Читать книгу Trails and Tales in Cobalt - W. H. P. Jarvis - Страница 8

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The first day we went prospecting we travelled east along the concession line, and immediately we found that we were going down hill. On the brow of the decline the country rock outcropped very strongly, a fire which had passed over the locality not long previously having burnt away the moss. The district had been lumbered for its pine years ago. The roads cut in connection with these operations were grown up with second growth birches and poplars ten feet high. “There’s many a lumber-jack working for twelve or fifteen dollars a month, which was the going wage in them days,” said Pard, “who has fairly scratched some of these silver veins with the nails of his boots and never knew what he was up against.”

As the district had been lumbered the fires did not do so much damage, but early operations had only attacked the pine; the spruce and cedar were there in primeval state. This class of timber was now of much greater value than formerly, and the thought that it was an even chance that the fire which had done the damage that was seen by us had been set with the object of making the search for minerals more expeditious inspired the further thought that the discovery of a mining field had its drawbacks. Our conversation turned in this direction. “Yes,” said Pard, “these fellows will turn loose a fire and burn thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of timber if they think it will give them another chance in a hundred to make a find. I’ve seen it in the West where whole valleys in the mountains was cleaned out by fellows setting fires to help make discoveries.”

We came across some abandoned prospect holes in the barren diabase rock. What indication of minerals possibly existing in depth the fellows who had put down this hole had seen neither of us could guess. Among the prospectors in the country generally the feeling seemed to pervade that to be at work on a claim was sufficient to give possession, and possession meant a possible sale on speculative instincts. With my partner there was one universal standard, particularly in all matters pertaining to mining, and that was the “West.” “Things are different here,” he would say; “out West fellows wouldn’t disgrace themselves by staking claims without discovery as they do here. A fellow generally finds something out West before he makes a record.

“Prospecting here is different, too; these ledges and veins in this country absolutely don’t throw out any indications. There’s no float in this country owing to its being so new; that is, the time since the glacial period in these parts has been so short—about seven thousand years, so the geologists reckon—that the country has had no opportunity to wear down since then, with the consequence there is no float. In the West it is the float we all prospect by. Take any creek bottom in the mountains and have a look into the bed of it, and you’ll pretty soon be able to tell every kind of rock that creek travels through, and if there is any iron stain go after it, for there ain’t anything like iron as an indication of mineral, and the oldtimers have a saying, ‘Iron is the mother of all minerals.’ Out West, too, the country is heavier, generally, and you can get more rock in sight and see the stains, but here the country is flatter, and not only have the glaciers carried away the float, but they have planed down the country and cleaned off any iron or other stains. Of course, there is the cobalt bloom which has had time to make since the glaciers left, but it don’t travel far. Silver does not throw out any stain, only turns black, and what little iron is along with these veins does not seem to have stained up at all. So I guess if we want to find anything we have got simply to scratch till we do find it.”

We floundered through a good deal of swamp that day, which, of course, presented no scope for prospecting, but in the afternoon came across a few outcroppings of conglomerate rock. These points, projecting through the clay soil, were not of very great extent, and, of course, presented proportionately limited possibilities. We scooped out all open cracks we could find, and made a thorough search and turned our way homeward. On the way home we met some partridge, and Pard brought his revolver into play with highly satisfactory results, shooting two birds in the neck, an extremely hard thing to do with a revolver. We had a stew with the birds as chief constituent, while seasoning was accomplished by the addition of small squares of ham.  The glories of the autumnal day ended with our supper, and while I washed the dishes my partner busied himself with his axe. Birch he cut four feet long of substantial thickness and piled the sticks near the fire. He smoked deeply and was thinking. He piled the fire high with wood, and both of us lounged before it in our customary places.

The air with its stimulation, the firelight flickering against the adjacent trees with its loss in the depths of the forest, the peace and solitude of our position lent a weirdness to our atmosphere, while stomachs full of wholesome food and bodies tired by willing exertion gave us a perfect contentment, the whole constituting Autumn’s charm in the forest. We gazed in silence at the flames until my companion spoke.

