DOWN THE RIVER TO NOME.
Two days later, Colonel Snow and the boys, accompanied by Swiftwater,
having taken leave of their new made friends at Dawson, embarked on a
small launch (a new importation from the States) and started on a leisure
trip down the Yukon, intending to use this means of river travel as far as
the military post at Fort Gibbon, at the mouth of the Tanana, up which
river Swiftwater was to proceed to the Fairbanks mining district, the
latest discovered and most important in Alaska.
Colonel Snow's plan was to drop down the river in the swift motor boat,
stopping at several army posts where he had friends, some of whom had come
up from Seattle with the party and had extended the hospitalities of the
various posts to them. They had left the crated aeroplane at Dawson with
other heavy baggage to come down on the large river steamer Amelia, which
was not due on its first trip up from St. Michael's for nearly a week, and
which would overtake them on its return trip down the river at Fort
Gibbon, another United States Army post.
The first stop of the party was to be at Eagle, a small, but prosperous
town, on the boundary line between Alaska and Yukon territory, containing
the most northerly custom house of the United States. Here they were to
"declare" the aeroplane and the property they were to bring back into the
United States and satisfy the customs authorities that it was all of
American manufacture, after which it would be examined and passed when the
"Amelia" came along. Adjoining the town of Eagle is the army post of Fort
Egbert, garrisoned by two companies of infantry, and here Colonel Snow
proposed to spend the night with his brother officers as their first
stopping place.
The distance from Dawson to Eagle is about 150 miles, but the high powered
launch they had secured with a crew of two, running down stream made
easily thirty miles an hour, and they expected to reach their destination
early in the afternoon.
"Colonel, if ye don't mind," said Swiftwater, "I'd like to stop off an
hour or so up at Forty-mile, jest above here."
"Certainly," replied the Colonel, "we're making first-class progress and
shall have plenty of time to reach Eagle before night. There's a wireless
station and a line of military telegraph to the coast at Eagle, and I
simply desire to get there early enough to get off some dispatches to
Washington before the post telegraph office closes."
"W-w-hat's 'Forty-mile?' I've heard of 'Forty-rod,' but never of
'Forty-mile,'" remarked Pepper flippantly.
"Wa-al," drawled the miner, "they was pretty near synon'mous, as you say,
when I first knew the place. Forty-mile is the only civilized place of
habitation between Dawson and Eagle. It's on the Yukon side of the river,
and is a trading station for the Forty-mile mining district, the first
real gold mining region opened up in this region. It was the scene of my
early triumphs as a 'sourdough' after I left the whaling business, and I
'mushed' into it in the winter along with Dowling, the great mail carrier
of this region, who carried the mail up the Yukon on the ice, with a dog
team, nine hundred miles between Dawson and Fort Gibbon once a month.
"I got a good paying claim on Forty-mile Creek and took out so much rich
gravel that winter that after I cleaned up in the spring I got an idea
that I didn't need any more, and sold out and hiked for the States. It
didn't last long, and I had to come back, but not up here. I thought I'd
like to stop for an hour or so and see if any of my old partners were
here."
There was little of interest at Forty-mile, except the big warehouses of
the trading companies, but they had dinner ashore, and Swiftwater managed
to find among the scanty population one or two of his old comrades, who
had given up the search for gold and were content to work for the trading
companies. A rapid but uneventful run during the afternoon brought them to
Eagle, where they were greeted with delight by the three hundred or more
citizens, and the few army officers, who, after welcoming the party,
carried the Colonel off to the barracks, the boys being quartered in the
only hotel of the place, run by the postmistress of the town, who had
formerly been a school teacher in the States, and who made the boys' stay
delightfully homelike.
Desiring to make Circle the next day, a distance of nearly two hundred
miles by the river, they left Eagle at an early hour after taking on board
a supply of fuel of a rather questionable character, for which they had to
pay a heavy price. The trading companies said that this was the second
launch that had visited Eagle and the demand for high-grade fuel was not
great.
"Say, boys, what is 'mush'?" asked Jack, suddenly, as they sped down the
river.
"C-c-cornmeal, salt and water, boiled," promptly spoke up Pepper, who was
the expert on most things edible.
"It's what we make de pone an' de hoecake of, honey," corrected Rand.
"I dunno," broke in Don, "but I hear it's some foolish substitute for
oatmeal porridge."
"My uncle feeds the chickens lots of it out on his farm," insisted Dick.
