Canadian Transport Sourcebook

Chapter XXI

A Prospector's Funeral on the Banks of the Yukon River

Years ago when I was camped a mile below what is now Dawson City, when the Arctic Summer with its monotonous daylight was about drawing to a close, a terrific thunderstorm came along one night; the wind blew a hurricane, shifted all around the compass many times, lashed the river into foam and snapped off the trees round the camp like carrots. The lightning was close to use and very vivid; the thunder roared and re-echoed again and again far away in the mountains. It was appalling, and the timid ones were almost induced to register a temporary vow to lead a better life in future.

A few days after these fireworks I was visited one evening by a huge giant, a typical prospector and as fine a specimen of a man as you could hope to come across in an ordinary lifetime. Handsome of face, bright-eyed, tall, straight-limbed, broad in the chest spare in the flank, this magnificent creature came crashing through the under-bush like a moose. After the manner of his kind he nodded at me, sat down, then slowly filled his pipe and proceeded to unburden himself of his tale of woe.

"Pardner," said he, "You ain't afraid of ghosts, be yer?" As it was considered infra dig in that country to be afraid of anything, I assured him that I was the proud possessor of unlimited courage, and had more nerve than I could conveniently pack.

"Well, Pardner, it's like this; I've brought a dead man down here to stay with yer awhile; I've got him in a boat; I've tied him up down under them bushes, and if yer don't mind I'll leave him there for a bit." I assured him that any friend of his was most welcome, dead or alive, but ventured to suggest that as the weather was still warm, perhaps a funeral would be appropriate. "Pardner, yer needn't be the least mite skeered. John will keep all right—why, he's guaranteed for thirty days." Then came the particulars of the tragedy. It appeared the deceased and my newly found friend were, as he remarked, "sort of side pardners" and were prospecting away up the Eldorado Gulch.

On the night of the big storm they were sleeping together under a sort of make-shift "lean-to," when a tree was blown down, instantly killing the young man by smashing in his skull. There was no help nearby and after cutting away the tree my giant discovered that the little "side Pardner" had done with prospecting in this world for ever. Taking him on his back, as he innocently observed (he always referred to the departed as "him"), he actually packed the body twenty-five miles down to Dawson.

"I had him in the Company's warehouse," he said simply, "till yesterday, but the Captain told me I had to take him away, as the orthorities won't allow him to stop in town."

I again suggested a funeral when the giant looked serious and explained his reason for delaying the final operation. It seemed that the dead man had a brother who was prospecting away up some distant creek, and he had been sent for, as they thought it the proper thing for him to officiate as chief mourner, so they decided to keep the late lamented above ground till the arrival of the brother. In addition, my friend was anxious to prove that there had been no foul play.

With these ideas, a number of old "sour dough" miners, with the aid of a retired tinsmith and many tomato tins, had actually managed to can him in a sort of home-made casket, so that he would keep. And there he was in the bottom of the boat that was moored to the bank, a bright shining object, a quiet, well behaved, and at present inoffensive neighbour.

"Good-night, pardner," said my visitor, and then look over his shoulder before he slowly disappeared into the bush, "keep an eye on him will yer? Yer see, some of the boys might take an notion to play a 'josh' on me and come and cut the line and let him go downstream."

Nothing happened for the next few days, and the faithful giant used to come down every morning and take a look at his silent armour-plated friend, till at last he came one day arrayed in all the trappings of woe, including a collar and an immense black necktie. He proudly announced that the brother had arrived, and the funeral was ordered for two o'clock that afternoon. The regular old miner dearly loves a funeral. To him it is an occasion not to be neglected.

The sad event is announced by crude notices posted on trees in conspicuous places, and the solemnity of the occasion is highly appreciated and most impressive. The virtues of the deceased are generally discussed in low tones and his many good qualities often exaggerated. On the day of this funeral I was formally invited to be present at the obsequies, but was obliged to decline. The giant prospector, who by this time I had christened "Gabriel Conroy," then suggested that I should send a couple of my men in canoes to follow the boat containing the canned gentleman, remarking quite pathetically, "I think, Pardner, that will make a kind of a nice little percession like, don't you?"

The ceremony came off exactly as planned and was a great success. I saw Gabriel once or twice afterwards, when he thanked me profusely for my share in the proceedings, which consisted principally in not being scared of ghosts, and taking care of him.

The heaven-born prospector, i.e., the genuine article, is the most hopeful and the most confident creature in the Universe. Failure simply whets his appetite and encourages him to seek fresh fields. The most appalling obstacles only increase his desire to penetrate the inaccessible on the merest chance of discovering the hiding place of the precious metal. Inured to hardships all his life and anticipating nothing better, he religiously follows his strange and varied calling without a murmur.

Theories born of long experience are constantly exploded, which makes no difference to him; he patiently plods along, working hard to discover the great secret of nature, living a hard life and often dying a hard death, "unwept, unhonoured and unsung." Once I asked Gabriel how it was that having prospected all over the Continent, he had never become rich. He quickly assured me that once he had discovered a mine in Colorado and "sold her for forty-seven thousand dollars cash." I wondered why he did not hang on to it and retire, to which he replied with childish innocence: "Well, pardner, I jest tell yer exactly how it is with us prospectors; the time I sold that there mine and got all that money, I thought I was a son of a gun, but I wanted to be a —— great big son of a gun, so I took that money and blowed it all in a quartz lode in Idaho, which warn't wuth a cuss, so I lose the whole pile."