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TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE ASCENT OF DENALI (MT. McKINLEY).
A narrative of the first complete ascent of THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN
NORTH AMERICA and the most northerly high mountain in the world.
Profusely illustrated. 8vo. $1.75 _net_
"Few climbers have had such good fortune on a
supreme occasion, but few have better deserved
it."
--_London Spectator._
[Illustration: Handwritten: Hudson Stuck.]
TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH
A DOG SLED
A NARRATIVE OF WINTER TRAVEL IN INTERIOR ALASKA
BY
HUDSON STUCK, D.D., F.R.G.S.
ARCHDEACON OF THE YUKON
AUTHOR OF "THE ASCENT OF DENALI (MOUNT McKINLEY)"
ILLUSTRATED
SECOND EDITION
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TO
GRAFTON BURKE, M.D.
AND
EDGAR WEBB LOOMIS, M.D.
PUPILS, COMRADES, COLLEAGUES,
COMPANIONS ON SOME OF THESE JOURNEYS,
ALWAYS DEAR FRIENDS,
AND TO
THE MOTHER OF THE THREE OF US
SEWANEE
THE COLLEGE ON THE MOUNTAIN-TOP
WHERE THE OLD IDEALS ARE STILL
UNFLINCHINGLY MAINTAINED
THIS VOLUME
IS
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
THIS volume deals with a series of journeys taken with a dog team over
the winter trails in the interior of Alaska. The title might have
claimed fourteen or fifteen thousand miles instead of ten, for the book
was projected and the title adopted some years ago, and the journeys
have continued. But ten thousand is a good round titular number, and is
none the worse for being well within the mark.
So far as mere distance is concerned, anyway, there is nothing
noteworthy in this record. There are many men in Alaska who have done
much more. A mail-carrier on one of the longer dog routes will cover
four thousand miles in a winter, while the writer's average is less than
two thousand. But his sled has gone far off the beaten track, across the
arctic wilderness, into many remote corners; wherever, indeed, white men
or natives were to be found in all the great interior.
These journeys were connected primarily with the administration of the
extensive work of the Episcopal Church in the interior of Alaska, under
the bishop of the diocese; but that feature of them has been fully set
forth from time to time in the church publications, and finds only
incidental reference here.
It is a great, wild country, little known save along accustomed routes
of travel; a country with a beauty and a fascination all its own; mere
arctic wilderness, indeed, and nine tenths of it probably destined
always to remain such, yet full of interest and charm.
Common opinion "outside" about Alaska seems to be veering from the view
that it is a land of perpetual snow and ice to the other extreme of
holding it to be a "world's treasure-house" of mineral wealth and
agricultural possibility. The world's treasure is deposited in many
houses, and Alaska has its share; its mineral wealth is very great, and
"hidden doors of opulence" may open at any time, but its agricultural
possibilities, in the ordinary sense in which the phrase is used, are
confined to very small areas in proportion to the enormous whole, and in
very limited degree.
It is no new thing for those who would build railways to write in
high-flown style about the regions they would penetrate, and, indeed, to
speak of "millions of acres waiting for the plough" is not necessarily a
misrepresentation; they are waiting. Nor is it altogether unnatural that
professional agricultural experimenters at the stations established by
the government should make the most of their experiments. When Dean
Stanley spoke disdainfully of dogma, Lord Beaconsfield replied; "Ah! but
you must always remember, no dogmas, no deans."
Besides the physical attractions of this country, it has a gentle
aboriginal population that arouses in many ways the respect and the
sympathy of all kindly people; and it has some of the hardiest and most
adventurous white men in the world. The reader will come into contact
with both in these pages.
So much for the book's scope; a word of its limitations. It is confined
to the interior of Alaska; confined in the main to the great valley of
the Yukon and its tributaries; being a record of sled journeys, it is
confined to the winter.
There is no man living who knows the whole of Alaska or who has any
right to speak about the whole of Alaska. Bishop Rowe knows more about
Alaska, in all probability, than any other living man, and there are
large areas of the country in which he has never set foot. There is
probably no man living, save Bishop Rowe, who has visited even the
localities of all the missions of the Episcopal Church in Alaska. If one
were to travel continuously for a whole year, using the most expeditious
means at his command, and not wasting a day anywhere, it is doubtful
whether, summer and winter, by sea and land, squeezing the last mile out
of the seasons, travelling on the "last ice" and the "first water," he
could even touch at all the mission stations. So, when a man from Nome
speaks of Alaska he means his part of Alaska, the Seward Peninsula. When
a man from Valdez or Cordova speaks of Alaska he means the Prince
William Sound country. When a man from Juneau speaks of Alaska he means
the southeastern coast. Alaska is not one country but many, with
different climates, different resources, different problems, different
populations, different interests; and what is true of one part of it is
often grotesquely untrue of other parts. This is the reason why so many
contradictory things have been written about the country. Not only do
these various parts of Alaska differ radically from one another, but
they are separated from one another by almost insuperable natural
obstacles, so that they are in reality different countries.
When Alaska is spoken of in this book the interior is meant, in which
the writer has travelled almost continuously for the past eight years.
The Seward Peninsula is the only other part of the country that the book
touches. And as regards summer travel and the summer aspect of the
country, there is material for another book should the reception of this
one warrant its preparation.
* * * * *
The problems of the civil government of the country will be found
touched upon somewhat freely as they rise from time to time in the
course of these journeys, and some faint hope is entertained that
drawing attention to evils may hasten a remedy.
Alaska is not now, and never has been, a lawless country in the old,
Wild Western sense of unpunished homicides and crimes of violence. It
has been, on the whole, singularly free from bloodshed--a record due in
no small part to the fact that it is not the custom of the country to
carry pistols, for which again there is climatic and geographic reason;
due also in part to the very peaceable and even timid character of its
native people.
