THE CENSUS HEROES OF THE FROZEN NORTH
"This is surely one blazing day," said Hamilton one day early in June,
as after the noon hour, he settled back at his work on the punching
machine.
"We'll cool you off all right," responded the foreman, who was coming up
at the moment and heard the boy's remark, "for I understand they're
looking for editors on the Alaskan schedules. A big batch of them has
just arrived and I happen to know that your name has been recommended.
Mr. Cullern asked me to send you to him just as soon as you came in."
"I should like that above all things," Hamilton replied, "partly because
I've always been interested in Alaska, and also because this work has
got a little monotonous. I hadn't thought of the Alaskan census," he
continued, "and that's strange too; I should think census-taking up in
that country must have been full of excitement and adventure."
"Probably it was," responded his friend, "but you won't find any
thrilling yarns on the schedules; they'll be just like any other
schedules, I should imagine, only that the occupations will be of a
different variety. But you had better go along and see the chief."
Hamilton went gladly, thinking that no matter how formal the schedules
might be that dealt with Alaska they could not help but show to some
extent the character of the conditions in which they had been secured
and the difficulties attaching to work in that isolated land.
"How would you like to try your hand at the editing of the Alaska
schedules, Noble?" asked the chief of the division when the boy appeared
before him a few moments later.
"Very much indeed, Mr. Cullern," Hamilton replied.
"I understand that you have shown a great deal of interest in your work
while you have been here," the chief said, "and when I was asked
yesterday if I had any one to recommend I thought of you at once. Having
had experience in the manufactures end, as well as in the population,
ought to help you a good deal in the work. You were a special agent in
the manufactures, were you not?"
"Yes, sir," the boy answered, "but I don't think any of the places to
which I went resembled in any way the conditions in Alaska."
"Probably not," the chief said dryly, "New England isn't usually
considered in that light. But the underlying principles are the same, of
course, all the way through. Well, if you want to try it, here is your
chance."
"Very well, sir," Hamilton answered promptly. "I shall be glad to take
it up."
The boy waited a moment, but as there seemed nothing more to be said, he
walked back to his machine, to straighten up before leaving.
"As soon as you're through with that schedule," the foreman in charge of
the sub-section told him, "let me know, and then you can go to Mr.
Barnes, who is in charge of the Alaskan schedules."
"I've nearly finished," answered the boy, "I'll be done in a quarter of
an hour anyway."
Accordingly, a little later, Hamilton found his way to another part of
the building, where he met his new superior, a small, alert, nervous,
quick-spoken man, who, as Hamilton afterwards found out, had the
capacity of working at lightning speed, and then stopping and wanting to
talk at intervals. He said very little when Hamilton first came to him,
merely handing him a number of schedules to edit.
Hamilton watched him furtively several times and noted the amazing
rapidity of his work. Secretly he knew he could not attain that speed,
but he thought he had better make as good a showing as he could, and so
he, too, buckled to the job for all he was worth. When the boy had done
two or three schedules, each containing fifty names, Mr. Barnes reached
out for those that had been edited and went through them closely. He
made one or two corrections.
"That's not half bad, Noble," he said suddenly, "but I can see from one
or two little things you let go by that you are not entirely familiar
with that country. I'll tell you more about it later, but in the
meantime you had better look over some of the reports the supervisors
have sent in; they give you an insight into what those enumerators out
there had to go through in order to secure anything like complete
schedules. Here in one from the Fourth District, for example, there is a
graphic description of the work which I think you ought to enjoy. It's
good writing, too."
"My enumeration work was in Kentucky," said Hamilton, "so I haven't much
line on the conditions in the North. But I've always enjoyed books and
stories about Alaska, and I'd like to read the report."
"It will give you the atmosphere," said Barnes, "listen to this
paragraph, for example: 'The work was performed during the severest
winter known in this part of Alaska by the oldest settlers there. There
did not appear to be a man who did not have a pride in his work, an
anxiety to create a record for traveling time, a desire to enumerate all
the people in the district assigned to him, and to have to his credit
less loss of time because of weather than any of the other agents.'"
"I guess," said Hamilton, "that supervisor had those enumerators just
breaking their necks to beat out the other agents, and he worked on
their pride to get up their speed."
