think of John Brown as a hero. We forget the outlaw and remember the
martyr. If he was setting the laws of men at defiance he was also
following the law that he felt was given him by God. His faith and his
simplicity have made him a great figure in history. A man who met him
riding across the plains of Kansas in the days of the border warfare
drew a vivid picture of him. He said that a tall man on horseback
stopped and asked him a question. "It was on a late July day, and in its
hottest hours. I had been idly watching a wagon and one horse toiling
slowly northward across the prairie, along the emigrant trail that had
been marked out by free-state men.... John Brown, whose name the young
and ardent had begun to conjure with and swear by, had been described to
me. So, as I heard the question, I looked up and met the full, strong
gaze of a pair of luminous, questioning eyes. Somehow I instinctively
knew this was John Brown, and with that name I replied.... It was a
long, rugged-featured face I saw. A tall, sinewy figure, too (he had
dismounted), five feet eleven, I estimated, with square shoulders,
narrow flank, sinewy and deep-chested. A frame full of nervous power,
but not impressing one especially with muscular vigor. The impression
left by the pose and the figure was that of reserve, endurance, and
quiet strength. The questioning voice-tones were mellow, magnetic, and
grave. On the weatherworn face was a stubby, short, gray beard.... This
figure,--unarmed, poorly clad, with coarse linen trousers tucked into
high, heavy cowhide boots, with heavy spurs on their heels, a cotton
shirt opened at the throat, a long torn linen duster, and a bewrayed
chip straw hat ... made up the outward garb and appearance of John Brown
when I first met him. In ten minutes his mounted figure disappeared over
the north horizon."
But John Brown had seized the government's arsenal, and put arms in the
hands of negro slaves, and therefore the law must take its course with
him. Its officers came to him where he lay on the floor of his fort, a
badly-wounded man, who had fought for fifty-five long hours, who had
seen two sons and eight of his comrades shot in the battle, and who felt
that his cause was lost.
When men who owned slaves asked the reason for his raid, he answered,
"You are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity and it would
be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free
those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage.... I pity the poor
in bondage that have none to help them. That is why I am here; not to
gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit."
A number of Virginians had been killed in the fight, and it was
difficult to secure a fair trial for the raiders. The state did its best
to hold the scales of justice even. The formal trial began on October
27, 1859. Friends from the North came to his aid, and a Massachusetts
lawyer acted as his counsel. John Brown heard the charges against him
lying on a straw pallet, and four days later he heard the jury declare
him guilty of treason. December 2, 1859, the sentence of the court was
carried out, and John Brown was hanged as a traitor. His last written
words were, "I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now
think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might
be done."
Every great cause in history has its martyrs, and John Brown was one of
those who were sacrificed in the battle for human freedom. Statesmen
had tried for years to argue away the wrongs that began when the first
African bondsmen were brought to the American colonies. Statesmen,
however, cannot change the views of men and women as to what is right
and wrong, and all the arguments in the world could not convince such
men as John Brown and his friends that one man had a right to the
possession of a fellow-creature. He struck his blow wildly, but its echo
rang in the ears of the North, and never ceased until the Civil War was
ended, and slavery wiped off the continent. The great negro orator,
Frederick Douglass, said twenty-two years later at Harper's Ferry, "If
John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did, at least,
begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and
men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina,
but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harper's Ferry and the arsenal,
not Major Anderson, but John Brown began the war that ended American
slavery, and made this a free republic.... When John Brown stretched
forth his arm the sky was cleared,--the armed hosts of freedom stood
face to face over the chasm of a broken Union, and the clash of arms was
at hand."
In the spring of 1861 the Boston Light Infantry went to Fort Warren in
Boston Harbor to drill. They formed a quartette to sing patriotic songs,
and some one wrote the verses that are known as "John Brown's Body,"
and set them to the music of an old camp-meeting tune. Regiment after
regiment heard the song and carried it with them into camp and battle.
So the spirit of the simple crusader went marching on through the war,
and his name was linked forever with the cause of freedom.