But as regards the stringent laws enacted by Congress for the protection
of these native people, and especially in the essential particular of
protecting them from the fatal effects of intoxicating liquor, the
country is not law-abiding, for these laws are virtually a dead letter.
Justices of the peace who must live wholly upon fees in regions where
fees will not furnish a living, and United States deputy marshals
appointed for political reasons, constitute a very feeble staff against
law-breakers. When it is remembered that on the whole fifteen hundred
miles of the American Yukon there are but six of these deputy marshals,
and that these six men, with another five or six on the tributary
rivers, form all the police of the country, it will be seen that
Congress must do something more than pass stringent laws if those laws
are to be of any effect.
A body of stipendiary magistrates, a police force wholly removed from
politics and modelled somewhat upon the Canadian Northwest Mounted
Police--these are two of the great needs of the country if the liquor
laws are to be enforced and the native people are to survive.
That the danger of the extermination of the natives is a real one all
vital statistics kept at Yukon River points in the last five years show,
and that there are powerful influences in the country opposed to the
execution of the liquor laws some recent trials at Fairbanks would leave
no room for doubt if there had been any room before. Indeed, at this
writing, when the pages of this book are closed and there remains no
place save the preface where the matter can be referred to, an impudent
attempt is on foot, with large commercial backing, to secure the
removal of a zealous and fearless United States district attorney, who
has been too active in prosecuting liquor-peddlers to suit the wholesale
dealers in liquor.
There are, of course, those who view with perfect equanimity the
destruction of the natives that is now going on, and look forward with
complacency to the time when the Alaskan Indian shall have ceased to
exist. But to men of thought and feeling such cynicism is abhorrent, and
the duty of the government towards its simple and kindly wards is clear.
A measure of real protection must be given the native communities
against the low-down whites who seek to intrude into them and build
habitations for convenient resort upon occasions of drunkenness and
debauchery, and some adequate machinery set up for suppressing the
contemptible traffic in adulterated spirits they subsist largely upon.
The licensed liquor-dealers do not themselves sell to Indians, but they
notoriously sell to men who notoriously peddle to Indians, and the
suppression of this illicit commerce would materially reduce the total
sales of liquor.
Some measure of protection, one thinks, must also be afforded against a
predatory class of Indian traders, the back rooms of whose stores are
often barrooms, gambling-dens, and houses of assignation, and
headquarters and harbourage for the white degenerates--even if the
government go the length of setting up co-operative Indian stores in the
interior, as has been done in some places on the coast. This last is a
matter in which the missions are helpless, for there is no wise
combination of religion and trade.
So this book goes forth with a plea in the front of it, which will find
incidental support and expression throughout it, for the natives of
interior Alaska, that they be not wantonly destroyed off the face of the
earth.
HUDSON STUCK.
NEW YORK,
_March, 1914._
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
IT is gratifying to know that a second edition of this book has been
called for and it is interesting to write another preface; it even
proved interesting to do what was set about most reluctantly--the
reading of the book over again after entire avoidance of it for two
years. It was necessary to do it, though one shrank from it, and it is
interesting to know that after this comparatively long and complete
detachment I find little to add and less to correct. Upon a complete
rereading I am content to let the book stand, with two or three
footnotes thrown in, and the correction of the one printer's error it
contained from cover to cover--an error that a score of kind
correspondents pointed out, for it was conspicuous in the title of a
picture.
The tendency to which attention is drawn in the original preface, the
pendulum swing from the old notion that Alaska is a land of polar bears
and icebergs to the new notion that it is a "world's treasure-house of
mineral wealth and unbounded agricultural possibilities" is yet more
marked than it was two years ago. The beginning of the building of the
government railway has given new impetus to the "boosting" writers for
magazines and newspapers. Quite recently it was stated in one such
publication that we need not worry about the destruction of our
forests, for had we not the inexhaustible timber resources of the
interior of Alaska to draw upon?
And in the North itself--though no one there would write about the
timber resources of the interior--in certain shrill journals the man who
does not confidently expect to see the Yukon Flats waving with golden
grain and "the lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea" of the Koyukuk and
the Chandalar is regarded as a traitor to his country and his God. But
it must be remembered that there are a number of journalists in Alaska
who know nothing of the country outside their respective towns, and that
"boosting" grows shriller, as Eugene Field found red paint grow redder,
"the further out West one goes." When they get a newspaper at Cape
Prince of Wales what a clarion it will be!
Truth, however, is not more wont than of old to be found in extremes,
and the author of this book believes that those who desire a sober view
of the country it deals with will find it herein. He claims no more than
that he has had adequate opportunity of forming his opinions and that he
has a right to their expression. It is now twelve years since he began
almost constant travelling, winter and summer, in the interior of
Alaska. He has described nothing that he has not seen; ventured no
judgment that he has not well digested, and has nothing to retract or
even modify; but he would repeat and emphasise a caution of the original
preface. Alaska is not one country but many countries, and so widely do
they differ from one another in almost every respect that no general
statements about Alaska can be true. The present author's knowledge of
the territory is confined in the main to the interior--to the valley of
the Yukon and its tributary rivers, which make up one of the world's
great waterways--and nothing of his writing applies, with his authority,
to other parts.
The matter of the preservation of the native peoples still presses, and
is nearer to the author's heart than any other matter whatever. The
United States Congress, which voted thirty-five millions of dollars for
the government railroad, strikes out year by year the modest additional
score or two of thousands that year by year the Bureau of Education asks
for the establishment of hospital work amongst the Indians of the
interior, and the preventable mortality continues to be very great.
