Soapy Smith 
Pass for the Klondike. This city, as it was 
termed, consisted only of a single street with 
wooden houses or shacks built throughout its 
short length of perhaps a quarter of a mile. 
Goods from the wharf and steamers were loaded 
on a tram-line which traversed the centre of the 
street. The captain of my steamer had publicly 
warned his passengers to beware of a “ bad” 
man named “ Soapy ”’ Smith and his gang, as 
he was a notorious desperado and blackguard. 
He had been “fired out”? of Dawson City by 
the North-West Mounted Police, and had made 
Skagway, as it were, his own. The sobriquet 
of ‘‘ Soapy ” had been acquired in this way, not 
that he failed in any respect as to “ slickness,”’ 
but from the fact that when he was in Cali- 
fornia, where he was wanted badly for various 
swindling tricks, he was in the habit, when 
almost on his “‘ beam ends,” owing to lack of 
money, to have recourse to the following dodge 
to obtain it. He bought a bar of common yellow 
soap. This he cut up into tiny cubes, wrapping 
up each piece of soap in a two-dollar bill (or note), 
which were mostly counterfeits, and having then 
walked out with one or more of his confederates, 
he would, at some quiet corner of a street, 
collect a crowd and hawk these lumps of soap, 
and sell them for fifty cents each. Occasionally, 
as a draw, he would give a genuine “ greenback ”’ 
for his victim’s money, but in the vast majority 
197 
