There's misery in them thar hills
The depression of the 1890s was as bad as anything we have seen
this century. Working people were dying of hunger in the streets,
but the rich called the period the `Gay 90s' anyway. Then came an
unexpected vision of a glittering pile of wealth, to be had for
the taking. It generated a frenzy.
Gold was discovered in the Klondyke, in the north-western
wasteland of Canada, near the border with Alaska. Within a few
weeks of a newspaper report at the end of 1897, around 100,000
people were massing at the port of Seattle, hopelessly naive,
ready to try anything to get rich quick.
Channel 4's quite beautifully-made series, Secret History
(Mondays, 9 pm) told the story this week of the rush for gold to
one of the world's most inhospitable spots.
``Many would die, few would be rewarded, and no one had ever seen
anything like it,'' said the narrator.
The people who went had no idea what they were getting into.
``People thought you could dig gold up, with a trowel or a spade,
and become rich instantly,'' said one historian.
The first batch assumed that they would be able to buy provisions
along the trail; they starved to death. From then on, the
Canadian government insisted that every prospector carry a year's
supply of food, clothing and equipment, almost a ton of goods in
all.
By January 1998, thousands were on the high sea, headed north.
Their own frenzy provoked a similar reaction in the media; Jack
London went up to write a novel about it, William Randolph Hearst
sent six photographers, Thomas Edison headed up with his new
motion-picture machine, and there were dozens of reporters.
The first stop was the port of Skagway, which is a native
American word meaning `desperate place to be avoided'. From
there, they had to make their way to the epicentre of the gold
rush, the town of Dawson, some 600 miles away.
There were two ways to get there, the first was an ice-covered
track where hundreds of armed bandits lay in wait, systematically
robbing and murdering travellers. The second was safe from
thieves, but over a mountain pass known as the cruellest 32 miles
on the face of the earth. Most opted to take on the elements
rather than their fellow man.
Throughout January, thousands of prospectors huddled in tents at
the bottom of the mountain, in temperatures that reached 64
degrees below zero and in daylight that lasted only six or seven
hours. Each day, they would try to lug some of their ton of goods
some of the way up the mountain.
The trail was two feet wide, and the snow on each side was loose.
Those who slipped fell instantly to their deaths.
One man, Fred Dewey, wrote to some friends who had backed him
financially, supplying the equipment money: ``The work is slavery.
My feet are sore, my legs lame, my hands, neck and shoulders
chaffed from the rope. But boys, don't think I'm discouraged.
There is a golden glimmer in the distance.''
When spring began, friendly native Americans warned prospectors
on days they sensed from the weather that there would be
avalanches. Some listened, some didn't. The ones that didn't
often found themselves buried alive. In one afternoon avalanche,
70 people died.
Those that made it over the mountain believed the worst of their
journey was over; only 547 miles to go, by lake and river.
Again, they had two choices - head straight away across the
frozen lakes and hope the ice didn't melt, or wait a while until
the thaw, and ride the rapids.
In May, the ice finally melted, and 9,000 people tried their luck
with the rapids. A good number died, and many more lost their
makeshift boats, and everything on them, winding up wet, cold and
penniless on the riverbank.
By June, the throng made it to Dawson. In the first week, the
town's population grew from 500 to 12,000.
``By the end of the summer, 30,000 people jammed the streets. The
hotels, casinos, saloons and whorehouses were booming,'' according
to the programme.
The currency of the day was neither US dollars nor British empire
sterling, but gold, in bags.
But while the first few hundred prospectors were fabulously
wealthy, those that were just a week or two late could often not
find claims. They also discovered that those trowels were not
adequate for the job.
The Canadian historian Pierre Berton said: ``The gold lay 40 to 50
feet below the surface. And to get to that `paystreak', as they
called it, you had to go down through permafrost. Permafrost is
as hard as granite.''
They had to burn their way down, about a foot a day, and even
then most found nothing.
``It is all I can do to keep from giving up, but the bitter fact
is forced on me that I have no home to go back to,'' wrote William
Patterson, one unlucky man.
In August, typhoid came to town, and several hundred people were
dead within a few weeks.
Then, just before winter set in, news came of another gold find,
1,000 miles to the north, in Nome, Alaska.
The desperate and luckless would have another chance, and off
they went, in their thousands.
Preview
Radharc in Retrospect (RTE One, 11.05pm, Sunday 20 July)
continues to bring fascinating glimpses from the past filmed by
the Radharc team which was at the cutting edge of Irish
broadcasting in the 1960s. Last Sunday a film from 1971 showed
the squalid conditions endured by Irish potato harvesters in
Scotland. Next Sunday the emigrant theme continues with two films
from 1965 showing the arrival of Irish exiles (`Boat Train to
Euston'), and the lives of site workers (`Oldbury Camp').
By Michael Kennedy
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