Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

170 HISTORY OF THE BANKthemselves wealthy overnight, as it were, had previously ledlives of privation and hardship, and it is not to be wonderedat that many lost their balance and were careless, ifonlyfor a short period, in such surroundings. Even shrewd andconservative easterners, in many cases, had their sense of thevalue of money utterly destroyed in a very short time. Twoyoung lawyers, whose signs had up till then been the onlyevidence of their practice in the east, made over twentythousand dollars in the first two months they practised as afirm in Dawson, and like the majority in such instances, theyfound it most unsettling.As already stated, the notes of the bank issued at Dawsonhad either "Yukon," or "Dawson," printed across them inheavy block type in various colours. The general public didnot grasp that this had been done as a precautionary measure,and assumed that it was a special issue carrying a complimentto the new country. When the notes were first paid out, itwas amusing to see groups of men in the streets passingone of them from hand to hand for inspection. By somethey were regarded as excellent souvenirs and a great manywere thus sent out in letters home. The compliment waseven paid the bank by one gambling hall of installing a completeset in a glass-covered case as a part of a novel bettinggame; but alas, this game either did not prove popular orprofitable, and disappeared after a very brief existence.After the arrival of the big rush from Lake Bennett thestreets of Dawson simply seethed with people day and night.Hovels of the queerest kind were hastily run up on the waterfrontand elsewhere, for use as shops and restaurants. Barsand dance pavilions were opened in tents. All nationalitieswere represented in the crowd; good nature was prevalent andeveryone expected, as a matter of course, to make a fortune.Unlike the population of earlier days in the Klondike, thecommunity now included a larger percentage of the criminaland depraved classes offscourings of the cities of the PacificCoast and elsewhere. Among them, as the official reports of