Skagway also had a crime problem. One of the chief criminals was a man named Jefferson Randolph Smith. He was better known as “Soapy” Smith. He did his best to take money from men who were on their way to seek gold.
One method he used seems funny, now. Soapy Smith had signs printed that said a person could send a telegram for five dollars. Many people paid the money to send telegrams to their families back home to say they had arrived safely in Skagway.
But they did not know that the telegraph office wires only went into the nearby forest. It was not a real telegraph office. It was a lie Soapy Smith used to take money from people who passed through Skagway.
Most of the gold seekers wanted to quickly travel to the area where gold had been discovered. However, the Canadian government required that each person had to bring enough supplies to last for one year if they wanted to cross the border into Canada. This was about nine hundred kilograms of supplies.
Each person had to bring food, tools, clothing, and everything else needed for one year. There were no stores in the Yukon. There was no place to buy food.
People who brought their supplies with them on the ship were lucky. Others had to buy their supplies in Skagway. They had to pay extremely high prices for everything they needed.
When they had gathered all the supplies, the gold seekers then faced the extremely hard trip into Canada. Their first problem was crossing over a huge mountain. They could cross the mountain in one of two places -- the White Pass and the Chilkoot Pass. Each gold seeker began by moving his supplies to the bottom of the mountain. Their progress to the mountain was painfully slow.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25