"'That the service lost none of its men from freezing to death, and that
every man returned safely, is a matter for congratulation and of good
fortune, from the fact that there were in this part of Alaska more
deaths from the weather this winter than all preceding years in total;
cases in which those who met such deaths did not begin to go through the
sacrifice and privation that these agents of the service did.'"
"Makes you proud to have been an enumerator, doesn't it?" asked the boy.
"But it always seems difficult to realize hardship unless you have been
there."
"I spent a winter in Alaska," said Barnes emphatically, "and I can feel
the thrill of it in every line. He knows what he's writing of, too, this
man. Hear how he describes it: 'All the men in the service,'" he
continued, "'covered hundreds of miles over the ice and snow, in weather
ranging from 30 to 70 degrees below zero, the average temperature
probably being about 40 below. Because of the absolute lack of beaten
trails--' I wonder," he broke off, "if any one who hasn't been there can
grasp what it means!"
Hamilton waited.
"No beaten trail," Barnes said reminiscently, "means where stunted
willows emphasize by their starved and shivering appearance the nearness
of the timber; where the snow-drifts, each with its little feather of
drifting snow sheering from its crest, are heaped high; where the snow
underfoot is unbroken; where under snow-filled skies a wind studded
with needle-sharp ice crystals blows a perfect gale; where the lonely
and frozen desolation is peopled only by the haunting shape of fear that
next morning a wan and feeble sun may find you staggering still blindly
on, hopelessly lost, or fallen beside a drift where the winter's snows
must melt before your fate is known."
He stopped abruptly and went on with his schedule. Hamilton worked on in
silence. Presently, as though there had been no pause, Barnes resumed
his quotation from the supervisor's report:
"'Because of the absolute lack of beaten trails, and the fact that the
snow lies so loosely on the ground like so much salt, no matter what its
depth may be, it was necessary through all their work to snow-shoe ahead
of the dog-teams. When one considers their isolation,--often traveling
for days without other shelter than a tent and fur robes--it can be
understood what sacrifices some of these men made to visit far-away
prospectors' cabins and claims. However, no man who travels in this part
of the country ever considers that there is any hardship, unless there
is loss of life, and they take their work stoically and good-naturedly,
though they drop in their tracks at the end of the day.'"
He tossed over the report to Hamilton.
"Look it over," he said. "I tell you there's some stirring stuff in
that, and just the bald reports of the enumerators' trips leave the
stories of explorers in the shade."
The boy took up the report as he was bidden, and read it with avidity.
Presently, upon a boyish exclamation, the other spoke:
"What's that one you've struck?"
"It's the enumerator from the district of Chandler," answered Hamilton.
"Go ahead and read it aloud," Barnes said, "I can go on with these
schedules just as well while you do."
"'At no time after he left Fairbanks,'" read the boy, "'did the
thermometer get above 30 degrees below zero. His long journey away from
a base of supplies made it impossible for him to carry a sufficient
supply of grub, and he was obliged to live off the country, killing
moose, mountain sheep, and other fresh meat. He froze portions of his
face several times, and on one occasion dropped into six feet of open
water, nearly losing his life in consequence.'"
"That would be fearful," said Barnes, "unless he could pitch camp right
there, put up a tent, build a fire, and change into dry clothing."
"There seems to have been mighty little wood for that up there,"
Hamilton remarked, "because, speaking of this same enumerator, the
supervisor says, further on, 'In crossing the Arctic Range and in
returning he traveled above timber line eighteen hours in both
directions, which, in a country where fire is a necessity, can be
understood is a very considerable sacrifice. He traveled in many places
where a white man had never been before, and as there are no beaten
trails or government roads in the district anywhere, he was obliged,
everywhere, to snow-shoe ahead of his team to beat down a trail.'"
"Did you ever snow-shoe?" asked Barnes abruptly.
"Once," answered Hamilton, "when I went to Canada to visit some cousins;
they had a snow-shoe tramp and insisted on my coming along. But I was
stiff for a week."
"Well," said the editor, "when you try to break trail and have to keep
ahead of a dog-team coming along at a fair clip, it's just about the
hardest kind of work there is."
"They all seem to have had their own troubles," said Hamilton, who had
been glancing down the pages of the report: "here's the next chap, who
got caught in a blizzard while accompanying the mail carrier, and if it
hadn't been for the fact that the people of the nearest settlement knew
that the mail carrier was expected on that day and sent out a rescue
party to search for him, neither of the two men would ever have been
found, and the census would have lost a man."