In the last two years, largely as the result of the untiring efforts of
Bishop Rowe on behalf of the natives, two modern, well-equipped
hospitals have been built, with money that he and his clergy have
gathered, on the Yukon River, one at Fort Yukon and one at Tanana; and
these are the only places of any kind, on nearly a thousand miles of the
river, where sick or injured Indians may be received and cared for.
Amongst men of thought and feeling there is noticeable revulsion from
the supercilious attitude that used not to be uncommon toward the little
peoples of the world. It begins to be recognised that it is quite
possible that even the smallest of the little peoples may have some
contribution to make to the welfare and progress of the human race. What
is the Boy Scout movement that is sweeping the country, to the enormous
benefit of the rising generation, but the incorporating into the nurture
of our youth of the things that were the nurture of the Indian youth;
that are a large part of the nurture of the Alaskan Indian youth to-day?
And the camp-fire clubs and woodcraft associations and the whole trend
to the life of the open recognise that the Indian had developed a
technique of wilderness life deserving of preservation for its value to
the white man. While as for the Esquimaux, the author never sees the
extraordinary prevalence amongst them of the art of graphic delineation
displayed in bold etchings of incidents of the chase upon their
implements and weapons (though not upon the articles made by the dozen
for the curio-venders at Nome and Saint Michael) without dreaming that
some day an artist will come from out that singular and most interesting
people who shall teach the world something new about art.
Whatever the future may hold for the interior of Alaska, the author is
convinced that its population will derive very largely from the present
native stocks, and this alone would justify any efforts to prevent
further inroads upon their health and vitality.
April, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. FAIRBANKS TO THE CHANDALAR THROUGH CIRCLE
CITY AND FORT YUKON 3
II. CHANDALAR VILLAGE TO BETTLES, COLDFOOT, AND
THE KOYUKUK 34
III. BETTLES TO THE PACIFIC--THE ALATNA, KOBUK
PORTAGE, KOBUK VILLAGE, KOTZEBUE SOUND 63
IV. THE SEWARD PENINSULA--CANDLE CREEK, COUNCIL,
AND NOME 102
V. NOME TO FAIRBANKS--NORTON SOUND--THE KALTAG
PORTAGE--NULATO--UP THE YUKON TO TANANA 125
VI. THE "FIRST ICE"--AN AUTUMN ADVENTURE ON THE
KOYUKUK 157
VII. THE KOYUKUK TO THE YUKON AND TO TANANA--CHRISTMAS
HOLIDAYS AT SAINT JOHN'S-IN-THE-WILDERNESS 188
VIII. UP THE YUKON TO RAMPART AND ACROSS COUNTRY
TO THE TANANA--ALASKAN AGRICULTURE--THE
GOOD DOG NANOOK--MISS FARTHING'S BOYS AT
NENANA--CHENA AND FAIRBANKS 219
IX. TANANA CROSSING TO FORTYMILE AND DOWN THE
YUKON--A PATRIARCHAL CHIEF--SWARMING
CARIBOU--EAGLE AND FORT EGBERT--CIRCLE
CITY AND FORT YUKON 251
X. FROM THE TANANA RIVER TO THE KUSKOKWIM--THENCE
TO THE IDITAROD MINING CAMP--THENCE
TO THE YUKON, AND UP THAT RIVER
TO FORT YUKON 294
XI. THE NATIVES OF ALASKA 348
XII. PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE ARCTIC 371
XIII. THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 380
XIV. THE ALASKAN DOGS 392
INDEX 413
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hudson Stuck (_photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Sunrise on the Chandalar-Koyukuk portage 36
Coldfoot on the Koyukuk 37
The upper Koyukuk 50
The barren shores of Kotzebue Sound 51
Gold-mining at Nome 122
Pulling the _Pelican_ out with a "Spanish windlass" 123
The start over the "first ice" 164
"Rough going" 165
Arthur and Doctor Burke 178
Saint John's-in-the-Wilderness, Allakaket, Koyukuk River 179
The double interpretation at the Allakaket 186
The wind-swept Yukon within the ramparts 187
A pleasant woodland trail 256
An Alaskan chief and his henchman 257
The Tanana crossing 270
Good going on the Yukon 271
"A portage that comes so finely down to the Yukon that
there is pleasure in anticipating the view it affords" 290
Fort Yukon 291
The rough breaking in of Doctor Loomis, camped on the mail
trail at 50 deg. below zero, unable to reach a road-house for
the deep snow 296
Esquimaux of the upper Kuskokwim 297
"The 'summit' is high above timber-line and the trail
pursues a hogback ridge for a mile and a half at the summit
level" 324
A street in Iditarod City 325
The end of the portage trail 334
Rough ice on the Yukon 335
A docile folk, eager for instruction 350
The mission type 351
Wild and shy 351
The native communicant 360
Raw material 360
An Esquimau youth 361
A half-breed Indian 361
An aged couple 366
Football at the Allakaket, exposure 1-1000 second, April,
after a new light snowfall 367
The sun dogs 388
"Tan," of mixed breed 389
"Muk," a pure malamute 389
Map of the interior of Alaska showing journeys described
in this book _At end of volume_
TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Three fundamental facts are to be borne constantly in mind by those who
would form any intelligent conception of the Territory of Alaska.
(1) Its area of approximately 590,000 square miles makes it two and a
half times as large as the State of Texas.
(2) But it is not, like Texas, one homogeneous body of land; it is not,
in any geographical sense, one country at all. "Sweeping in a great arc
over sixteen degrees of latitude and fifty-eight degrees of longitude,"
it is no less than four, and some might say five, different countries,
differing from one another in almost every way that one country can
differ from another: in climate, in population, in resources, in
requirements; and--
(3) These different countries are not merely different from one another,
they are _separated_ from one another by formidable natural barriers.
TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED
CHAPTER I
FAIRBANKS TO THE CHANDALAR THROUGH CIRCLE CITY AND FORT YUKON
THE plan for the winter journey of 1905-6 (my second winter on the
trail) was an ambitious one, for it contemplated a visit to Point Hope,
on the shore of the Arctic Ocean between Kotzebue Sound and Point
Barrow, and a return to Fairbanks. In the summer such a journey would be
practicable only by water: down the Tanana to the Yukon, down the Yukon
to its mouth, and then through the straits of Bering and along the
Arctic coast; in the winter it is possible to make the journey across
country. A desire to visit our most northerly and most inaccessible
mission in Alaska and a desire to become acquainted with general
conditions in the wide country north of the Yukon were equal factors in
the planning of a journey which would carry me through three and a half
degrees of latitude and no less than eighteen degrees of longitude.
The course of winter travel in Alaska follows the frozen waterways so
far as they lead in the general direction desired, leaves them to cross
mountain ranges and divides at the most favourable points, and drops
down into the streams again so soon as streams are available. The
country is notably well watered and the waterways are the natural
highways. The more frequented routes gradually cut out the serpentine
bends of the rivers by land trails, but in the wilder parts of the
country travel sticks to the ice.
Our course, therefore, lay up the Chatanika River and one of its
tributaries until the Tanana-Yukon watershed was reached; then through
the mountains, crossing two steep summits to the Yukon slope, and down
that slope by convenient streams to the Yukon River at Circle City.
[Sidenote: THE GOLD TRAIN]
We set out on the 27th of November with six dogs and a "basket" sled and
about five hundred pounds' weight of load, including tent and stove,
bedding, clothes for the winter, grub box and its equipment, and dog
feed. The dogs were those that I had used the previous winter, with one
exception. The leader had come home lame from the fish camp where he had
been boarded during the summer, and, despite all attentions, the
lameness had persisted; so he must be left behind, and there was much
difficulty in securing another leader. A recent stampede to a new mining
district had advanced the price of dogs and gathered up all the good
ones, so it was necessary to hunt all over Fairbanks and pay a hundred
dollars for a dog that proved very indifferent, after all. "Jimmy" was a
handsome beast, the handsomest I ever owned and the costliest, but, as I
learned later from one who knew his history, had "travelled on his
looks all his life." He earned the name of "Jimmy the Fake."
Midway to Cleary "City," on the chief gold-producing creek of the
district, our first day's run, we encountered the gold train. For some
time previous a lone highwayman had robbed solitary miners on their way
to Fairbanks with gold-dust, and now a posse was organised that went the
rounds of the creeks and gathered up the dust and bore it on mule-back
to the bank, escorted by half a dozen armed and mounted men. Sawed-off
shotguns were the favourite weapons, and one judged them deadly enough
at short range. The heavy "pokes" galled the animals' backs, however
they might be slung, and the little procession wound slowly along, a man
ahead, a man behind, and four clustered round the treasure.
These raw, temporary mining towns are much alike the world over, one
supposes, though perhaps a little worse up here in the far north. It was
late at night when we reached the place, but saloon and dance-hall were
ablaze with light and loud with the raucity of phonographs and the
stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the
thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go
on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces
leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government,
without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation
for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks
save such as a man may choose to lay in front of his own premises, and
the simplest sanitary precautions are entirely neglected. Nothing but
the cold climate of the north prevents epidemic disease from sweeping
through these places. They rise in a few days wherever gold is found in
quantities, they flourish as the production increases, decline with its
decline, and are left gaunt, dark, and abandoned so soon as the diggings
are exhausted.
The next day we were on the Chatanika River, to which Cleary Creek is
tributary, and were immediately confronted with one of the main troubles
and difficulties of winter travel in this and, as may be supposed, in
any arctic or subarctic country--overflow water.
[Sidenote: OVERFLOW WATER AND ICE]
In the lesser rivers, where deep pools alternate with swift shallows,
the stream freezes solid to the bottom upon the shoals and riffles.
Since the subterranean fountains that supply the river do not cease to
discharge their waters in the winter, however cold it may be, there
comes presently an increasing pressure under the ice above such a
barrier. The pent-up water is strong enough to heave the ice into mounds
and at last to break forth, spreading itself far along the frozen
surface of the river. At times it may be seen gushing out like an
artesian well, rising three or four feet above the surface of the ice,
until the pressure is relieved. Sometimes for many miles at a stretch
the whole river will be covered with a succession of such overflows,
from two or three inches deep to eight or ten, or even twelve; some just
bursting forth, some partially frozen, some resolved into solid "glare"
ice. Thus the surface of the river is continually renewed the whole
winter through, and a section of the ice crust in the spring would show
a series of laminations; here ice upon ice, there ice upon
half-incorporated snow, that mark the successive inundations.
This explanation has been given at length because of the large part that
the phenomenon plays in the difficulty and danger of winter travel, and
because it seems hard to make those who are not familiar with it
understand it. At first sight it would seem that after a week or ten
days of fifty-below-zero weather, for instance, all water everywhere
would be frozen into quiescence for the rest of the winter. Throw a
bucket of water into the air, and it is frozen solid as soon as it
reaches the ground. There would be no more trouble, one would think,
with water. Yet some of the worst trouble the traveller has with
overflow water is during very cold weather, and it is then, of course,
that there is the greatest danger of frost-bite in getting one's feet
wet. Water-proof footwear, therefore, becomes one of the "musher's"
great concerns and difficulties. The best water-proof footwear is the
Esquimau mukluk, not easily obtainable in the interior of Alaska, but
the mukluk is an inconvenient footwear to put snow-shoes on. Rubber
boots or shoes of any kind are most uncomfortable things to travel in.
