Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1898 — XMAS IN KLONDIKE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

XMAS IN KLONDIKE.

ONE DAY OF GOOD CHEER DURING A DREARY WINTER. At 50 Decrees Below Zero, and While the Bitter Winds Were Roaring. Dawson City' Celebrated in a Crude but Joyous Manner.

HE December days and nights, according to one of the miners who came back from the YujLT kon diggings with plenty of gold, are i w’F the most trying of the year in the Klondike region, especialk ly at Christmas time. “If I live to the age y of Methusaleh,” he says, “I don’t be-

Here I shall ever forget Christmas. It was Dawson City’s first. Dawson was three months and a half old, and had settled down to be a permanent town. All the miners who had made good locations had by this time housed themselves in pine-board shanties. A few had built shanty frames about tents to secure greater warmth within. All of us who made any strikes of gold at all had done so by October, so we were well along with our gold digging; but we could do less in December than in any month in the year. From the latter part of November to early in January there is only four hours of practical daylight in any day. Many days, when the wind blew hardest —in fact, it blows a gale there all the winter long, and snow and pellets of ice were blown along—candles were kept lighted all day long. In winter, candles and lamps were always lighted between 1 and 2in the afternoon. The mercury ranged from 26 degrees below zero to 65 degrees below. So we could not make satisfactory

headway even in the richest of the diggings. All through December about half the miners used to spend days in loafing about McCarthy’s saloon at Dawson. The other half puttered about their cabins, dug a little now and then, mended their fur suits and made shoes from walrus hide. “At McCarthy’s sometimes 150 or more men would gather around the roaring fire and a strange scene it was. Imagine an assemblage of men in a rough, barn-like structure, furnished with board benches, and illuminated by a dozen flickering candles. Some men are dressed in baggy garments of fur, others in several coarse, heavy overcoats over heavy woolen clothes. All have caps of half-cured, shag-

gy, rancid-smelling fur, so that only th» face appears. Every man has a prodig ions growth of whiskers, sometimes a foot long, and hair that reaches below the rim of the caps and lies across the shoulders. “There were but a dozen calendars in all that region and very few men had any idea of dates. Some did not even know what month it was. One day, as we sat at McCarthy’s, some one suggested that Christmas was approaching and we thought of observing the occasion. A week before Christmas we all agreed upon a celebration, and, crude though it was, we had a day that none of us will ever forget. It was more remarkable from the fact that there were in and about the little hamlet of Dawson City over 1,100 men. No one earned less than sl6 a day, and the larger part had each risen from poverty to possessions worth several thousand dollars in a period of three months. I suppose the combined wealth in actual gold in the district then was nearly sl,000,000, and a clear prospect of increasing it to twice or thrice that sum in another five months. I don’t believe that a community richer per capita has existed in this world than that was at Dawson City. Yet we had a mockery of civilization and hardly any of the comforts of life of a lot of paupers. “Every one was informed on Dec. 24 of the fact that next day would be Christ-’ mas. Some 300 of us went down to McCarthy’s to celebrate the holiday. Darkness set in at that period at about 1:30 p. m., but we had become accustomed to thq 20-hour nights. When it got along to about 11:50 p. m. we got our watches out and waited. At exactly 12 the signal was given. The whistle at Joe Ladue’s sawmill screeched for a half hour, an 4 over 300 shotguns, rifles and pistols were discharged, in volleys, singly, in quartets and in trios, for hours. Every one shook hands. Some danced about the room, and big, burly miners hugged one another, while ‘Merry Christmas’ was shouted again and again. It was the first time in the whole experience of the Klondike that we felt in sympathy with the outside world. “On Christmas morning we brushed np

a bit, and putting on our best rubber boots went and called on onr best friends in the mining cabins and settlements, and received our friends from the mining cabins scattered up and down the frozen creeks. “At 2 p. m., when the darkness was settling down in the valleys, several hundred miners met by agreement at McCarthy’s. It was the only building in Dawson that could comfortably hold a large assemblage of people. Mac had prepared a program of events for the day and we had each chipped in an ounce of dust toward defraying the expenses. The sawdust had been removed from the floor and a score of candles and lamps were arranged about the room. McCarthy himself wore a boiled shirt in honor of the occasion. On a broad board table along one wall of the room a luncheon had been arranged for the Christmas celebrators. For a half hour after arriving at Mac’s we were busy stamping snow from our rubber boots and walrus hide shoes. peeling off extra coverings and in general hand-shakings and more ‘Merry Christmasings.’ “ ‘Now, boys, fall right in and tickle your gizzards over there,* shouted Mac urbanely to the crowd. “There was room for only fifty to eat at a time, so while one squad was standing up and eating at the table, the rest were sitting about on the benches. We told stories of other Christmas days in other camps, talked about what the people down in the States were doing, wondered what had transpired since we last heard from there (five months before), wondered who wns dead, how election had gone, and what the people would say when we go back with our heaps of gold and stories of how rich we had struck it. "At last the last man in the crowd of Christmas celebrators had been to the' long table and had filled up on baked beans, fried pork and bacon, codfish balls, macaroni and coffee. Then Mac read the program and the entertainment proceeded. A dozen mon made speeches—a few of them genuinely humorous—appropriate to the occasion. ‘America’ and ‘Cod Save the Queen’ were sung and resung. The Norwegians and Swedes sang their national songs, and the sounds of the first Christmas celebration in the Klondike were carried on the wind down among the icy crags of the lonely, frozen Yukon. It must have been below 50 degrees below zero when we pulled our fur caps on and strapped our heavy garments about us i late that arctic night and went trudging home through the snow to our cabin* along the creeks.”