"Here, here," cried Jack, as soon as he could get in a word. "My mind
isn't constantly on the menu. It's queer how a young man's fancy
constantly turns to something to eat at any time of day. I'm talking of
some word that Swiftwater used yesterday, referring to Forty-mile."
"Better ask him," suggested Rand, "he's an awful good explainer."
The miner, who had been talking with Colonel Snow about the value of
Alaska mining investments in various districts, heard his name mentioned
and turned with a smile.
"What's Swiftwater's latest crime?" he asked.
"We wanted to know what you meant by the word 'mush' you used yesterday,"
said Jack.
"Oh, that means simply gettin' somewhere; jest walkin' which, I might say,
has been up to this time the chief means of communication in this big
Alaska. I don't know where the word come from, but it was here when I
arrived. I always supposed it was Eskimo. The whole Eskimo language,
before I learned it, used to sound to me like a mouthful of it. However, a
young feller who was up here some years ago, a newspaper man like you (he
was with a party of United States senators), gave me a new idea on the
matter. He showed me that the most of Alaska that wasn't forest and
mountain and rock was just a soft wet spongy mat of roots and grass and
moss that every step on it just pernounced the word."
"Ah, you mean McClain," exclaimed Colonel Snow. "I've read his work, and
it is the most lucid, modest, and understandable descriptive work on the
Alaskan country that has yet appeared."
The low grade fuel and inferior oil which they had taken aboard at Eagle
had its effect on the engine which showed signs of "laying down," as the
engineer said, several times during the day. Finally, after a peculiarly
vicious splutter the motor "backfired," setting the oil soaked dungarees
of the engineer aflame, and promptly "died." The engineer did not hesitate
with so much oil and gasoline around him, but went over the side into the
Yukon with one hand on the gunwale and, as soon as his burning clothing
was soaked, was helped aboard again by his companion.
It became absolutely necessary to clean the engine, and while one of the
boys kept the launch in the middle of the river as it drifted, with an
oar, the others rolled up their sleeves, and with the knowledge gained
from their aeroplane motors, aided the steersman to disconnect and clean
the machinery. Meantime the engineer arrayed himself in dry clothing.
"Well, well," said he, as he came out of the cabin, "I didn't know we had
a group of experts aboard. I supposed the aviator that went up yesterday
knew all about it, but this help will save us about an hour's time, and we
haven't been getting any too much speed out of her to-day."
The engine behaved excellently for the rest of the day, and about five
o'clock in the afternoon they landed at the town of Circle.
They found it a village of a couple of hundred, the supply point for the
Birch Creek mining region.
At an early hour the next morning they were again on the bosom of the
river, the engine having again been cleaned and "nursed" as the engineer
described it for the day. The river had begun to widen and the bank to
fall to almost a dead level just before reaching Circle the night before,
and they now entered upon a dreary expanse of tundra or flat marsh land
covered with a meager growth of willow and stunted birch. The river spread
out to a width of nearly a dozen miles, dividing into many channels
surrounding small bushy islands and rendering navigation very difficult.
The wheelman, who was an old river pilot, was thoroughly acquainted with
what he called the "Yukon flats," and managed to elude the sandbars and
sunken islands with considerable dexterity.
"The trouble is," he confided to Swiftwater, "that this old river is
closed six months in the year, and we never can tell whether we're goin'
to find any of it here when the ice goes out in the spring. It wanders
'round as if it had no home or mother, and where we find a twenty-foot
channel this fall there may be a dusty wagon road next spring."
At nine o'clock in the forenoon, Swiftwater rose and stepped onto the roof
of the cabin and scanned the far-off shore intently. Suddenly, he turned
to the interested Scouts, and removing his broad brim made a mock bow and
said impressively:
"Young fellows, let me welcome you to the Frigid Zone; we have just
crossed Arctic Circle."
"Wha--wha--where is it?" cried Pepper excitedly.
"Where's what?" asked Swiftwater.
"Th-the Circle."
"All in your imagination, if you'll remember back to your geography,"
replied the miner, with a smile, while the other boys who were slightly
awed by the new situation, for a moment, gave a hearty laugh.
"Don't appear to be very frigid, does it?" remarked the Colonel, and the
boys, who, for the first time, felt that they had really invaded the
"Terrible North" of the explorers, gazed with new interest on the lush
green meadows of the shores and the foliage of the tree-covered island.
They ran on down the river, and an hour later landed at Fort Yukon, an
abandoned military post, the most northerly point on the river, lying at
the mouth of the Porcupine, the Yukon's most important tributary.