"That was up in the Tanana region, wasn't it?" queried Barnes, but
without looking up from his work.
"Yes," answered the boy, "and from all accounts that must be a wild part
of the country. Speaking of that same enumerator, the supervisor says:
'That this agent survived the work during the stormy period and came
back alive was the wonder of the older inhabitants of the country. No
less than four times this man was found by other travelers in an
exhausted condition, not far from complete collapse, and assisted to a
stopping place. He lost three dogs, and suffered terribly himself from
frost-bite. In the same district, during the same time, eight persons
were frozen to death, six men and two women.' There's quite a story
here, too, telling how he himself rescued a couple of trappers in the
last stages of hunger, exposure, and exhaustion."
"It's fearful to think of," the other commented; "just imagine those
agonizing journeys in the teeth of an Arctic wind, traveling over
hundreds of miles of trackless wilderness to get less than one-tenth as
many people as a city enumerator would find in one block!"
"But why do it in winter?" asked Hamilton. "It's hot up there in summer,
I've heard, and driving in the warm weather is pleasant enough; there's
no hardship in that!"
"You can't drive where there are no roads, and you can't ride where
there are no horses. Then the time available is short."
"Why is it so short?"
"You haven't a railroad going to every point in Alaska," Barnes pointed
out, "there's usually a trip of several hundred miles before you get to
the place from which to start. And when are you going to make that
journey?"
"In the spring," Hamilton said, "as soon as it gets mild."
"I reckon you don't know much about Alaska," the older man remarked.
"When the snow thaws, the creeks overflow, and the rivers become raging
torrents. You can't ride, and if you walk, how are you going to cross a
swollen river, filled with pieces of ice the size of this room? Those
Alaska rivers are huge bodies of water, many of them, and there are no
bridges."
"How about boats?"
"You mean traveling on those ice-filled rivers? It couldn't be done."
"But as soon as the ice goes out?"
"That's pretty well into June, to start with, and then you would have to
pole up against the current all the way, and the currents of most of the
rivers are very swift. Did you ever pole a boat up against a swift
mountain river?--I thought not. Suppose, by very hard work, you could
make two or three miles an hour up stream,--at that rate how long would
it take you to go up to the highest settlement? And then you would have
to go all the way down again and ascend the next stream; and even then
more than half the settlements would be on streams and creeks you could
not get to with boats because of falls, of rapids, of long portages, and
things of that kind."
"I guess they couldn't use a boat," said Hamilton, "but still I don't
see why they couldn't ride!"
"Ride what? Dogs? Or reindeer? I suppose you mean to take a horse up
there?"
"That's what I was thinking of," Hamilton admitted.
"How would you get him up there? Take him in a dog-sled the preceding
winter? You know a horse couldn't travel on the snow like a dog-team.
And if you did get him up to the starting point during the winter, on
what would you feed him? Dried salmon? That's all there is, and while it
makes good enough dog-feed, a horse isn't built that way. There's no
hay-cutting section up there, and your horse would starve to death
before you had a chance to ride him. And even supposing that you could
keep him alive,--I don't believe you could ride him over the tundra
swamps; there is no horse made that could keep his footing on those
marshy tussocks."
"I see you're right," said Hamilton, "I hadn't thought of all that."
The older man continued: "There are horses in the towns of southern
Alaska, because, you know, there is one narrow strip that runs a long
way south, and there the weather is not severe. But the north is
another matter entirely. The pay that you would have to offer in order
to lure the men away from the gold-diggings would be enormous. No, it
had to be a winter job, and in the Geography section--where I was last
year--it took us all our time to estimate satisfactory enumeration
districts for Alaska."
[Illustration: OVER THE TRACKLESS SNOW WITH DOG-TEAM. Census agents in
Alaska starting on perilous journeys in the most severe winter ever
known in sub-Arctic regions. (_Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census._)]
"The Geography section?" queried Hamilton in surprise. "I hadn't heard
of that. What is that part of the census work for?"
"To map out the enumeration districts," his superior explained. "That is
a most important part of the work. You remember that the enumeration
district was supposed to provide exactly a month's work for each man?"
"Yes," Hamilton answered, "I know I had to hustle in order to get mine
done in the month."
"Supposing," said the other, "that all the people that were on your
schedule had lived in villages close together, would it have taken you
as long to do?"