“There are some things in heaven and earth that are not compassed by our philosophy, as Shakespeare says. Now, I don’t know exactly how far the scientists have gone towards forcing a show-down from Nature in regard to her illuminations in the northern heavens in winter nights—I mean the northern lights; but I do know I got mixed up among them in the mountains north of Dawson in the winter of ’98, and that my hair ain’t grey simply shows that I had got over being frightened before that time. Dawson then was short of grub, and fresh meat was a dollar and a dollar and a half a pound and mighty scarce at that. Even canned truck was scarce at any money. In the restaurants a meal of pork and beans cost two dollars and a half, and in the cabins and tents around a good many fellows had beans without pork. Well, a partner and me had a hunch where some meat could be killed back in the Rockies,^[1] at the head of Twelvemile, and we just naturally went there and made a slaughter—moose, of course. Well, we killed four or five and hauled their bodies into a heap as well as we could, and my partner stayed in camp to watch the meat while I toted part of it into town.

“Well, I got one load into town, and sold all right with the money in my pocket, and next day lit out back for camp. I had a good dog team, and I gave them a good licking all round at first excuse just to show I was boss, and so I made pretty good time. It had been pretty late in the day when I got things fixed in town and got my team hitched up, but this was as I wanted it, for we had a pretty good moon, which didn’t rise till about six, and I didn’t want to come to the hard part of the trail till the moon was up. So far as the daylight was concerned, it quit at four o’clock. About six o’clock I came to the last of the timber going up the valley of the Twelvemile, and I lit a fire and made a little tea. I made a supper off some bread and dried fruit. As I got up pretty well on the Twelvemile I edged off to the right, climbing the ridge that separated Twelvemile from the creek in which was our cache. As I got on the hog’s back the moon was shining mighty bright, and I saw the Rocky Mountains stretching away up along the Klondike River looking something splendid. Down in the valleys in the Yukon, when it gets cold a fog settles and you can’t see much of anything plain, but once you get above the fog, why there ain’t nothing on top of earth that looks so much as if it weren’t there at all as the Klondike atmosphere. Well, those mountains fairly stared at you, and I thought I could reach out and grab any one of them. Beside the bright moonlight I pretty soon noticed that the Aurora Borealis was doing business on a pretty extensive scale, and I stopped the dogs to take a look at it. Way off on the range towards the north-east, things were doing in big style, and pretty soon I noticed the performance was coming my way. At first it moved rather slow, but soon it flung out its banners quicker like, and pretty soon it was mighty interesting. The light was getting brighter all the time, and even the dogs began to take notice. In shape it looked nothing so much as a big eel with three or four tails, moving tails first, each tail being flung out in a different direction and lashing the heavens all around. On the blooming reptile came, and its sand-shifting noise grew into a roar. Pink, blue, green, orange—all the colors were there, extending from the heavens themselves down into the valleys below me. Down the hog’s back from the main range one of these tails, unwreathing itself and fairly dancing, came towards me. The dogs now took to howling, pointing their noses to the heavens and pouring forth the deep distress that seemed to move their souls. This, as you may suppose, kind of scared me more, but what’s the use? I couldn’t do anything. The hair on the dogs was now standing on end, and I guess mine was pretty near that way too, or would have been if my cap had not been there to hold it on. Have you ever seen a whirlwind playing down a road in summer, raising the dust and paper and stuff? Well, that was the way this here Aurora Borealis proposition struck me, only bigger. The first thing I knew I knew nothing, except that I kind of had a feeling I was going into the air, just as if there was a lot of iron in a fellow’s make-up and a big magnet hung over his head. Outside of that ten thousand rainbows was doing the grand roping act in a Wild West show, with me as the steer, while the howls from the dogs was as far ahead of the yells of the broncho busters as anything well could be; and as for the dogs themselves, they was sort of bucking like a broncho turned mean.

“The thing played for about five minutes, if a fellow is able to reckon time during such goings on, when I found I was out of it. Just then I got a clout on the side of the head and made a grab at what hit me. I missed, but the thing fell on the snow, and I reached down and picked it up. It was a ptarmigan, white as the snow itself, and as I heard a rushing noise come on again I took a good look into the air, and made out that thousands of ptarmigan were passing in a flock. Fellows who was over the ground next spring told me there was any number of the birds lying around, having evidently become blinded and killed themselves by pitching into the snow. Was the roaring noise I had heard all through from the lights? I don’t think so, at least not altogether. These birds, scared by thousands out of the snow in which they burrow, had a lot to do with it.

“All was soon still except an occasional whine from the dogs, and that strange feeling began to come over a fellow as when he thinks too much alone in the mountains, so I finally broke away and started again for camp. The last I saw of the display was a flare away off in the north-west towards the Forty Mile. The dogs acted as if I had given them the best licking they had ever got in their lives, and not one of them tried to chew his traces for the rest of the way home.”



[1]	Popular usage calls the range of mountains here indicated the “Rockies” though they are properly the Ogilvie Range.