The Floor of Heaven (41 page)

The elixir was an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was a scoop, actually, and an intrepid one to boot. The editors had received a tip that the steamer Portland had shipped off a month earlier from the old Alaskan port of St. Michael on the Bering Sea, and was bound for Seattle carrying an incredible cargo. It was filled with prospectors who had rushed to a remote gold field in the Yukon wilderness following a discovery by someone named George Carmack. They’d mined all winter and spring, and now they were loaded down with gold. So the newspaper had charted a tug to intercept the steamer. As soon as the Portland entered the sound, newsmen from the Post-Intelligencer were scrambling over the ship’s rails.

And what a story they found! Times were tough. America was still gripped by a depression. But here were men who less than a year ago had been broke and now were rich. They had gold jammed into their suitcases, in caribou-hide pokes, in jam jars, old tonic bottles, tomato cans, and bundled up in Indian blankets. Gold was stacked on deck, in the purser’s office, and piled high in cabins. The Portland was a treasure ship.

An extra edition of the Post-Intelligencer hit the Seattle streets before the Portland docked. The front page screamed in huge type:

But while the headline surely grabbed the reader’s attention, the opening sentence of the story that ran below was inspired. Beriah Brown wrote that the steamer carried “more than a ton of solid gold aboard.”

The reporter had miscalculated. When all the gold on the Portland was added up, the total was more than two tons. But “a ton of solid gold” proved sufficiently captivating. The phrase was telegraphed around the world.

In Spokane, Soapy read the report even before the Portland had headed into Seattle’s harbor. He took the night train and was part of the throng of five thousand people who crowded the waterfront as the steamer anchored at Schwabacher’s dock. It was pandemonium.

“Show us your gold!” screamed the crowd, and in response the miners lined along the boat’s rail happily raised suitcases and pokes high into the air. The crowd cheered. Soapy stared at the sea of excited faces all around him, people hot with visions of their own anticipated fortunes, and he was inspired.

He returned to the Owl in Spokane, but now he had no time for poker. That day he wrote to “Reverend” Bowers in Denver. “Call out the troops,” he announced, ordering Bowers to round up the old gang. He fired off another letter to a Denver police officer who had taken part in a few of his old swindles. Soapy hoped to persuade him to turn in his badge and sign on for the Big Scheme that would make them all rich. “You will know that there is a good chance for a good talker and a petrified man in Klondyke at this stage of the game,” he wrote. Bursting with his former confidence, he continued, “And if I didn’t say it myself, there ain’t any of them that can out-talk old Jeff. We’ll open up a real estate and mining office when we get there, and I’ll gamble and they’ll tumble like tired doves.”

Within days the boys started gathering around. They arrived from San Francisco, Denver, from all parts of the West as soon as they received the word. And as the reunited gang made preparations to head north, if any of them dared to mention their boss’s fervent pledge never, never to return to Alaska, Soapy would look them straight in the face. Then he’d earnestly remind them that the only promise a gambler keeps is his vow to break all his promises.

THIRTY-SIX

he stampede began. Just as George Carmack’s handful of gold nuggets deposited on the blower in a one-room wilderness saloon had ignited a dash to the Klondike by a passel of sourdoughs, the arrival of “a ton of gold” in Seattle created a worldwide frenzy. At a time when an economic depression continued to squeeze lives and cloud futures, the prospect of dipping a pan into a cool Yukon stream and—presto!—finding a fortune of bright yellow gold dust was an answered prayer. The Klondike suddenly loomed as an enchanted land, a fairy-tale world where wishes would be fulfilled—if one were bold enough to make the journey.

“Klondicitis,” as the New York Herald dubbed the phenomenon, gripped folks everywhere. A giddy mix of greed, a yearn for adventure, and wishful thinking, Klondicitis convinced people to abandon their old lives in a rash instant and confidently set off for the far north. “Klondike or bust!” pledged tens of thousands, the three words sealing an oath of allegiance to an intrepid fraternity. The lure of gold, people in all walks of life agreed, was too hypnotic to resist.

