CHAPTER I._Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

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Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD

_Third Edition_

ST. LOUIS, MO., 1914

Published by B. HERDER

17 South Broadway

FREIBURG (BADEN)

Germany

LONDON, W. C.

68 Great Russell Str.

--BECKTOLD--

PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO.

ST. LOUIS, MO.

KENNETH O'CONNOR,

First-District-of-Columbia Volunteers,

Gen'l Shafter's Fifth Army Corps, Santiago de Cuba:

IN MEMORY OF OUR HOME-LIFE IN THE BUNGALOW.

NOTE.

The Author returns thanks to the Editor of the _Ave Maria_ for the

privilege of republishing these notes of travel and adventure.

CONTENTS.

Chapter. Page.

I. Due West to Denver 7

II. In Denver Town 18

III. The Garden of the Gods 29

IV. A Whirl across the Rockies 40

V. Off for Alaska 47

VI. In the Inland Sea 56

VII. Alaskan Village Life 66

VIII. Juneau 74

IX. By Solitary Shores 86

X. In Search of the Totem-Pole 98

XI. In the Sea of Ice 111

XII. Alaska's Capital 124

XIII. Katalan's Rock 136

XIV. From the Far North 148

XV. Out of the Arctic 159

CHAPTER I.

Due West to Denver.

Commencement week at Notre Dame ended in a blaze of glory. Multitudes of

guests who had been camping for a night or two in the recitation

rooms--our temporary dormitories--gave themselves up to the boyish

delights of school-life, and set numerous examples which the students

were only too glad to follow. The boat race on the lake was a picture;

the champion baseball match, a companion piece; but the highly decorated

prize scholars, glittering with gold and silver medals, and badges of

satin and bullion; the bevies of beautiful girls who for once--once only

in the year--were given the liberty of the lawns, the campus, and the

winding forest ways, that make of Notre Dame an elysium in summer; the

frequent and inspiring blasts of the University Band, and the general

joy that filled every heart to overflowing, rendered the last day of the

scholastic year romantic to a degree and memorable forever.

There was no sleep during the closing night--not one solitary wink; all

laws were dead-letters--alas that they should so soon arise again from

the dead!--and when the wreath of stars that crowns the golden statue of

Our Lady on the high dome, two hundred feet in air, and the

wide-sweeping crescent under her shining feet, burst suddenly into

flame, and shed a lustre that was welcomed for miles and miles over the

plains of Indiana--then, I assure you, we were all so deeply touched

that we knew not whether to laugh or to weep, and I shall not tell you

which we did. The moon was very full that night, and I didn't blame it!

But the picnic really began at the foot of the great stairway in front

of the dear old University next morning. Five hundred possible

presidents were to be distributed broadcast over the continent; five

hundred sons and heirs to be returned with thanks to the yearning bosoms

of their respective families. The floodgates of the trunk-rooms were

thrown open, and a stream of Saratogas went thundering to the station at

South Bend, two miles away. Hour after hour, and indeed for several

days, huge trucks and express wagons plied to and fro, groaning under

the burden of well-checked luggage. It is astonishing to behold how big

a trunk a mere boy may claim for his very own; but it must be remembered

that your schoolboy lives for several years within the brass-bound

confines of a Saratoga. It is his bureau, his wardrobe, his private

library, his museum and toy shop, the receptacle of all that is near and

dear to him; it is, in brief, his _sanctum sanctorum_, the one inviolate

spot in his whole scholastic career of which he, and he alone, holds the

key.

We came down with the tide in the rear of the trunk freshet. The way

being more or less clear, navigation was declared open. The next moment

saw a procession of chariots, semi-circus wagons and barouches filled

with homeward-bound schoolboys and their escorts, dashing at a brisk

trot toward the railroad station. Banners were flying, shouts rent the

air; familiar forms in cassock and biretta waved benedictions from all

points of the compass; while the gladness and the sadness of the hour

were perpetuated by the aid of instantaneous photography. The

enterprising kodaker caught us on the fly, just as the special train was

leaving South Bend for Chicago; a train that was not to be dismembered

or its exclusiveness violated until it had been run into the station at

Denver.

After this last negative attack we were set free. Vacation had begun in

good earnest. What followed, think you? Mutual congratulations,

flirtations and fumigations without ceasing; for there was much lost

time to be made up, and here was a golden opportunity. O you who have

been a schoolboy and lived for months and months in a pent-up Utica,

where the glimpse of a girl is as welcome and as rare as a sunbeam in a

cellar, you can imagine how the two hours and forty-five minutes were

improved--and Chicago eighty miles away. It is true we all turned for a

moment to catch a last glimpse of the University dome, towering over the

treetops; and we felt very tenderly toward everyone there. But there

were "sweet girl graduates" on board; and, as you know well enough, it

required no laureate to sing their praises, though he has done so with

all the gush and fervor of youth.

It was summer. "It is always summer where they are," some youngster was

heard to murmur. But it was really the summer solstice, or very near it.

The pond-lilies were ripe; bushels of them were heaped upon the

platforms at every station we came to; and before the first stage of our

journey was far advanced the girls were sighing over lapfuls of lilies,

and the lads tottering under the weight of stupendous _boutonnieres_.

As we drew near the Lake City, the excitement visibly increased. Here,

there were partings, and such sweet sorrow as poets love to sing. It

were vain to tell how many promises were then and there made, and of

course destined to be broken; how everybody was to go and spend a happy

season with everybody or at least somebody else, and to write meanwhile

without fail. There were good-byes again and again, and yet again; and,

with much mingled emotion, we settled ourselves in luxurious seats and

began to look dreamily toward Denver.