Nothing equals the moccasin on the trail, nothing is so good to
snow-shoe in. The well-equipped traveller has moccasins for dry trails
and mukluks for wet trails--and even then may sometimes get his feet
wet. Nor are his own feet his only consideration; his dogs' feet are,
collectively, as important as his own. When the dog comes out of water
into snow again the snow collects and freezes between the toes, and if
not removed will soon cause a sore and lameness. Then a dog moccasin
must be put on and the foot continually nursed and doctored. When
several dogs of a team are thus affected, it may be with several feet
each, the labour and trouble of travel are greatly increased.
So, whenever his dogs have been through water, the careful musher will
stop and go all down the line, cleaning out the ice and snow from their
feet with his fingers. Four interdigital spaces per foot make sixteen
per dog, and with a team of six dogs that means ninety-six several
operations with the bare hand (if it be done effectually) every time the
team gets into an overflow. The dogs will do it for themselves if they
are given time, tearing out the lumps of ice with their teeth; but,
inasmuch as they usually feel conscientiously obliged to eat each lump
as they pull it out, it takes much longer, and in a short daylight there
is little time to spare if the day's march is to be made.
[Sidenote: "OVERFLOW" ICE]
We found overflow almost as soon as we reached the Chatanika River, and
in one form or another we encountered it during all the two days and a
half that we were pursuing the river's windings. At times it was covered
with a sheet of new ice that would support the dogs but would not
support the sled, so that the dogs were travelling on one level and the
sled on another, and a man had to walk along in the water between the
dogs and the sled for several hundred yards at a time, breaking down the
overflow ice with his feet.
At other times the thin sheets of overflow ice would sway and bend as
the sled passed quickly over them in a way that gives to ice in such
condition its Alaskan name of "rubber-ice," while for the fifteen or
twenty miles of McManus Creek, the headwaters of the Chatanika, we had
continuous stretches of fine glare ice with enough frost crystals upon
it from condensing moisture to give a "tooth" to the dogs' feet, just as
varnish on a photographic negative gives tooth to the retouching pencil.
Perfectly smooth ice is a very difficult surface for dogs to pass over;
glare ice slightly roughened by frost deposit makes splendid, fast
going.
Eighty-five miles or so from Fairbanks, and just about half-way to
Circle, the watercourse is left and the first summit is the
"Twelve-Mile," as it is called. We tried hard to take our load up at one
trip, but found it impossible to do so, and had to unlash the sled and
take half the load at a time, caching it on the top while we returned
for the other half.
It took us half a day to get our load to the top of the Twelve-Mile
summit, a rise of about one thousand three hundred feet from the creek
bed as the aneroid gave it. In the steeper pitches we had to take the
axe and cut steps, so hard and smooth does the incessant wind at these
heights beat the snow, and on our second trip to the top we were just in
time to rescue a roll of bedding that had been blown from the cache and
was about to descend a gully from which we could hardly have recovered
it.
This summit descended, we were in Birch Creek water, and had we followed
the watercourse would have reached the Yukon; but we would have
travelled hundreds of miles and would have come out below Fort Yukon,
while we were bound for Circle City. So there was another and a yet more
difficult summit to cross before we could descend the Yukon slope. We
were able to hire a man and two dogs to help us over the Eagle summit,
so that the necessity of relaying was avoided. One man ahead continually
calling to the dogs, eight dogs steadily pulling, and two men behind
steadily pushing, foot by foot, with many stoppages as one bench after
another was surmounted, we got the load to the top at last, a rise of
one thousand four hundred feet in less than three miles. A driving
snow-storm cut off all view and would have left us at a loss which way
to proceed but for the stakes that indicated it.
The descent was as anxious and hazardous as the ascent had been
laborious. The dogs were loosed and sent racing down the slope. With a
rope rough-lock around the sled runners, one man took the gee pole and
another the handle-bars and each spread-eagled himself through the loose
deep snow to check the momentum of the sled, until sled and men turned
aside and came to a stop in a drift to avoid a steep, smooth pitch. The
sled extricated, it was poised on the edge of the pitch and turned loose
on the hardened snow, hurtling down three or four hundred feet until it
buried itself in another drift. The dogs were necessary to drag it from
this drift, and one had to go down and bring them up. Then again they
were loosed, and from bench to bench the process was repeated until the
slope grew gentle enough to permit the regulation of the downward
progress by the foot-brake.
[Sidenote: "SUMMITS"]
The Eagle summit is one of the most difficult summits in Alaska. The
wind blows so fiercely that sometimes for days together its passage is
almost impossible. No amount of trail making could be of much help, for
the snow smothers up everything on the lee of the hill, and the end of
every storm presents a new surface and an altered route. A "summit" in
this Alaskan sense is, of course, a saddle between peaks, and in this
case there is no easier pass and no way around. The only way to avoid
the Eagle summit, without going out of the district altogether, would be
to tunnel it.
The summit passed, we found better trails and a more frequented country,
for in this district are a number of creeks that draw supplies from
Circle City, and that had been worked ten years or more.
At the time of the Klondike stampede of 1896-97, Circle City was already
established as a flourishing mining camp and boasted itself the largest
log-cabin town in the world. Before the Klondike drew away its people as
a stronger magnet draws iron filings from a lesser one, Circle had a
population of about three thousand. Take a town of three thousand and
reduce it to thirty or forty, and it is hard to resist the melancholy
impression which entrance upon it in the dusk of the evening brings.
There lay the great white Yukon in the middle distance; beyond it the
Yukon Flats, snow-covered, desolate, stretched away enormously, hedged
here at their beginning by grey, dim hills. Spread out in the foreground
were the little, squat, huddling cabins that belonged to no one, with
never a light in a window or smoke from a chimney, the untrodden snow
drifted against door and porch. It would be hard to imagine a drearier
prospect, and one had the feeling that it was a city of the dead rather
than merely a dead city.
