The total length of the auriferous portions ot the creeks of the Klondike district is about llo miles, that is in the well-defined portions alone, to say nothing of the Kluane district, in the southern part where creeks known to carry gold extend over twenty-five miles. No man, .even if he had the eye ot a prophet, could foretell the future of that territory. In an earlier portion of my address I stated that in an inhospitable region in Russia, the Vologda district is to-day sustaining a population of over a million souls. t\ lien one realizes what tiiat means the imagination fails to grasp what the Yukon may be doing twenty-five or fiftv years from now. Mr. Joseph StcGillivrav, a hydraulic mining engineer of extensive'experience both in California and in tiie Yukon subnutted for the consideration of the Board ot Trade of Dawson, in 1004. a letter a portion of which I shall read. I am now trying to show the House that this countrv is'not a country of a day, that this gold is not going to peter out, so to speak, in a few months or years; I wish to impress on the House that m tiie Yukon we have a countrv that is not a country of to-day, but that with a little help at the present juncture it will be a country of a century and perhaps even more than that. Mr. McGillivray says
The following is an estimate of the amount of gravel on these white channel benches alone which measure about 27 miles in length with an
SVh, :'250 feet " Wi:lth 100 'feet " !hls ls a very conservative estimate of the depth, as these same benches on Bonanza Klondike and Hunker are much deeper than that, especially where they near the Klondike, l here a depth of 100 feet is attained. Taking this conservative average the estimate is * 27 miles 142,560 running feet. 1,250 feet wide' wl feet deep, 17,820,000,000 cubic feet The7f7=
cu'bfc'yards0 CUWC b3' 27 W°Uld sive 660,000,000
waTsh .^amount oV grav^- ' in WWch f°
grirvfd 777th? ,7me' not tLe amount of giatei, that I wish to impress on the House.
waterlt(e„e„^Tlme^t,hat 5'000 miners' inches of I (equalling 7,o00 cubic feet tier minute)
fafinnFQ°<S t0 w^ite channel by gravitation at a sufficient elevation to give a hvdraucienPcve oTwater 10°7et °r " ™ ' efflers° inch to everv '-Wal^ng should be one miners inch to every , cubic yards of gravel every
Mr. THOMPSON "
"4 hours. Each inch is equal to 11 cubic feet per minute. That is to say, 5,000 miners' inches or water washing 7 cubic yards to the inch ever} „4 hours would equal 35,000 cubic vards every 24 hours.
tlle summer mining season here is short, days is a liberal estimate of the lime in wmich to carry on such work. Thus 35,000 yards per day for 130 days would equal 4,550,000 yards each sep.son.
The time it would take to wash out these benches alone with 5,000 inches of water each season of 130 days, would therefore be 660.000,-)00 yards at 4,550,000 a year, 145 years and 70 1-7 days.
That is the estimate of the time it would take to wash out gravel benches near Dawson with 5,000 inches of water, something that we have not now and will not have for some time to come. One more quotation trom Mr. McGillivray :
I feel confident there is enough of pay gravel t0 ,asVfor tIle next hundred years at the rate it could be worked with the water system I have already described. When I say that the system could be put in for $3,000,000, I am stating an outside figure and one which would cover all the expense of installing the electric power plants. This might not be deemed advisable at the beginning of the enterprise ; the initial cost for simply bringing on the water to work ^grounds might possibly come under $2,-
He was discussing the water svstem then He proceeds :
h,lf„'.his government water supply system should be put m l see no reason why our annual output ol gold should not be increased to $50,000,000 annually, and kept at that amount for many 7,7s' an<J-what sueh a building up of this disilneatl t0 the rest of the Yukon and 77 wealth and prosperity of the whole Dom-mion, I need not point out.
I will not weary the House with any further reference to the extent of the gravels we have there. I just want to show the House now why Canada should help us in developing this vast territorv. We are all your own people and we are doing our best m the Yukon to build up Canada and to perpetuate the Canadian interests. We of us who are Canadians have upheld Canadian civilization, encouraged Canadian ideas and
vof, 7 £anadian trade- Let me inform you, Sir. Speaker, that we are not all Canadians m the Y'ukon Territory. A very large portion of our population conies front other countries ouiside our own. Canada has no better customer in the world per head today than the Yukon. I will show you how, ns I said before, we produce absolutely nothing but the gold. We have no manu-lactures ; we have no agricultural products. M e have to import everything and the people there live well. Every mail, woman and cWid who comes over the White Pass into the Yukon has to be clothed and fed and every man woman and child should he clothed and fed by our own Canadian manufacturers and producers. Is there any coun-
try in the world that Canada clothes and feeds ? To-day our people are scouring the world for new markets, establishing consular agencies, of which I quite approve and I only hope there may be more of them when right here at our own doors, within our own Dominion, we have a market, which, if encouraged will prove of greater benefit to Canada than any market in Brazil, the Indies or in the old country. To show you that I am not saying anything that is not an absolute fact I will read an extract from a statement prepared for me by Mr. Bain, of the Customs Department here, and by this extract I hope to show the House what the Yukon has bought from Canada within the last few years. I hold in my hand a 'statement of Canadian and foreign goods entering northern British Columbia and Yukon Territory, via the White Pass and Yukon route, during the fiscal year
1903-4.' I will not weary the House by reading over the different months, but I will give the total which will convey to the minds of hon. members what I wish to convey and that is that in 1903-4 the Yukon Territory bought from Canada $4,034,385 worth of goods. Remember this is not a bartering trade, but it is a trade for which we pay absolutely every dollar in cash and every dollar in gold at that. With other countries you have a bartering trade. It is not so with us ; you send your goods there and get tiie money. Is that not a market worth cultivating ? Here you have a territory right within our own Dominion-which will buy from you over $4,000,000 worth of goods per year and it does not cost yon a cent to establish a consular agency there. The people within the bounds of that Territory are only too glad to come here, to Montreal, to Toronto or to the great manufacturing and farming centres of Canada and buy their food and clothing. Every pair of shoes, every suit of clothes, every shirt, every hat, every overcoat, absolutely everything that we use to clothe our bodies and to feed them has to be imported into the Yuk-on. Nor does it stop there. Absolutely everything we use to work our mines we have to. import from the outside. In the early years of that Territory Canada did not get as much of the trade as she gets to-day, but due to the fact that the Customs Department have there a competent and efficient officer in the person of Mr. Busby, Canada and the Canadian manufacturers have, within the last turn or three years, received a very much greater percentage of that trade than they did in former years. In 1898 the Canadian people only received 7 per cent of the Yukon trade. Now, in the Yukon we buy SO cents in every dollars worth that we import into that country from Canada-eighty .per cent now as against seven per cent then, due very largely to the fact that we have there men -who are alive to the trade of Canada .and to .the fostering of that trade. We have to-day in Dawson
24 bonded customs warehouses and 5 inland revenue warehouses. Just one quotation more to show you what we have bought from Canada. There are no returns available previous to 1898 although we were .doing business there for two years before that time, but since 1S98 we have bought $13,976,000 worth and we have paid to the Canadian government in duties $3,412,980. These figures are from the Customs Department, they are absolutely correct and they speak for themselves. That is all I have to say upon the trade of Canada and the Yukon ex-cept to impress upon the House and the country that right here in our own Dominion we have a market that can be and should be supplied by our own people. Now I have finished.