In the mazes of the wonderful city of Chicago we saw the warp of that

endless steel web over which we flew like spiders possessed. The sunken

switches took our eye and held it for a time. But a greater marvel was

the man with the cool head and the keen sight and nerves of iron, who

sat up in his loft, with his hand on a magic wand, and played with

trainfuls of his fellowmen--a mere question of life or death to be

answered over and over again; played with them as the conjurer tosses

his handful of pretty globes into the air and catches them without one

click of the ivories. It was a forcible reminder of Clapham Junction;

the perfect system that brings order out of chaos, and saves a little

world, but a mad one, from the total annihilation that threatens it

every moment in the hour, and every hour in the day, and every day in

the year.

It did not take us long to discover the advantages of our special-car

system. There were nigh fifty of us housed in a brace of excursion cars.

In one of these--the parlor--the only stationary seats were at the two

ends, while the whole floor was covered with easy-chairs of every

conceivable pattern. The dining car was in reality a cardroom between

meals--and _such_ meals, for we had stocked the larder ourselves.

Everywhere the agents of the several lines made their appearance and

greeted us cordially; they were closeted for a few moments with the

shepherd of our flock, Father Zahm, of the University of Notre Dame,

Indiana; then they would take a bite with us--a dish of berries or an

ice,--for they invariably accompanied us down the road a few miles; and

at last would bid us farewell with a flattering figure of speech, which

is infinitely preferable to the traditional "Tickets, please; tickets!"

At every town and village crowds came down to see us. We were evidently

objects of interest. Even the nimble reporter was on hand, and looked

with a not unkindly eye upon the lads who were celebrating the first

hours of the vacation with an enthusiasm which had been generating for

some weeks. There was such a making up of beds when, at dark, the parlor

and dining cars were transformed into long, narrow dormitories, and the

boys paired off, two and two, above and below, through the length of our

flying university, and made a night of it, without fear of notes or

detentions, and with no prefect stalking ghostlike in their midst.

It would be hard to say which we found most diverting, the long, long

landscape that divided as we passed, through it and closed up in the

rear, leaving only the shining iron seam down the middle; the beautiful,

undulating prairie land; the hot and dusty desolation of the plains;

the delicious temperature of the highlands, as we approached the Rockies

and had our first glimpse of Pike's Peak in its mantle of snow: the

muddy rivers, along whose shores we glided swiftly hour after hour: the

Mississippi by moonlight--we all sat up to see that--or the Missouri at

Kansas City, where we began to scatter our brood among their far Western

homes. At La Junta we said good-bye to the boys bound for Mexico and the

Southwest. It was like a second closing of the scholastic year; the

good-byes were now ringing fast and furious. Jolly fellows began to grow

grave and the serious ones more solemn; for there had been no cloud or

shadow for three rollicking days.

To be sure there was a kind of infantile cyclone out on the plains,

memorable for its superb atmospheric effects, and the rapidity with

which we shut down the windows to keep from being inflated

balloon-fashion. And there was a brisk hail-storm at the gate of the

Rockies that peppered us smartly for a few moments. Then there were some

boys who could not eat enough, and who turned from the dessert in

tearful dismay; and one little kid who dived out of the top bunk in a

moment of rapture, and should have broken his neck--but he didn't!

We were quite sybaritical as to hours, with breakfast and dinner

courses, and mouth-organs and cigarettes and jam between meals. Frosted

cake and oranges were left untouched upon the field after the

gastronomical battles were fought so bravely three or four times a day.

Perhaps the pineapples and bananas, and the open barrel of strawberries,

within reach of all at any hour, may account for the phenomenon.

Pueblo! Ah me, the heat of that infernal junction! Pueblo, with the

stump of its one memorable tree, or a slice of that stump turned up on

end--to make room for a new railway-station, that could just as well

have been built a few feet farther on,--and staring at you, with a full

broadside of patent-medicine placards trying to cover its nakedness. On

closer inspection we read this legend: "The tree that grew here was 380

years old; circumference, 28 feet; height, 79 feet; was cut down June

25, 1883, at a cost of $250." So perished, at the hands of an amazingly

stupid city council, the oldest landmark in Colorado. Under the shade of

this cottonwood Kit Carson, Wild Bill, and many another famous Indian

scout built early camp fires. Near it, in 1850, thirty-six whites were

massacred by Indians; upon one of its huge limbs fourteen men were

hanged at convenient intervals; and it is a pity that the city council

did not follow this admirable lead and leave the one glory of Pueblo to

save it from damnation. It afforded the only grateful shelter in this

furnace heat; it was the one beautiful object in a most unbeautiful

place, and it has been razed to the ground in memory of the block-heads

whose bodies were not worthy to enrich the roots of it. Tradition adds,

pathetically enough, that the grave of the first white woman who died in

that desert was made beneath the boughs of the "Old Monarch." May she

rest in peace under the merciless hands of the baggage-master and his

merry crew! Lightly lie the trunks that are heaped over her nameless

dust! Well, there came a time when we forgot Pueblo, but we never will

forgive the town council.

Then we listened in vain at evening for the strumming of fandango music

on multitudinous guitars, as was our custom so long as the _muchachos_

were with us. Then we played no more progressive euchre games many miles

in length, and smoked no more together in the ecstasy of unrestraint;

but watched and waited in vain--for those who were with us were no

longer of us for some weeks to come, and the mouths of the singers were

hushed. The next thing we knew a city seemed to spring suddenly out of

the plains--a mirage of brick and mortar--an oasis in the

wilderness,--and we realized, with a gasp, that we had struck the

bull's-eye of the Far West--in other words, Denver!