XII
AN ARCTIC EXPLORER
When Columbus sailed from Palos in 1492 he hoped to find a shorter
route to Cathay or China than any that was then known, and the great
explorers who followed after him had the same hope of such a discovery
in their minds. When men learned that instead of finding a short route
to China they had come upon two great continents that shared the Western
Ocean, they turned their thoughts to discovering what was known as
the Northwest Passage. They hoped to find a way by which ships might
sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean north of America. The
great English explorers in particular were eager to find such an ocean
route, and this search was the real beginning of the fur-trading around
Hudson's Bay, the cod-fishing of Newfoundland, and the whale-fishing of
Baffin Bay.
One sea-captain after another sailed across the Atlantic, and strove to
find the passage through the Arctic regions; but the world of snow and
ice defeated each of them. Some went back to report that there was no
Northwest Passage, and others were lost among the ice-floes and never
returned. Then in 1845 England decided to send a great expedition to
make another attempt, and put at the head of it Sir John Franklin, a
brave captain who had fought with Nelson and knew the sea in all its
variety. He sailed from England May 26, 1845, taking one hundred and
twenty-nine men in the two ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_. He carried
enough provisions to last him for three years. On July 26, 1845,
Franklin's two vessels were seen by the captain of a whaler, moored to
an iceberg in Baffin Bay. They were waiting for an opening in the middle
of an ice-pack, through which they might sail across the bay and enter
Lancaster Sound. They were never seen again, and the question of what
had happened to Sir John Franklin's party became one of the mysteries of
the age.
More than twenty ships, with crews of nearly two thousand officers and
men, at a cost of many millions of dollars, sought for Sir John Franklin
in the years between 1847 and 1853. One heroic explorer after another
sailed into the Arctic, crossed the ice-floes, and searched for some
trace of the missing men. But none could be found, and one after another
the explorers came back, their only report being that the ice had
swallowed all traces of the English captain and his vessels. At length
the last of the expeditions sent out by the English Government returned,
and the world decided that the mystery would never be solved. But brave
Lady Franklin, the wife of Sir John, urged still other men to seek for
news, and at last explorers found that all of Franklin's expedition had
perished in their search for the Northwest Passage.
Arctic explorers usually leave records telling the story of their
discoveries at different points along the road they follow. For a long
time after the fate of Franklin's party was known, men tried to find
records he might have left in cairns, or piles of stones through the
Arctic regions. Whale vessels sometimes brought news of such records,
but most of them proved to be idle yarns told by the whalers to surprise
their friends at home. One of these stories was that all the missing
records of Sir John Franklin were to be found in a cairn which was built
near Repulse Bay. This story was told so often that people came to
believe it was true, and some young Americans set out to make a search
of King William Land and try to find the cairn. The party sailed on the
whaler _Eothen_, and five men landed at Repulse Bay. The leader was
Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, of the United States Army. He had three
friends with him named Gilder, Klutschak, and Melms, and with them was
an Eskimo, who was known as Joe.
The young Americans set up a winter camp on Chesterfield Inlet, and
tried to live as much like the native Eskimos as possible. During the
winter they met many natives on their hunting-trips, and the latter soon
convinced them that they were on a wild-goose chase, and that the story
of the cairn was probably only a sailor's yarn. Lieutenant Schwatka,
however, was not the sort of man to return home without some results
from his trip, and so he made up his mind to go into the country where
Franklin's party had perished, hoping that he might find some record
which would throw light on the earlier explorer's travels.
The Eskimos were a race largely unknown to civilized men. White men
had seen much more of the native American Indians who lived in more
temperate climates. These young Americans found a great deal to interest
them during the winter among these strange people of the far North.
Hunting was their chief pursuit, and the Americans found that they spent
much of their time indoors playing a game called _Nu-glew-tar_, which
sharpened their quickness of eye and sureness of aim. It was a simple
sport; a small piece of bone, pierced with a row of small holes, was
hung from the roof of the hut by a rope of walrus hide, and a heavy
weight was fastened to the end of the bone to keep it from swinging. The
Eskimo players were each armed with a small sharp-pointed stick, and
each in turn would thrust his stick at the bone, trying to pierce one of
the holes. The prize was won by the player who pierced the bone and held
it fast with his stick.
