Kolchak Eras
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Gold Rush in the Klondike
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Gold Rush in the Klondike
A Womans Journey in 1898-1899
Sale price
£17.99
Regular price
£23.99
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When Josephine Knowles left for the Klondike gold fields with her husband in 1898, she didnt know she would be facing a constant battle with cold, disease, malnutrition, and the ever-present possibility of death. With quiet determination, she resolved to survive, to endure each fresh hardship without complaint, and to be of service to the community around her. Gold Rush in the Klondike is Knowless true story of her year in the Yukon territory, a revealing, never-before-published personal memoir of day-to-day life at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Written in a clear, forthright, nineteenth-century style, Gold Rush in the Klondike presents terrifying struggles against a hostile environment, picturesque descriptions of an untouched Arctic wilderness, and Knowless keen observations of men and women on the frontier. A Victorian gentlewoman of refinement, Knowles found herself among swearing, whoring, sometimes violent miners, whom she won over with her grit and compassion. Deciding to never moralize or condemn, Knowles writes frankly of the intense hardships that drove miners into lives of drink and dissipation and the frontier women who were forced to make stark choices between prostitution and starvation. Knowless adventures include encounters with author Jack London (Knowles firmly disapproved of Londons cruel mistreatment of his sled dogs), nursing miners during a typhoid outbreak until she fell ill herself, witnessing savage fights among the miners, dangerous travel through the mountain passes and river rapids of the Yukon, and a daring surreptitious visit to a gambling saloon. Amid all hardships, Knowles formed warm relationships with the mining community, for, as she put it, All the diseases and other troubles had knitted us into one large family. Illustrated with period photographs, Gold Rush in the Klondike is an invaluable historical document of a lost time and place and an admirable portrait of one womans determination in the face of danger.
Josephine Knowles was born in Buffalo Prairie, Illinois, in 1864. She lived in Nebraska, Selma, California, and Oakland, California before her extraordinary year in the Klondike in 1898. She returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1899 and spent the rest of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was the grandmother of noted psychologist Muriel James, who edited Knowles' manuscript and wrote the foreword. Knowles died in Berkeley, California, in 1936, at the age of 71.
- ISBN-13
- 9781610352703
- Publisher
- Linden Publishing
- Imprint
- Linden Publishing
- Publication date
- 1 February 2016
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 176
- Dimensions
- 230 x 155 mm
- Illustrations
- 19 b/w photos & illus
- Language
- English
