The writer has already had occasion to speak of the peculiar vein of humour discernible in the character of the North-Western placer-miner—a point which may be further illustrated by a reference to some of the tall tales" of the Yukon pioneers. As Mr. Ogilvie pointed out ip the report of his explorations in 1835, these men were, and are, great jokers and enjoyed nothing so much as taking advantage of a new-comer's ignorance o} country in order to stuff him up with a number of preposterous yarns. A few of these yarns would have made his pamphlet lighter reading than it is, but it is possible those told to him were either too blue or too purple to be set down in the black and white of an official print. A recent specimen of these stories is actually told of Mr. Ogilvie's medicine-chest, and is worth reproducing in the form it reached the writer. It appears that a party of prospectors at the mouth of the Stewart were anxious to keep a birthday in good style, but theca was no whiskey to be got—'*nary "rep!" So they filled a pan_with water, boiled it, and put th available store of sugar in it: and then one of them, who had in the meantime visited the explorer's cattle, emptied all the bottles of drugs in the explorer's medicine-chest into the bowl. 'When tasted *'twas none so bad," so concludes the anecdote—*' and we was all full when the stuff was done. But, by gosh! next morning most of us had ter'ble bad sins in the bellies. I mysel' could count nine different kinds of ache—nine being the exact number o' the bottles in Mr. O's med' a "animal story "a product of his wit aken jester's speciality is the
obviously invented for the benefit of the tenderfoot. Such are the innumerable tales told about the silver-tip (to judge from the narratives of Yukonites you cannot travel a mile without being attacked by a bear)—the story of the moose, who being Iasooed
certainly have yanked the hull outfit ni by the Suptain of river steamer, would the bank only the ole man's lasso parted—the romantic escape of the big horn who, having accidentally fallen down. a forty-feet shaft, leapt out on the approach of the claim owner, an' was seen no more round them diggins"—anl, best s, the story of the who was taught by his ingenious owner to hunt gold by scent, and, after making many rich strikes for his owner (who never had occasion to sink another prospect shaft!), was taken home to Tacoma, where he ran down a prominent preacher of Total Abstine"ce, who had secretly taken the Gold Cure the summer before.
Concerning the present stage of development, or rather arrested development of the Klondyke placers enough has already been said in the first article of this series and the conditions of life and labour in and around Dawson City are probably familiar by now to every reader of the newspapers. Accordingly the writer will confine himself to an attempt to answer the following questions—(1) What are the Region and (2) Isit.probable that other respects of reef-mining in the Klondyke
important discoveries of ''coarse gold" will be made in the Yukon district
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.