m sure it had a very salutary
effect on the bad element, as it has shown them that nothing will be
left undone and no expense will be spared to prevent crime and bring the
guilty ones to justice." Starnes has a reference to the verdict of a
coroner's jury in the case of one Dr. Bettinger which indicates that he
thinks the jury "played safe." It appears that the doctor had started
from Dawson for the coast on foot and that he was not clad well enough
for such a trek. When he did not turn up at points he ought to have
reached, Inspector McDonnell was put on the trail and all the detachment
men along the river took up the search. In a few days the body of the
unfortunate man was found seven miles off the Yukon trail up the White
River. Inspector Wroughton, who was out on an inspection trip, held an
inquest in order to have the body properly identified, so that any
matters connected with the estate might not be confused. And this jury
concluded that the body was that of Dr. Joseph Bettinger and that the
said Bettinger "came to his death from some cause or causes unknown to
the jury, but are of the opinion that death was caused by exposure
during extreme cold weather." The opinion of the jury was no doubt
correct, though they expressed it with proverbial caution.

Starnes refers with proper sarcasm to the cases in which people imagine
the Police ought to save them from the results of their own
carelessness. He says, "There have been a number of sluice box robberies
on some of the creeks, and we have been fortunate in securing one or two
convictions, but in many instances it was impossible to find the
thieves. This class of crime is one of the hardest to detect, owing to a
great number of miners leaving their sluice boxes unprotected when there
is a lot of gold in them, and another reason being that it is impossible
to identify gold dust. We may have our suspicions in many cases, and in
some feel sure of our man to a moral certainty, but it is almost
impossible to prove the guilt unless we catch the man in the act. The
distances being so great, it is out of the question for us to place
guards on every claim, and the miners who wish to keep their gold must
take proper precautions. It would be just as well for a farmer in the
East to leave ten dollar bank notes in his stable yard with no one to
watch them, as to leave gold in the sluice boxes the way some of the
miners do." Starnes here hits at the all too common assumption of p