The weather had grown steadily colder since we reached the Yukon slope,
and for two days before reaching Circle the thermometer had stood
between 40 deg. and 50 deg. below zero. It was all right for us to push on, the
trail was good and nearly all down-hill, and there were road-houses
every ten or twelve miles. Freighters, weather-bound, came to the doors
as we passed by with our jangle of bells and would raise a somewhat
chechaco pride in our breasts by remarking: "You don't seem to care what
weather you travel in!" The evil of it was that the perfectly safe
travelling between Eagle Creek and Circle emboldened us to push on from
Circle under totally different conditions, when travelling at such low
temperatures became highly dangerous and brought us into grave
misadventure that might easily have been fatal catastrophe.
Our original start was a week later than had been planned and we had
made no time, but rather lost it, on this first division of the journey.
If we were to reach Bettles on the Koyukuk River for Christmas, there
was no more time to lose, and I was anxious to spend the next Sunday at
Fort Yukon, three days' journey away. So we started for Fort Yukon on
Thursday, the 7th of December, the day after we reached Circle.
[Sidenote: THE YUKON FLATS]
A certain arctic traveller has said that "adventures" always imply
either incompetence or ignorance of local conditions, and there is some
truth in the saying. Our misadventure was the result of a series of
mistakes, no one of which would have been other than discreditable to
men of more experience. Our course lay for seventy-five miles through
the Yukon Flats, which begin at Circle and extend for two hundred and
fifty miles of the river's course below that point. The Flats constitute
the most difficult and dangerous part of the whole length of the Yukon
River, summer or winter, and the section between Circle City and Fort
Yukon is the most difficult and dangerous part of the Flats. Save for a
"portage" or land trail of eighteen or twenty miles out of Circle, the
trail is on the river itself, which is split up into many channels
without salient landmarks. The current is so swift that many stretches
run open water far into the winter, and blow-holes are numerous. There
is little travel on the Flats in winter, and a snow-storm accompanied by
wind may obliterate what trail there is in an hour. The vehicle used in
the Flats is not a sled but a toboggan, and our first mistake was in not
conforming to local usage in this respect. There is always a very good
reason for local usage about snow vehicles. But a toboggan which had
been ordered from a native at Fort Yukon would be waiting for us, and
it seemed not worth while to go to the expense of buying another merely
for three days' journey.
The second mistake was in engaging a boy as guide instead of a man. He
was an attractive youth of about fourteen who had done good service at
the Circle City mission the previous winter, when our nurse-in-charge
was contending single-handed against an epidemic of diphtheria. He was a
pleasant boy, with some English, who wanted to go and professed
knowledge of the route. The greatest mistake of all was starting out
through that lonely waste with the thermometer at 52 deg. below zero. The
old-timers in Alaska have a saying that "travelling at 50 deg. below is all
right as long as it's all right." If there be a good trail, if there be
convenient stopping-places, if nothing go wrong, one may travel without
special risk and with no extraordinary discomfort at 50 deg. below zero and
a good deal lower. I have since that time made a short day's run at 62 deg.
below, and once travelled for two or three hours on a stretch at 65 deg.
below. But there is always more or less chance in travelling at low
temperatures, because a very small thing may necessitate a stop, and a
stop may turn into a serious thing. At such temperatures one must keep
going. No amount of clothing that it is possible to wear on the trail
will keep one warm while standing still. For dogs and men alike,
constant brisk motion is necessary; for dogs as well as men--even though
dogs will sleep outdoors in such cold without harm--for they cannot take
as good care of themselves in the harness as they can when loose. A
trace that needs mending, a broken buckle, a snow-shoe string that must
be replaced, may chill one so that it is impossible to recover one's
warmth again. The bare hand cannot be exposed for many seconds without
beginning to freeze; it is dangerous to breathe the air into the lungs
for any length of time without a muffler over the mouth.
Our troubles began as soon as we started. The trail was a narrow,
winding toboggan track of sixteen or seventeen inches, while our sled
was twenty inches wide, so that one runner was always dragging in the
loose snow, and that meant slow, heavy going.
[Sidenote: SUNRISE AND SUNSET]
The days were nearing the shortest of the year, when, in these
latitudes, the sun does but show himself and withdraw again. But,
especially in very cold weather, which is nearly always very clear
weather, that brief appearance is preceded by a feast of rich, delicate
colour. First a greenish glow on the southern horizon, brightening into
lemon and then into clear primrose, invades the deep purple of the
starry heavens. Then a beautiful circle of blush pink above a circle of
pure amethyst gradually stretches all around the edge of the sky, slowly
brightening while the stars fade out and the heavens change to blue. The
dead white mirror of the snow takes every tint that the skies display
with a faint but exquisite radiance. Then the sun's disk appears with a
flood of yellow light but with no appreciable warmth, and for a little
space his level rays shoot out and gild the tree tops and the distant
hills. The snow springs to life. Dead white no longer, its dry,
crystalline particles glitter in myriads of diamond facets with every
colour of the prism. Then the sun is gone, and the lovely circle of rose
pink over amethyst again stretches round the horizon, slowly fading
until once more the pale primrose glows in the south against the purple
sky with its silver stars. Thus sunrise and sunset form a continuous
spectacle, with a purity of delicate yet splendid colour that only
perfectly dry atmosphere permits. The primrose glow, the heralding
circle, the ball of orange light, the valedictory circle, the primrose
glow again, and a day has come and gone. Air can hold no moisture at all
at these low temperatures, and the skies are cloudless.
