man can perform hard work on such meager food. The situation cannot be overdrawn or exaggerated. The Canadian authorities have issued bulletins urging the people to go to Fort Yukon for provisions. It is a sad prophecy to make that by May 1 hundreds of new graves will fill the little cemetery back of Dawson City, but it is being heard frequently. Hundreds of valuable claims which could not be bought a month ago for any price are now being traded for provisions, and men with any amount of property or money are sacrificing nearly all of their worldly possessions for food. Following is a notice posted in Dawson City by the Canadian mounted police: OFFICIAL WARNING—LEAVE DAWSON OR STARVE. The undersigned, officials of the Canadian Government, having carefully looked over the present distressing situation In regard to the supply of food for the winter, find that the stock on hand Is not sufficient to meet the wants of the people now at Dawson, and can only see one way out of the difficulty, and that Is an Immediate move down the river of all those who are now unsupplled to Fort Yukon, where there Is a large stock of provlatops. ; . , . ; Within a few days the river will he closed and the move must be made at once. It is absolutely hazardous to build hopes upon the arrival of boats. It Is almost beyond a possibility that any more food will come to this district. For those who have not laid In a winter’s supply to remain here any longer Is to court death from starvation, or at least a certainty of sickness from scurvy or other troubles. Starvation now stares every man In the face who Is waiting and hoping for outside relief. Little effort and trifling cost will place them in comfort and safety, within a few days, at Fort Yukon or other points below, where there are now large stocks of food. C. C. CONSTANTINE, Chief Mounted Police. D. W. DAVIS, Collector of Customs. THOMAS FAWCETT. Gold Commissioner.