The Edmonton Trail

Another Story of Hardships From Old Time Miners
A Party of Four Reach Dawson In Rags and Minus Their Outfits After Fifteen Months on the Trail

Dawson Daily News, 23 August 1899

Another tale of hardship and suffering echoes from the Edmonton trail and this time it is not "tender feet" or "chechakoes" who suffered, but old time prospectors and backwoodsmen.

Chas Lascombe has been in the N.W.T. since 1879 and was for seven years a member of the N.W.M.P. His three companions, Alex Stewart, S. Givemen and S. Vanluben, were all hardy prospectors of long experience. The four had resided at Prince Albert and left that place May 27, 1898, bound for Dawson. They were fully equipped for a long journey with both food and clothing and they arrived at Dawson after nearly fifteen months travel literally in rags and with their few remaining belongings in packstraps. They made dozens of portages from one stream to another, built and abandoned boat after boat and rafts too numerous to mention, and after many months of privation and toil reaching the Clearwater river and went into camp. Their pack animals had long since been left to bleach their bones by the wayside and the long portages had to be double tripped time after time.

There was absolutely no game or fresh meat of any kind and that dreaded disease, scurvy, was only avoided by the copious use of "spruce tea."

Early this spring they resumed their journey and in the language of Mr. Lascombe, "saw the most welcome sight of our lives--the Yukon river," a few weeks ago.