As soon as spring opened Lieutenant Schwatka started out, leaving his
winter camp in April, 1879, and crossing in as straight a line as
possible to Montreal Island, near the mouth of the Black River. He took
with him twelve Eskimos, men, women, and children, and dogs to pull the
sledges. They carried food for one month only, intending to hunt during
the summer. Every night the Eskimos built snow huts, or igloos, in which
the party camped. As they went on they met men of another Arctic tribe,
the Ook-joo-liks, who wore shoes and gloves made of musk-ox skin, which
was covered with hair several inches long, and made the wearers look
more like bears than like men. One of these natives said that he had
seen a ship that had sunk off Adelaide Peninsula, and that he and his
friends had obtained such articles as spoons, knives, and plates from
the ship. Lieutenant Schwatka thought the ship was probably either the
_Erebus_ or the _Terror_. Later his party found an old woman who said
that when she had been on the southeast coast of King William Land not
many years before she had seen ten white men dragging a sledge with a
boat on it. Five of the white men put up a tent on the shore and five
stayed with the boat. Some men of the woman's tribe had killed seals and
given them to the white men; then the white men had left, and neither
she nor any of her tribe had seen them again. Asking questions of the
Eskimos he met, Lieutenant Schwatka and his comrades gradually pieced
together the story of what had happened to Franklin and his men. But the
American was not content with what he had learned in this way, and he
determined to cross Simpson Strait to King William Land, and search for
records there during the summer. This meant that he would have to spend
the summer on this bare and desolate island, as there would be no chance
to cross the strait until the cold weather of autumn should form new ice
for a bridge.
The Eskimos did everything they could to persuade him not to cross
to the island. They told him that in 1848 more than one hundred men
had perished of starvation there, and added that no one could find
sufficient food to keep them through the summer. Yet the fearless
soldier and his friends insisted on making the attempt, and some of the
Eskimos were daring enough to go with them.
It seemed doubtful whether they could even get across the strait. Every
few steps some man would sink into the ice-pack up to his waist and his
legs would dangle in slush without finding bottom. The sledges would
sink so that the dogs, floundering and scrambling, could not pull them.
The men had to push the dog-teams along, and after the first day's
travel they were all so exhausted that they had to rest the whole of
the next day before they could start on again. Finally they reached the
opposite shore of the strait, and, while the natives built igloos and
hunted, the Americans searched for records of Franklin's party. They
found enough traces to prove that the men who had sought the Northwest
Passage had spent some time on this desolate strip of land.
More than once they were in danger of starvation. In the spring the
Eskimos hunted wild ducks, which they found in remote stretches of
water. Their way of hunting was to steal up on a flock of the birds,
and, as soon as the ducks took alarm, to rush toward the largest bunch
of them. The hunter then threw his spear, made with three barbs of
different lengths, and caught the duck on the sharp central prong. The
long wooden shaft of the spear would keep the duck floating on the water
until the hunter could seize it. But as summer drew on, and the ducks
migrated, food grew very scarce. Once or twice they discovered bears,
which they shot, and when there was nothing else to eat they lived on a
small black berry that the Eskimos called _parawong_, which proved very
sustaining.
As the white men tramped day after day over the icy hillocks their
footwear wore out, and often walking became a torment. In telling of
their march Gilder said, "We were either wading through the hillside
torrents or lakes, which, frozen on the bottom, made the footing
exceedingly treacherous, or else with sealskin boots, soft by constant
wetting, painfully plodding over sharp stones set firmly in the ground
with the edges pointed up. Sometimes as a new method of injury, stepping
and slipping on flat stones, the unwary foot slid into a crevice that
seemingly wrenched it from the body."
