Текст на английском языке с переводом № 4.4

The Klondike Gold Rush

In late summer, 1896, a family of weary prospectors¹ was traveling through the inhospitable lands of Yukon, Canada. The region was famous for its harsh climate, poor infrastructure and very little else. Few rapidly decaying towns dotted² the landscape, their inhabitants making a living not from prospecting, but rather from trading skins and furs with indigenous³ tribes.

The family has stopped to rest on a bank of a small creek⁴, a tributary of Klondike River. As they were setting up a camp, they took a notice of a shiny rock glittering in the water. Exploring up and down the river revealed at least four large veins of gold, which George Carmack, the lead prospector, has claimed to himself and his family.

Next morning he had registered his claims⁵ at the police station, and the news spread with locals like a wildfire. The first discovery soon led to another, even larger vein. As it was a dead of winter by then, it went largely unnoticed by authorities and mainland prospectors. Locals, in turn, encouraged by stories about golden rivers and emboldened⁶ by the notion that native tribes saw no value in gold, went through extreme hardships to claim the best mining spots.

On July 15, 1897, two ships returned from Yukon to Seattle, bringing Klondike prospectors along with more than a 1,000,000$ (which, accounting for the inflation, roughly equals 1,000,000,000$ in 2020) of worth in gold. The story has caught the attention of the press, and soon almost 100,000 explorers stampeded⁷ to Klondike, eager to repeat the successes of the first prospectors. Most of these people had no experience in mining whatsoever, and many of them were unemployed earlier. Even if they didn’t want to go, they couldn’t just let the others have all the fame and riches. As the competition grew, the would-be-prospectors started to trade in claims instead of mining for actual gold. To accommodate a rush of explorers, Seattle was transformed into a major transport hub, which it still remains nowadays.

Getting to Klondike was an adventure in itself. Richer people could sail all the way to their destination, albeit the ticket price has risen a hundredfold over the course of the 3-year long rush. Travelling by land implied carrying over a ton of supplies to last through the year, bringing pack animals⁸, dogs, sleds and hiring various specialists that knew the land and would be able to care about animals.

Of 100,000 prospectors that answered the call of gold, only about 40,000 have actually reached Klondike, and only about 4000 of those became rich. By the time the vast majority of people had arrived into Dawson City, the last outpost of civilization near the mines, all of the major claims were mined out, and the remaining ones required some major investment to explore and gave a little guarantee of success. In 1898 first of the disillusioned (and often ruined) prospectors started to return home, and by 1899 the legend of fabulous Klondike died out as swiftly as it had begun mere three years before that.