[Sidenote: AN ESCAPADE ON THE YUKON]
Moreover, in the wilds at 50 deg. below zero there is the most complete
silence. All animal life is hidden away. Not a rabbit flits across the
trail; in the absolutely still air not a twig moves. A rare raven passes
overhead, and his cry, changed from a hoarse croak to a sweet liquid
note, reverberates like the musical glasses. There is no more delightful
sound in the wilderness than this occasional lapse into music of the
raven. We wound through the scrub spruce and willow and over the
niggerhead swamps, a faint tinkle of bells, a little cloud of steam; for
in the great cold the moisture of the animals' breath hangs over their
heads in the still air, and on looking back it stands awhile along the
course at dogs' height until it is presently deposited on twigs and
tussocks. We wound along, a faint tinkle of bells, a little cloud of
steam, and in the midst of the cloud a tousle of shaggy black-and-white
hair and red-and-white pompons--going out of the dead silence behind
into the dead silence before. The dusk came, and still we plodded and
pushed our weary way, swinging that heavy sled incessantly, by the gee
pole in front and the handle-bars behind, in the vain effort to keep it
on the trail. Two miles an hour was all that we were making. We had come
but thirteen or fourteen miles out of twenty-four, and it was dark; and
it grew colder.
The dogs whined and stopped every few yards, worn out by wallowing in
the snow and the labour of the collar. The long scarfs that wrapped our
mouths and noses had been shifted and shifted, as one part after another
became solid with ice from the breath, until over their whole length
they were stiff as boards. After two more miles of it it was evident
that we could not reach the mail cabin that night. Then I made my last
and worst mistake. We should have stopped and camped then and there. We
had tent and stove and everything requisite. But the native boy insisted
that the cabin was "only little way," and any one who knows the misery
of making camp in extremely cold weather, in the dark, will understand
our reluctance to do so.
I decided to make a cache of the greater part of our load--tent and
stove and supplies generally--and to push on to the cabin with but the
bedding and the grub box, returning for the stuff in the morning. And,
since in the deepest depths of blundering there is a deeper still, by
some one's carelessness, but certainly by my fault, the axe was left
behind in the cache.
With our reduced burden we made better progress, and in a short time
reached the end of the portage and came out on the frozen river, just as
the moon, a day or two past the full, rose above the opposite bank. One
sees many strange distortions of sun and moon in this land, but never
was a stranger seen than this. Her disk, shining through the dense air
of the river bottom, was in shape an almost perfect octagon, regular as
though it had been laid off with dividers and a ruler.
We were soon in doubt about the trail. The mail-carrier had gone down
only two or three times this winter and each time had taken a different
route, as more and more of the river closed and gave him more and more
direct passage. A number of Indians had been hunting, and their tracks
added to the tangle of trails. Presently we entered a thick mist that
even to inexperienced eyes spoke of open water or new ice yet moist. So
heavy was the vapour that to the man at the handle-bars the man at the
gee pole loomed ghostly, and the man ahead of the dogs could not be
distinguished at all. We had gone so much farther than our native boy
had declared we had to go that we began to fear that in the confusion of
trails we had taken the wrong one and had passed the cabin. That is the
tenderfoot's, or, as we say, the chechaco's, fear; it is the one thing
that it may almost be said never happens. But the boy fell down
completely and was frankly at a loss. All we could get out of him was:
"May-be-so we catch cabin bymeby, may-be-so no." If we had passed the
cabin it was twenty odd miles to the next; and it grew colder and the
dogs were utterly weary again, prone upon the trail at every small
excuse for a stop, only to be stirred by the whip, heavily wielded.
Surely never men thrust themselves foolhardily into worse predicament!
Then I made my last mistake. Dimly the bank loomed through the mist, and
I said: "We can't go any farther; I think we've missed the trail and I'm
going across to yon bank to see if there's a place to camp." I had not
gone six steps from the trail when the ice gave way under my feet and I
found myself in water to my hips.
[Sidenote: AN ESCAPADE ON THE YUKON]
Under Providence I owe it to the mukluks I wore, tied tight round my
knees, that I did not lose my life, or at least my feet. The thermometer
at Circle City stood at 60 deg. below zero at dark that day, and down on the
ice it is always about 5 deg. colder than on the bank, because cold air is
heavy air and sinks to the lowest level, and 65 deg. below zero means 97 deg.
below freezing.
My moose-hide breeches froze solid the moment I scrambled out, but not a
drop of water got to my feet. If the water had reached my feet they
would have frozen almost as quickly as the moose hide in that fearful
cold. Thoroughly alarmed now, and realising our perilous situation, we
did the only thing there was to do--we turned the dogs loose and
abandoned the sled and went back along the trail we had followed as fast
as we could. We knew that we could safely retrace our steps and that the
trail would lead us to the bank after a while. We knew not where the
trail would lead us in the other direction. As a matter of fact, it led
to the mail cabin, two miles farther on, and the mail-carrier was at
that time occupying it at the end of his day's run.
The dogs stayed with the sled; dogs will usually stay with their sled;
they seem to recognise their first allegiance to the load they haul,
probably because they know their food forms part of it.
Our cache reached, we made a fire, thawed out the iron-like armour of my
leather breeches, and cutting a spare woollen scarf in two, wrapped the
dry, warm pieces about my numbed thighs. Then we pushed on the eighteen
miles or so to Circle, keeping a steady pace despite the drowsiness that
oppressed us, and that oppressed me particularly owing to the chill of
my ducking. About five in the morning we reached the town, and the
clergyman, the Reverend C. E. Rice, turned out of his warm bed and I
turned in, none the worse in body for the experience, but much humbled
in spirit. My companion, Mr. E. J. Knapp, whose thoughtful care for me I
always look back upon with gratitude, as well as upon Mr. Rice's
kindness, froze his nose and a toe slightly, being somewhat neglectful
of himself in his solicitude for me.