"Of course not," Hamilton replied, "I could have done it in half the
time. What delayed things was riding from farm to farm, and they were
scattered all over the countryside."
"Exactly," Barnes continued, "but I suppose you never stopped to think
that the number of people in each district and the nature of the ground
to be covered both had to be considered. Then allowance had to be made
for the enumeration of those not readily accessible, and for such
natural obstacles as unbridged rivers; all these had to be mapped out
and gone over by the Census Bureau before the sections were assigned."
"No," the boy replied, "I never really stopped to think who it was that
made up all those districts. And, now you come to speak of it, I don't
see how it could have been done without being on the ground."
"Yet it is evident," the other said, "that it must have been done. It
wouldn't be fair to tell a man to finish a district that represented
seven or eight weeks' work, nor to promise a month's work to a man and
then give him a district that had only two or three weeks' employment.
You couldn't alter the districts afterwards, either, as everything had
to be prepared in Washington for enumeration and tabulation by the
original districts as mapped out."
"You mean," said Hamilton, "that every square mile of territory in the
United States, the number of people on it, the kind of land it was, the
roads and trails, the distance from the nearest town, the rivers, and
the location of bridges across them, and all that sort of thing had to
be worked out in advance?"
"Every acre," was the reply, "and the worst of it was that there was
very little to go by. The lists for the last Decennial Census were only
of use in the Eastern districts, for in the West large towns had grown
up that were mere villages then. Whole sections of territory which were
uninhabited ten years ago are thick with farms today and the 'Great
American Desert' of a few years ago is becoming, under irrigation, the
'Great American Garden.'"
"The Survey maps helped, I should think," said Hamilton. "I have a
friend, Roger Doughty, on the Geological Survey, and he told me all
about the making of the Topographic maps."
"They helped, of course, but even with those it was hard to work out
some of the queerly shaped districts. The supervisors helped us greatly
after the larger districts had been planned, but the Geography division
had to keep in touch with every detail until the entire country was
divided into proportionately equal sections.
"And you had to do that for Alaska, as well!"
"As far as we could. Of course it was difficult to determine routes of
travel there, and to a large extent that had to be left to the
supervisors, but they merely revised our original districting. It took a
lot of figuring in Alaska because of the tremendous travel difficulties
there and the thousands of miles of territory still unsurveyed."
"I had never realized the need of all that preparatory work," the boy
admitted.
"There's a great deal of the work that has to be done in the years
before the census and in the years after," he was informed, "and the
Bureau is kept just as busy as it can be, all the while. The Decennial
Census, although it is the biggest part of the census work, is only one
of its many branches, and then there are always other matters being
looked after, like the Quinquennial Census of Manufactures, and such
numberings as those of the Religious Bodies and the Marriage and Divorce
Statistics of a few years ago."
"I understood the Bureau had regular work all the year round?" Hamilton
said.
"Indeed it has. All the births and deaths that are registered are
tabulated here, and a number of tables of vital statistics are worked
out which are of immense value to doctors not only in the United States
but all over the world. Then, as I think you know, we have for years
made a special study of cotton crop conditions, and there is a bulletin
published at stated intervals showing the state of the cotton industry
in the United States. Then there is all the statistical work on cities
of over 30,000 inhabitants, and there is scarcely a question which has
reference to the population or the manufacturing interests of the
country that is not referred sooner or later to the Bureau of the
Census."
"You work with the Forest Service, too, I believe," said Hamilton.
"Wilbur Loyle, a forest ranger whom I knew very well, showed me some
figures that the Bureau had prepared."
"Only in the collection and publication of statistics of forest
products," said Barnes, rising and changing his office coat,--for the
conversation had run on long after office hours,--"owing to their
co-operation the task is not cumbersome; questions of information or
special statistics asked for by Congress or by the executive departments
take up a great deal of time when added to an already extensive routine
work."
Editing the schedules of the population of Alaska, just as Hamilton had
expected, proved to be of the most intense interest, since, despite the
closest desire on the part of the enumerators to confine themselves
strictly to official facts, the wildness of the frontier life would
creep in. An example of this was the listing of an Eskimo girl on the
schedule as having "Sun" and "Sea" for her parents with an explanatory
note to the effect that she had been found as a tiny girl upon a heap of
sea moss on the beach. Another was when an enumerator wrote on his
schedule under 'language spoken,' "Some pesky lingo; I know most of
their talk, but this was too much for me and the hut was too strong to
stay in long."
