Now, it appeared, there was a favoured land somewhere beyond the subarctic mists where the treasure lay thickly on the ground waiting to be shovelled into club bags. In those drab years, when depression destroyed hope and men and women literally died in the gutters of starvation, gold was the rarest of prizes, to be hoarded in socks and sugar bowls by those who had lost faith in paper. For gold was a magic word in that dark and dreadful decade, which history has mislabeled the Gay Nineties. Before the Excelsior could turn north again, her agents had been forced to refuse tickets to ten times her passenger list.
In that moment of comprehension, the Klondike stampede began, not quietly or gradually, but instantaneously and with explosive force. And these men, who had been paupers a few months before - some driven nearly to suicide by despair - were now rich beyond their wildest fantasies. It dawned on the spellbound onlookers that this was not common baggage: that these suitcases, canvas sacks, old cartons and boxes were stuffed not with socks and shirts but with gold.
Down the gangplank they staggered, wrestling with luggage that seemed extraordinarily heavy - old leather grips bursting at the hinges, packing cases about to break apart, bulging valises, blanket rolls barely secured by straps and so heavy that it required two men to hoist each one to the dock. The buzz increased as it was noticed that their tattered clothing was still stained with the mud and clay of some far-off northern valley.Īn outlandish scene followed. A long line of men in miners' hats was clustered at the deck railing and now, as individual features began to emerge from the blur, it was seen that these were men aged beyond their years, gaunt and unshaven, their faces leathered by the sun but with eyes that glittered feverishly - picture-book prospectors, in fact.
Somewhere along that obscure waterway, so the rumours hinted, something electrifying had happened.Īs the ship drew closer, a murmur rose from the crowd. Michael, near the mouth of a river know as the Yukon. But what was it? Was there substance to those tantalizing whispers drifting out of the North? Was there treasure aboard the stubby little steamer, stained and rusty, puffing slowly toward the dockside? The Excelsior was nine days out of a distant port on the Bering Sea called St. Something was in the wind that July morning in 1897 the loungers waiting on the San Francisco wharf felt it.
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