When they had nothing else to eat the white men lived on the same
food as the native hunters. This was generally a tallow made from the
reindeer, and eaten with strips of reindeer meat. A dish of this, mixed
with seal-oil, was said to look like ice-cream and took the place of
that dessert with the Eskimos. Lieutenant Schwatka said, however, that
instead of tasting like ice-cream it reminded him more of locust,
sawdust and wild-honey.
As autumn drew on they made ready to cross back to the mainland; but it
took some time for the ice to form on the strait. Gilder said of their
camp life: "We eat quantities of reindeer tallow with our meat, probably
about half of our daily food. Breakfast is eaten raw and frozen, but we
generally have a warm meal in the evening. Fuel is hard to obtain and
now consists of a vine-like moss called _ik-shoot-ik_. Reindeer tallow
is used for a light. A small, flat stone serves for a candlestick, on
which a lump of tallow is placed close to a piece of fibrous moss called
_mun-ne_, which is used for a wick. The melting tallow runs down upon
the stone and is immediately absorbed by the moss. This makes a cheerful
and pleasant light, but is most exasperating to a hungry man as it
smells exactly like frying meat. Eating such quantities of tallow is a
great benefit in this climate, and we can easily see the effects of it
in the comfort with which we meet the cold."
As soon as the ice on the strait was frozen hard enough the reindeer
crossed it, and by the middle of October King William Land was
practically deserted. Then the Americans and Eskimos started back to the
mainland. Winter had now come, and the weather was intensely cold, often
ninety degrees below freezing. In December the traveling grew worse, and
food became so scarce that they had to stop day after day for hunting.
In January a blizzard struck their camp and lasted thirteen days; then
wolves prowled about them at night, and once actually killed four of
their dogs. "A sealskin full of blubber," said Gilder, "would have saved
many of our dogs; but we had none to spare for them, as we were reduced
to the point when we had to save it exclusively for lighting the igloos
at night. We could not use it to warm our igloos or to cook with. Our
meat had to be eaten cold--that is, frozen so solid that it had to be
sawed and then broken into convenient-sized lumps, which when first put
into the mouth were like stones. Sometimes, however, the snow was beaten
off the moss on the hillsides and enough was gathered to cook a meal."
When they were almost on the point of starvation a walrus was killed,
and supplied them with food to last until they got back to the nearest
Eskimo village. From the coast they took ship to the United States. The
records they brought with them practically completed the account of what
had happened to Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition. And almost
equally important were the new details they brought in regard to Eskimo
life, and the proof they gave that men of the temperate zone could pass
a year in the frozen land of the far north if they would live as the
natives did, and adapt themselves to the rigors of that climate.
XIII
THE STORY OF ALASKA
In the far northwestern corner of North America is a land that has had
few stirring scenes in its history. It is an enormous tract, close to
the Arctic Sea, and far from the busy cities of the United States.
Not until long after the English, French, and Spanish discoverers had
explored the country in the Temperate Zone did any European find Alaska.
Even when it was found it seemed to offer little but ice-fields and
desolate prairies, leading to wild mountain ranges that did not tempt
men to settle. Seal hunters came and went, but generally left the native
Indians in peace. Most of these hunters came from Siberia, for the
Russians were the first owners of this land.
An officer in the Russian Navy named Vitus Bering found the strait
that is called by his name in 1728. Some years later he was sent into
the Arctic Sea again by the Empress Anne of Russia to try to find the
wonderful country that Vasco de Gama had sought. He sailed in summer,
and after weathering heavy storms finally reached Kayak Island on St.
Elias Day, July 17, 1741, and named the great mountain peak in honor
of that saint. More storms followed, and soon afterward the brave
sailor was shipwrecked and drowned off the Comandorski Islands. His crew
managed to get back to Siberia, having lived on the meat of the seals
they were able to shoot. Russian traders saw the sealskins they brought
home, and sent out expeditions to obtain more furs. Some returned richly
laden, but others were lost in storms and never heard from. There was
so much danger in the hunting that it was not until 1783 that Russian
merchants actually established trading-posts in Alaska. Then a rich
merchant of Siberia named Gregory Shelikoff built a post on Kadiak
Island, and took into partnership with him a Russian named Alexander
Baranof. Baranof built a fort on an island named for him, some three
miles north of the present city of Sitka. The two men formed the Russian
American Fur Company, and Baranof became its manager in America.