Such comments made it easy to create a picture of the semi-savagery of
the fur-clad fishers on the shores of the Arctic Sea.
Another schedule, one which interested the boy greatly, was that in
which the age of an Indian was described as "200 snows." To try to get
this worked out to the probably true age of 80 or 90 years evidently had
been quite a task. The enumerator wrote:
"This Indian ain't 200 years old. He says he's 200 snows, but I can't
quite figure it out. He says he was 20 snows when he got first woman,
kept her 4 snows, then she go away! He complained that 'he had no
women 4 suns and catch no women 4 snows.' He 'got more woman, keep her 5
snows, then she eat cold (frozen to death). Got no woman 20 snows, she
good woman.' He could not give any clue about his children only that
'his chickens 30 to 45 snows!' They reckon here only from what they can
remember, so this buck is probably counting from about ten years old.
That would make him thirty when he first got a wife, thirty-four when
she died, thirty-eight when he got his next wife, and forty-three when
she died. Counting his oldest child at 45 this would make him about
seventy-five. Where the '200 snows' comes in, I don't see."
[Illustration: THE CENSUS IN THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. Enumerator on a
schooner skirting the icy shores of the glacier-fed waters of the
Behring Sea. (_Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census._)]
A great treat to the boy came, however, when one of the enumerators from
the Second District of Alaska, who had been summoned East in the spring
on business concerning some property with which he was associated, and
had come as soon as the break-up permitted travel, dropped into the
Census Bureau. He made himself known to the Director, and the latter,
always ready to show attention and being really proud of the Census
Bureau staff, arranged to have him shown around the building. The
Alaskan was a small fellow, hard as nails, given to stretches of
silence, but with a ready, infectious laugh and the ability to tell a
good yarn after he got started. Presently, just before quitting time, he
reached the desk where Barnes and Hamilton were editing schedules.
"This ought to interest you," said the Bureau official who was showing
him around, "these men are just going over the Alaskan schedules before
sending them to the machines to be punched and tabulated."
Looking interested, the man bent forward and, with a muttered word of
apology, picked up the schedule on which Hamilton was working at the
time. "This must be one o' mine!" he said, with an air of surprise.
"But that is marked, 'Copy'!" said Hamilton "I was just wondering where
the original was."
"I'm willin' to gamble quite a stack, son," was the surprising reply,
"that you'd have been wonderin' a whole lot more if the original had
come down to you."
"Why, how's that?"
"Well, I reckon I c'n handle dogs better'n I can a pen," he said, "an'
when you come to try an' write one o' these schedules on scraps o' dried
skin you c'n count it sure's shootin' there's some decipherin' got to
be done."
Barnes looked at the official who was showing the Alaskan 'round the
building, and knowing him very well, he said to the visitor, "Spin us
the yarn; I've been up there and I'd like to hear it myself, and I know
the lad is just wild to hear it."
"I want to be a part of that audience, too," said the official, with a
smile.
"I don't want to hold up the job!" the visitor suggested hesitatingly.
"Go ahead," his conductor answered. "Here we are all waiting, and it's
nearly half-past four anyway."
"Well, then, it was up in the Noatak Pass--" he was beginning, when
Hamilton stopped him.
"I don't want to interrupt, right at the start," he said, "but where is
that pass?"
"I should have told you," said the miner goodhumoredly, "it's the pass
between the Endicott an' the Baird ranges, at the extreme northern end
of the Rockies. I hated to go through it, an' I wouldn't have, most
times, not unless there was a mighty big pull to get me over there, but
I had promised to count every one in my district, an' so, of course,
there was nothin' else to do but go, even though I knew there was no one
on the other side but a bunch of Eskimos. Well, we were halfway up the
pass when the Indian guide stopped the dogs an' listened. It was just
about noon an' the travelin' was good, so that, wantin' to make time, I
got good an' mad at the stop. Knowin' my Indian, I kep' quiet just the
same, always bein' willin' to bet on an Indian bein' right on the trail.
First off, I could notice nothin', then, when I threw back my parka hood
I could hear a boomin' in the air as though some one was beatin' a gong,
miles and miles away. It was so steady a sound that after you had once
heard it for a while you wouldn't notice it, an' you would have to
listen again real hard to see if it was still goin' on."
"Like distant thunder?" queried Hamilton.
