December 7, 1899] 



NATURE 



123 



rising from 50 in 1882 to 1000 in 1894, and to 1700 in 

 1896 — should for many years have been prospecting up 

 and down the Yukon from its mouth nearly to its sources 

 with only moderate success. This in itself was sufficient 

 to show that the riches of the land were neither unlimited 

 nor easily attained, and that most of the tyros in gold- 

 hunting who made their laborious march in the wake of 

 these men must do so in vain. According to Prof. 

 Heilprin, " probably not less than thirty-five thousand 

 to forty thousand people, possibly even considerably 

 more, have in the short period following the discovery of 

 gold in the Klondike region already passed to or beyond 

 the portals of what has not inaptly been designated 

 the New Eldorado. To some of these a fortune has 

 been born ; to many more a hope has been shattered 

 in disappointment." — And how could it be otherwise ? 



The sudden movement of this great army, made up of 

 units marching independently and without organisation, 

 with self-interest as the only motive, into the heart of a 

 wild land incapable of furnishing more than a very small 

 number with the barest elements of sustenance, de- 

 pendent therefore for their very existence upon supplies 

 from a base many hundreds of miles away, possesses 

 extreme interest to the student of economics and 

 sociology ; and perhaps the chief value of Prof. 

 Heilprin's book is that it contams the record of a certain 

 stage in the transient and unstable conditions which 

 arose under these circumstances. That within the space 

 of a few months this transplanted social mass should 

 ■.\ ith scarcely any disorder have struck root amid novel 

 and arduous surroundings, and by the play of individual 

 interest alone should have found itself provided with all 

 tiie actual necessaries, and many — indeed, too many — of 

 the luxuries of life (brooms and window-glass being, 

 according to Prof. Heilprin, the chief things lacking) 

 is, in its way, as remarkable an object-lesson as the cen- 

 tury has afforded. At no previous period in human 

 history could this have happened, and it is all the more 

 deserving of careful record. The flood of hazily in- 

 accurate or wilfully misleading information from the 

 newspaper press is past ; we have reached the second 

 stage at which, as in the volume before us, the under- 

 lying facts emerge ; and there will follow, no doubt, in 

 the fulness of time, the brightly coloured growth of fiction 

 which imaginative writers will cultivate for our enter- 

 tainment around the picturesque elements of the move- 

 ment when its sordid details are forgotten. 



As for the actual contents of Prof. Heilprin's book, it 

 aims to place before its reader the impressions of one 

 accustomed to exaniine critically and record accurately, 

 during a tour to the Klondike by the Upper Yukon 

 route, made under favourable circumstances between 

 the end of July and the middle of October of last 

 year. Prof. Heilprin went in from tide-water at Skaguay 

 by the White Pass to the head of inland navigation on 

 Lake Bennett in a day and a half, and came out, late in 

 the season, by the Chilkoot Pass in one day with com- 

 parative ease, and concludes that the difficulties of both 

 trails have been greatly exaggerated. 



" To a mountaineer or traveller of ordinary resource 

 neither the White Pass nor Chilkoot Pass will appear 

 other than it actually is— /.^. a mountain pass, sufficiently 

 NO. I 57 I, VOL. 61] 



rough and precipitous in places, and presenting no serious 

 obstacle to the passage of man, woman, or child" 

 (pp. 15-16). 



But he justly observes that what to a person in his own 

 circumstances seemed easy enough, both in these passes 

 and on the trails of the interior, might wear a very dif- 

 ferent aspect to the man struggling onward with a load 

 of 60 or 80 lbs. on his back In fact, all through the book 

 we realise that the impressions are those of one travel- 

 ling in ordinary tourist fashion, light and with sufficiency 

 of means, and that the prospector mentioned on p. 177, 

 " who was moving by slow stages, and without assistance 

 of any kind, an equipment weighing somewhat over 

 400 lbs." would have another tale to tell. 



However, with the completion of the railway in course 

 of construction on the White Pass route, the journey to 

 Dawson City becomes simply a matter of the payment of 

 fares. Already, we learn from the newspapers, the 

 journey from Vancouver to Dawson has been made in 

 so short a time as six days, while from eight to twelve 

 days is now ordinarily the length of the through trip. 



From Lake Bennett Prof. Heilprin went by river-boats 

 down the lakes and the Lewes or Upper Yukon River to 

 Dawson in 4^ days, reaching the last-mentioned place 

 on August 6. Here he took quarters in the recently 

 opened " foremost hotel of the land," paying 35 dollars 

 per week for his scantily furnished room, and 25 to 35 

 dollars per week more for board. He estimated the 

 number of inhabitants of the two-year old city at i6,ooo, 

 and this sudden concentration of humanity ahead of the 

 resources of the country had, necessarily, curious con- 

 sequences upon the relative values of merchandise. 

 Thus we read (p. loi), that chickens "earlier in the 

 season had sold for 100 dollars for three," but later 

 '•were obtainable at 10 dollars apiece" ; eggs were 2^^ 

 dollars per dozen ; radishes 75 cents a bunch of five 

 pieces, and so on ; while at the same time at the auction 

 rooms many articles could be bought for less than the 

 original outside cost (p. 104). But with regard to the 

 enhanced value of food-stufFs, it may be well to mention 

 that the Canadian Geological Surveyors, who were in 

 Dawson during the same summer, state in their report 

 that "it was found quite possible to purchase provisions 

 at retail prices at the stores, for the maintenance of a 

 party, at less than a dollar a day per man (Rep. Geol. 

 Survey of Canada for 1898, p. 62). 



That the conditions were peculiarly evanescent, and 

 with the establishment of Dawson City as a distributing 

 centre are not likely to be repeated in the district, 

 should make the fluctuations of the Dawson markets 

 during the last three years an instructive chapter in 

 economics. 



One notices at times in' Prof. Heilprin's book an un- 

 pleasant oblique mode of expression, not uncommon 

 in the literature of forty years ago, but now happily rare. 

 This is especially pronounced in the chapter on the 

 inhabitants of Dawson, as, for example, in the passages 

 describing " Sir ," " Count C ," the " professor- 

 doctor" and the "Gold Commissioner" (pp no— 112). 



The author notes that the number of blacklegs was 

 surprisingly small, and remarks on " the feeling of 

 security which every one seems to experience and enjoy." 

 This he ascribes in great measure to the efficiency of 