One day a seal hunter came to Baranof at his fortress, and took from
his pocket a handful of nuggets and scales of gold. He held them out
to the Russian, and said that he knew where many more like them were
to be found. "Ivan," said Baranof, "I forbid you to seek for any more.
You must not say a word about this, or there will be trouble. If the
Americans or the English know that there is gold in these mountains we
will be ruined. They will rush in here by the thousands, and crowd us to
the wall." Baranof was a fur merchant, and did not want to see miners
flocking to his land, as his company was growing rich from the seals
and fur-trading with the natives.
Little by little, however, the news leaked out that the northwestern
country had rich minerals, and soon the King of Spain began to covet
some of that wealth for himself. The Spaniards claimed that they owned
all of the country that had not yet been mapped out, and they sent
an exploring party, under Perez, to make charts of the northwest.
Perez sailed along the coast, and finding two capes, named them Santa
Margarita and Santa Magdalena, but beyond that he did little to help the
cause of Spain. Some years later exploring parties were sent out from
Mexico, but they found that the wild ice-covered country was already
claimed by the Russians, and that the Czar had no intention of giving it
up. Other nations, therefore, soon ceased to claim it, and the Russian
hunters and traders were allowed to enjoy the country in peace.
Alexander Baranof made a great success of the trade in skins, but the
men who took his place were not equal to him. The company began to lose
money, and the Czar of Russia decided that the country was too far away
from his capital to be properly looked after. The United States finally
made an offer to buy the great territory from the Czar, although the
government at Washington was not very anxious to make the purchase.
The tract, large as it was, did not seem to promise much, and it was
almost as far from Washington as it was from St. Petersburg. The Czar
was quite willing to sell, however, and so the United States bought the
country from him in 1867, paying him $7,200,000 for it.
On a fine October afternoon in 1867 Sitka Bay saw the Stars and Stripes
flying from three United States war-ships, while the Russian Eagle waved
from the flagstaffs and houses in the small town. On the shore soldiers
of the two nations were drawn up in front of the old castle, and
officers stood waiting at the foot of the flagpole on the parade ground.
Then a gun was fired from one of the United States war-ships, and
instantly the Russian batteries returned the salute. A Russian officer
lowered his country's flag from the parade ground pole, and an American
pulled the Stars and Stripes to the peak. Guns boomed and regimental
bands played, and then the Russian troops saluted and left the fortress,
and the territory became part of the United States.
Up to that time the country had been known as Russian America, but now
a new name had to be found. Some suggested American Siberia, and others
the Zero Islands; but an American statesman, Charles Sumner, urged the
name of Alaska, a native word meaning "the Great Land," and this was the
name that was finally adopted.
It took many years to explore the western part of the United States, and
men who were in search of wealth in mines and forests did not have to
go as far as Alaska to find it. That bleak country was separated from
the United States by a long, stormy sea voyage on the Pacific, or a
tedious and difficult overland journey through Canada. Alaska might have
remained for years as little known as while Russia owned it had it not
been for a small party of men who set out to explore the Yukon and the
Klondike Rivers.
On June 16, 1897, a small ship called the _Excelsior_ sailed into San
Francisco Harbor, and half an hour after she had landed at her wharf the
news was spreading far and wide that gold had been discovered in large
quantities on the Klondike. Some of the men had gone out years before;
some only a few months earlier, but they all brought back fortunes.
Not one had left with less than $5,000 in gold, gathered in nuggets or
flakes, in tin cans, canvas bags, wooden boxes, or wrapped up in paper.
The cry of such sudden wealth was heard by many adventurers, and the old
days of 'Forty-Nine in California began over again when the wild rush
started north to the Klondike.