"Not a bit. It was high, like a gong, an' it wasn't any too good to
hear. The dogs knew it, too, for though we had been stopped nearly five
minutes none of them had started to fight."
"Do dogs fight every time they stop?"
"Just about. They try to, anyway. In the traces, of course, they can't
do much but snap an' snarl, but that they're always doin'. This time,
however, all save one or two of them stood upright sniffin' uneasily.
"'Wind?' I asked the Indian.
"'Heap wind!' he answered. 'Go back?'
"Now you may lay ten to one that when an Indian is the first to suggest
goin' back, trouble with a big 'T' is right handy. I reckon that was the
first time I ever did hear an Indian propose goin' back. 'Why go back,
Billy?' I asked.
"'Heap wind,' he repeated, 'old trail easy.' He pointed ahead, 'No
trail!'"
"He meant, I suppose," Hamilton interjected, "that if you doubled on
your tracks the trail would have been broken before, and it would be
easy going."
"That's the bull's-eye, and if a storm did come up we'd have a trail to
follow and not get lost."
"Did you go back?"
"I did not. I figured that while we were about a day's journey to a
settlement either way, we were perhaps an hour nearer where we were
goin' than where we had come from, an' that perhaps the storm would hold
off long enough for us to make it. Those storms last for days,
sometimes, an' we'd have the trip to make anyway, even if we did go
back. Besides, I didn't want to lose the time. 'No, Billy,' I called to
the Siwash, 'go on!'
"I was sorry the minute I said it, because I knew the Siwash thought me
wrong, although, bein' an Indian, of course he never showed a sign. He
started up the dogs without a word. I knew he thought it reckless and
dangerous, but tortures wouldn't have made him say so. In half an hour's
time, I began to be sure he was right."
"Did the storm strike as soon as that?" asked the boy.
"No. If it had, I think I should have gone back. But at the end of that
half-hour, we topped a rise that gave a view of the country ahead an'
showed it to be broken an' bad travelin'. I shouldn't have liked the
look of it at any time, but with a storm brewin' an' the Indian wantin'
to go back, it sure did look ugly. But the faint roarin' of the distant
storm sounded no louder, the sky was no heavier, the air no colder, the
wind no higher,--an' I built my hopes upon a delay in its comin', an'
plunged on. We were makin' good time; the dogs were keepin' up a fast
lick, an' the Indian ahead, workin' to break the trail, was movin' like
a streak. I sure never did see an Indian travel the speed he did. I was
behind, pushin' the sled, an' I had to put out all there was in me. An
hour went by, an' I was just beginnin' to think that we would be able to
cover the greater part of the distance, when a huge white shape rose
from the snow near by, passed in front of the sledge, and disappeared.
I've been scared once in my life. This was that once."
"What was it?" asked Hamilton breathlessly.
"I watched," the Alaskan continued, "an' presently about a hundred yards
away, an' a little to the right of the sled, the snow began to move. I
couldn't feel a breath of wind. But the snow seemed to writhe an' stir
as though some monster from the Arctic night was wakin' from his winter
sleep, an' a wisp of snow hurled upwards; then, with a heave the snow
crust broke an' fell apart an' a column of snow shot up like a geyser
swirlin' into a pillar a hundred feet high.
"A moment it stood; then swayed over an' begun to move slowly at first,
but gatherin' speed every second, noiselessly, save for a sound like the
indrawin' of a breath and a faint crackin' as the hard snow crust
shivered into atoms where it struck. Aimlessly, yet seemin' to have a
hidden purpose as though wreathin' the figures of some Boreal dance, it
come near us and fell back; moved away an' threatened again; then swept
upon us till its icy breathin' gripped our throats, an' our hearts stood
still.
"An' in the silence, one dog whined.
"Behind the sled there stirred the snow anew, an' in a moment or two
another column threw itself at the sky, and behind us an' around, other
of these columns rose an' moved like spectral dancers under the
slate-green clouds of the snow-filled sky. No wind, no sound but the
lone leader of the team howlin' in utter fear."
"A dancing blizzard!" said Barnes, in an awed tone, under his breath.