In Seattle, it was as if the city had been attacked by a devastating plague, so quickly did thousands of its citizens rush to escape. Streetcar service came to a halt as the operators walked away from their jobs. Policemen resigned. Barbers closed shops. Doctors left their patients. The Seattle Times lost nearly all its reporters. Even the mayor, W. D. Wood, boarded a steamer to Alaska, wiring his resignation from the ship rather than dallying to say his good-byes at city hall. “Seattle,” a New York Herald reporter observed, “has gone stark, staring mad on gold.”

In California, the Sacramento Valley fruit pickers decided they’d rather pluck gold nuggets from bedrock than oranges from trees. The gold fields near Jackson couldn’t keep their miners. At medical schools in Los Angeles and San Francisco, scores of members of the graduating classes announced plans to settle in the Yukon Valley. Those with jobs and those without jobs—people up and down the Pacific coast found a reason to race north.

All across the continent hopes soared. The day after headlines in the New York papers announced the arrival of the treasure ship, two thousand tickets to Alaska were sold. The following day, another twelve hundred people signed up. In Chicago, stockyard workers tossed off their bloodstained aprons and decided to become prospectors; the hunt for gold, they assumed without the slightest evidence, offered a chance at a better life than the gruesome, low-paying occupation with which they passed their days. “I have never seen such a change pass over the faces of people,” said Senator C. K. Davis of Minnesota in astonishment.

Throughout the world the time was right for great expectations; people who had nothing were willing to risk all they had. The century had seen previous gold rushes in California, Australia, and South Africa, but none had taken hold of people’s imaginations as immediately as this new stampede. Within months men and women were blithely crossing continents and oceans, bound for a rough wilderness of which they had no previous knowledge. Crammed boats sailed from Norway and Australia. A group of Greeks headed out from Jerusalem. Several hundred Italians made their way to California, an advance party, they promised, for thousands more. Three hundred Scots sailed to Montreal and then planned to cross Canada on foot. From England alone, the former prime minister of Canada Sir Charles Tupper estimated with a persuasive authority, 100,000 would-be prospectors set forth. All over the world the lust to become rich sparked glittering dreams.

The opportunity for adventure swayed brave hearts, too. The West had been tamed. The world was largely at peace. For those who craved excitement, an expedition to the far north appeared as a magnificent challenge. Winfield Scott Stratton, already blessed by the fortune he had made at Cripple Creek, outfitted two riverboats to sail up the Yukon. Brigadier General M. E. Carr, mired in a stultifying law practice after a dashing military career, gave it all up to rush to the gold fields. A. J. Balliot, once celebrated as Yale’s quarterback but now languishing in a downtown office, headed for Alaska. At a sprightly seventy-one, E. J. “Lucky” Baldwin, flush with millions from hotels and real estate, decided that this was his last chance to wring the most out of his days and joined the stampede. As champagne corks popped and an orchestra played, a clique of well-heeled English aristocrats gaily steamed across the Atlantic in a yacht. Like so many others on their way to the Yukon, they sought to live to the limit; they looked forward to facing up to dangers and returning home with tales of their triumphs.

In the feverish initial ten days, fifteen hundred people had left Seattle and nine more ships were busily boarding passengers. By August, the northwest coast shipping industry had pressed into service all manner of crafts, many of them of dubious seaworthiness, and twenty-eight hundred people would embark each week toward the Lynn Canal. As of September 1, nine thousand passengers and thirty-six thousand tons of freight had sailed off just from Seattle.

The coming of winter had little effect on the enthusiasm of people who had never experienced the far north’s penetrating cold or attempted to trudge over a snow-blocked mountain pass when the winds were howling and ice as hard as granite gripped the ground. In mid-August of 1897 a concerned U.S. secretary of the interior issued an official warning to those impetuous enough to set out at this late date. The Canadian minister of the interior released a similar advisory, urging travelers to wait until the spring. The newspapers offered their advice, too. “TIME TO CALL A HALT,” pleaded one headline. The accompanying article pointedly admonished: “There are but a few sane men who would deliberately set out to make an Arctic trip in the fall of the year, yet this is exactly what those who now set for the Klondike are doing.”

There was no way, though, to dissuade people whose convictions were firmly set. The stampede to the gold fields charged on. In that first winter, at least 100,000 pushed across the world toward the Yukon and another 1 million people made arrangements to go.