"If there had been anythin' to do, it would have been easier," the
Alaskan continued, "but to move was not more dangerous than to stay
still. In answer to a sign, the Indian started up the dogs again, an' we
went on, though the road ahead looked like the ice-forest of a
disordered dream. Presently, without a moment's warnin' one of the huge
snow pillars came rushin' straight at us, an' I braced myself by the
sledge to hold to it if I could, but it swerved before it reached us an'
ran along beside the trail. About fifty feet ahead it swerved again and
cut across the trail, an' the extreme edge caught the Indian, picked
him up in the air, an' threw him at least thirty feet."
"Was he hurt?" cried Hamilton.
"Not a bit, for there was nothin' to fall on but snow. He picked himself
up, looked carefully at his snow-shoes to see that they had not been
damaged, an' resumed his place at the head of the dogs. What would have
become of him if he had been plucked into the middle of the whirlwind is
hard to say. I wouldn't have counted on seein' him again anyway."
"But you never really got caught by any?"
"Wouldn't be here talkin', if I had," was the reply. "But when we come
to the track of that whirlwind column, it was a puzzle how to get
across. The column, goin' like a railroad train, had cut a gully in the
hard snow full ten feet deep,--the sides as clean cut as though done
with a knife, or rather with a scoop, because the edge was slightly
scolloped all the way along."
"How did you get across?"
"Axes," was the brief reply. "We cut through the snow crust and beat
down a steep path on both sides of the gully an' made the dogs take it.
Dog harness is strong, but I was afraid of the strain on it that time."
"How long did the blizzard last?"
"You mean the whirlwinds?"
"Yes, sir," the boy answered.
"Not very long,--quarter of an hour, perhaps. Then I felt a slight
breeze, an' at the same moment the columns, bendin' their heads like
grass before the wind, swept to the right of us, an' were out of sight
in a moment. The Indian yelled and pointed to the left, throwin' himself
on the ground as he did so."
"What was it?" cried Hamilton.
"It looked like a solid wall of snow, an' before I realized it was
comin', the storm struck, hurled me to the ground, an' rolled me over
an' over in the snow. I wasn't hurt, of course, but it took me so long
to get my breath that I thought it was never goin' to come, an' that I
should suffocate. But after that first burst, the blizzard settled down
to the regular variety, an' we all felt more at home. But even at that,
it was the worst one I ever saw in the North, an' I've been there nine
winters."
"What did you do? Go back?"
"No use tryin' to go back," the traveler said, "because those whirlwinds
had cut gullies across the snow in every direction so that our old trail
was no use to us. We went ahead a bit, as far as we could, but soon
realized that there was nothin' to do but camp right where we were an'
wait for the blizzard to blow over. Usually two days is enough for the
average storm to let up a little, but it was not until the third day
that there was any chance of startin', an' even then it was almost as
bad as could be for travel. But I had to make a start then."
"Why?" asked Hamilton, who always wanted to know the details of
everything.
"Because we were runnin' short of dog-feed, an' you can't let your dogs
die of hunger, for then you can't get anywhere. But the blizzard had
drifted everything an' was still driftin', so that the snow was hard in
some places and soft in others; the travelin' was almost impossible, an'
you couldn't see twenty yards ahead. Then while the blizzard had filled
the gullies made by the whirlwinds, the snow in them was not packed down
as hard as the rest of the surface, an' dogs an' sled an' Indian an'
myself would all go flounderin' into the drift, an' it would be a tough
pull to get the sled out again.--That was a hard trip.
"The worst of it came when, without a bit of warnin', without our even
knowin' where we were, the hard crust of the snow gave way beneath us,
an' the sled, the dogs, and myself fell headlong down a slope an' into a
stream of runnin' water, the sled upside down, of course."
"How about the Indian?" asked the boy.
"He saved himself from goin' into the water, an' it was a good thing
that he did, for he was able to help in pullin' us out. But, from one
point of view, the accident was a help, for it told the Indian just
where we were. There was only one stream of that size in that
neighborhood, an' until we found it, we were hopelessly lost. But from
that time we knew that the settlement we were headin' for was straight
up the stream, an' all we had to do was to follow it. But it was a race
for life, in order to get to camp before frozen clothin' and various
frostbites crippled me entirely."
"But how about the dogs?" queried Hamilton. "I should think it would be
worse for them than for you."
The Alaskan shook his head.
"A 'husky' can stand just about anythin' in the way of cold," he said,
"an' my leaders 'Tussle' and 'Bully' were a couple of wonders. Only one
of the dogs gave out. Well, we made the camp finally, pretty well done
up all round. The worst of it was, that when we come to unpack the
sled--we did it with an ax because everythin' was frozen solid--the
census pouch was missin'. Luckily there was no past work in it,--only
blank schedules, information papers, an' things of that sort. So I made
up the schedules on odd bits of paper and skins, as I told you, an' the
supervisor copied them on the schedule to send in, an' that schedule you
have in your hand is the copy of those very pieces of skin."
[Illustration: CAN WE MAKE CAMP? A last rush for shelter as the blizzard
strikes, wiping out all landmarks.]
Hamilton glanced at the paper with redoubled interest.
"I suppose it was no use trying to get the pouch back," he said.
"I didn't think it would be," the Alaskan replied "but I tried to reach
the place where the sled had been overturned, an' each time the weather
drove me back. On the third day I got a chance to go with some Eskimos
with reindeer to a little settlement about twenty miles off, an' so I
went along and got the names there, comin' back on a reindeer sled.
That's the only time I ever felt like Santa Claus. I'm sure I don't look
it."
[Illustration: TO ESKIMO SETTLEMENTS BY REINDEER. Census enumerator
using half-wild animals when dog-team was too exhausted to go farther.
(_Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census._)]
Hamilton looked at his spare figure and laughed.
"No," he said, "I don't think an artist would be likely to pick you for
the part. How did you like the reindeer, though? I've always wondered
that they didn't use them more in Alaska. The government keeps a herd,
doesn't it?"
"Yes," was the reply, "but that is more for fresh meat than for travel.
A good reindeer is a cracker-jack of an animal when he wants to be, but
when he takes a streak to quit, it doesn't matter where it is or what
you do to him, he won't go another step. A balky mule is an angel of
meekness beside a reindeer. You can always make a mule see what you want
him to do--although the odds are that he won't do it even then--but when
a reindeer gets stubborn,--why, he just can't be made to understand
anythin'!"
"Yet I've read that they use them a good deal in Lapland!" said the boy
in surprise.
"They have domesticated them more thoroughly, I guess," the Northerner
replied. "In time they may be worked up here in the same way, and when
you consider how short a time the government has had to do what is
already accomplished, it seems to me the result is wonderful. Of course,
so far as traffic is concerned there are dogs enough, and they do the
work in mighty good shape."
"How did you work back from the settlement which you had got to with
such difficulty?" the boy asked.
"I came back another way, in order to take in a little group of houses
on a small pay-creek," was the reply. "But it was comin' back from that
trip, on the Koatak River, that I had quite a time, although I was not
the sufferer. We had been havin' a hard spell of weather, but there come
a week when conditions on the trail were much better an' we were reelin'
off the miles in great shape. I hadn't a place on my map for about sixty
miles, when in the distance I saw a little hut, just in the fringe of
some stunted cottonwoods and some scraggy willows, for we were not far
from the timber limit.
"'Billy,' I called to the Indian, 'ever see that hut before?'
"The Indian shook his head, but knowin' that I wanted to see an' count
everybody in the district, he turned off the trail--he said it was a
trail but I couldn't see it--an' led the way to the hut. I went in an'
found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead. He was one of
the survivors of the wrecked steamer _Filarleon_, and had frozen all
the fingers of both hands. Two or three were turnin' gangrenous; an' one
of these had got so bad that with his other crippled hand, he had sawed
off the decomposin' member with his pocket-knife. One foot also was
frozen an' had turned black, but that afterwards recovered."
"What did you do for him?" asked the boy.
"Put him on the sled, of course," the Alaskan answered, "an' took him to
the nearest settlement. I afterwards heard that a doctor happened in to
camp soon after I left, an' got at his hurts right away, an' that he was
put back into fair condition all but the one finger.--That's no
tenderfoot's country up there."
"I wonder you stuck it out," said Hamilton. "But then," he added a
moment later, "I can see how a fellow would hate to quit."
"It was tough," reluctantly admitted the narrator, "an' I'll tell you
what I did. I'm not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle
of the work I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down
and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a
thing as I ever read. I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance
another party was comin' up that way, an' some weeks later I received a
reply. What do you suppose he said!"
"I haven't the least idea," answered the boy.
"His answer read just this way:
"'I chose you because you were experienced in the treeless coast. Go to
it. We are expecting you to make good.'"
"And," Hamilton said, his eyes shining, "I'll bet you did!"