Only a few of these travelers, though, had a realistic appreciation of the struggles that awaited them. Most believed that the boats would be dropping them off at the gold fields. The geography of the north, including the long distances from the Alaskan port cities in American territory to the Klondike creeks in Canada, was ignored. And the will that would be required to complete this journey, an expedition over steep, snowcapped mountains furrowed with narrow trails and down twisting rivers with stretches of churning rapids, was not even pondered. The desire to get rich overwhelmed practical considerations. The fact that even after arriving in Alaska travelers would have no chance to reach the Klondike until the following summer—six long months away—did not enter their calculations. They just kept coming.

The shipping companies, pushed by their own strong greed, were happy to keep selling tickets. Glossing over the perils that awaited the travelers, captains crowded any boat that would float and set off on hazardous voyages through increasingly stormy autumnal waters. The Willamette, for example, was an old coal ship quickly converted into a passenger vessel by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. Once eight hundred men and women, as well as three hundred horses, were packed aboard, it sailed from Tacoma. The voyage was a torture. The dining area could hold only sixty-five people, so there were ten seatings on the first day. After that, the food ran out. The second-class hold was a dungeon; the dank, noxious stench of hundreds of bodies crowded into a small space carpeted with layers of coal dust proved nearly suffocating. Those in first class fared no better. Their quarters were directly below the tethered horses, and the animals’ excrement slid through the cracks of the deck planks and rained down on them. The only recourse was to spend the ten-day voyage jammed shoulder to shoulder on the open main deck, drenched by the cold, pelting rain that fell for the entire journey. On the Canadian steamer Amur, five hundred passengers, all promised and paying for separate berths, were shoved into accommodations designed for one hundred. A victimized traveler described the experience as “a floating bedlam … the Black Hole of Calcutta in an Arctic setting.” Other boats, like the Islander, were little more than floating brothels, their corridors sweet with perfume and long, snaking lines of men chugging from bottles of rye while waiting impatiently for their turn to be entertained. “Half-dressed—and often completely naked—women reeled about the passages … laughing, screaming or talking in a drunken babble. Others would dance obscene dances on the dining room tables, while their bullies and pimps took the hat around for subscriptions,” primly recalled one irritated passenger after his voyage.

Yet the conditions on these boats were only inconveniences when compared to the mishaps and disasters that plagued more unfortunate vessels. The steamer Bristol set off loaded down with so many passengers and horses that the first strong wind nearly turned the boat on its side and it was forced to creep back to port. The Nancy G. foundered on the Lynn Canal and then went up in flames. Despite a law prohibiting passenger travel on boats carrying explosives, when the dynamite in the hold of the Clara Nevada exploded, sixty-five people were killed. The City of Mexico struck Devil’s Rock, off Sitka, and sank. Overloaded and manned by an inexperienced crew, the Anderson listed to starboard, which caused her rudder to malfunction, and she smashed into the Glory of the Seas, a three-masted clipper, leaving both ships badly damaged. The sea voyage to Alaska was invariably a nasty, dangerous trip.

A flotilla of all manner of ships, however, continued to head north, and hordes of passengers continued to push and shove their way to the ticket windows. The most direct route was by steamer to the dismal, weather-beaten port of St. Michael, on the Bering Sea, about twenty-seven hundred miles from Seattle. Upon arrival, the traveler would transfer to a flat-bottomed riverboat for the sixteen-hundred-mile trip up the Yukon to the boomtown of Dawson. From there, it would be an arduous hike to the Klondike. Among alternatives that held only uncertainties and hardships, this was the least challenging route. Still, the icy Yukon was navigable for only four months, from mid-June to early September. For the flurry of gung ho stampeders (as the would-be prospectors rushing north came to be known) who shipped out during this first fall and winter, this route was not a possibility.

Then there was the Canadian route. From Edmonton, the trip would be a start-and-stop twenty-seven-hundred-mile journey over rutted wagon passes and nearly a dozen tricky rivers, often going against hard currents, that eventually led to Dawson. But this circuitous and demanding trail was also impassable for most of the year.