We had been out about twenty hours in a temperature ranging from 52 deg. to
60 deg. below zero, had walked about forty-four miles, labouring incessantly
as well as walking, what time we were with the sled, with nothing to
eat--it was too cold to stop for eating--and, in addition to this, one
of us had been in water to the waist, yet none of us took any harm. It
was a providential overruling of blundering foolhardiness for which we
were deeply thankful.
The next day a native with a fast team and an empty toboggan was sent
down to take our load on to the cabin and bring the dogs back.
Meanwhile, the mail-carrier had passed the spot, had seen the abandoned
sled standing by recently broken ice, and had come on into town while we
slept and none knew of our return, with the news that some one had been
drowned. The mail for Fairbanks did but await the mail from Fort Yukon,
and the town rumour, instantly identifying the abandoned sled, was
carried across to Fairbanks, to my great distress and annoyance. The
echoes of the distorted account of this misadventure which appeared in a
Fairbanks newspaper still reverberate in "patent insides" of the
provincial press of the United States.
[Sidenote: FORT YUKON ]
The next Monday we started again, this time with a toboggan and with a
man instead of a boy for guide, and in three days of only moderate
difficulty we reached Fort Yukon.
Fort Yukon, though it holds no attraction for the ordinary visitor or
the summer tourist on the river, is a place of much interest to those
who know the history of Alaska. While it is purely a native village,
with no white population save the traders and the usual sprinkling of
men that hang around native villages, it is yet the oldest white man's
post on the Yukon River, save the post established by the Russians at
Nulato, five or six hundred miles lower down. The Hudson Bay Company
established itself here in 1846, and that date serves as the year one
in making calculations and determining ages to this day. It is a fixed
point in time that every native knows of. Any old man can tell you
whether he was born before or after that date, and, if before, can pick
out some boy that is about the age he was when the event occurred. The
massacre at Nulato in 1851 serves in a similar way for the lower river.
After the Purchase, and the determination of the longitude of Fort Yukon
by Mr. Raymond in 1869--who made the first steamboat journey up the
Yukon on that errand--the Hudson Bay Company moved three times before
they succeeded in getting east of the 141st meridian, and at the point
reached on the third move, the New Rampart House on the Porcupine River,
only a few hundred yards beyond the boundary-line, they remained until
the gold excitement on the Yukon and the journeying of the natives to
new posts on that river rendered trading unprofitable; then they
withdrew to the Mackenzie. The oldest white men's graves in Alaska,
again with the exception of Nulato, are those in the little Hudson Bay
cemetery near Fort Yukon.
[Sidenote: ARCHDEACON MACDONALD ]
Fort Yukon is also the site of the oldest missionary station on the
river, unless there were earlier visits of Russian priests to the lower
river, of which there seems no record, for in 1862 there was a clergyman
of the Church of England at this place. Archdeacon MacDonald was a
remarkable man. Married to a native wife, he translated the whole Bible
and the Book of Common Prayer into the native tongue, and his
translations are in general use on the upper river to this day. He
reduced the language to writing, extracted its grammar, taught the
Indians to read and write their own tongue, and dignified it by the gift
of the great literature of the sacred books. The language is, of course,
a dying one--English is slowly superseding it--but it seems safe to say
that for a generation or two yet to come it will be the basis of the
common speech of the people and the language of worship. It is chiefly
in matters of trading and handicrafts that English is taking its place,
though here as elsewhere it stands to the discredit of the civilised
race that blackguard English is the first English that is learned.
There seems ground to question whether the substitution of a smattering
of broken English for the flexibility and picturesque expressiveness of
an indigenous tongue, thoroughly understood, carries with it any great
intellectual gain, though to suggest such a doubt is treason to some
minds. The time threatens when all the world will speak two or three
great languages, when all little tongues will be extinct and all little
peoples swallowed up, when all costume will be reduced to a dead level
of blue jeans and shoddy and all strange customs abolished. The world
will be a much less interesting world then; the spice and savour of the
ends of the earth will be gone. Nor does it always appear unquestionable
that the world will be the better or the happier. The advance of
civilisation would be a great thing to work for if we were quite sure
what we meant by it and what its goal is. To the ordinary government
school-teacher in Alaska, with some notable exceptions, it seems to
mean chiefly teaching the Indians to call themselves Mr. and Mrs. and
teaching the women to wear millinery, with a contemptuous attitude
toward the native language and all native customs. The less intelligent
grade of missionary sometimes falls into the same easy rut. So letters
pass through the post-offices addressed: "Mr. Pretty Henry," "Mrs.
Monkey Bill," "Miss Sally Shortandirty"; so, occasionally, the grotesque
spectacle may present itself, to the passengers on a steamer, of a
native woman in a "Merry Widow" hat and a blood-stained parkee gutting
salmon on the river bank.
The nobler ideal, as it seems to some of us, is to labour for
God-fearing, self-respecting Indians rather than imitation white men and
white women. An Indian who is honest, healthy and kindly, skilled in
hunting and trapping, versed in his native Bible and liturgy, even
though he be entirely ignorant of English and have acquired no taste for
canned fruit and know not when Columbus discovered America, may be very
much of a man in that station of life in which it has pleased God to
call him.
Christmas and the Fourth of July are the Indian's great holidays, the
one just after the best moose hunting and the other just before the
salmon run. It may be supposed that there were always great feasts at
the winter and summer solstices, though now he is sufficiently devout at
the one and patriotic at the other. At these seasons, and for weeks
before and after, Fort Yukon gathers a large number of Indians. It is
the native metropolis of the country within a radius of a hundred
miles, and what may be termed its permanent population of one hundred
and fifty is doubled and sometimes trebled by contingents from the
Chandalar, the Porcupine, and the Black Rivers, from that long river
called Birch Creek, and all the intervening country. Many families of
the "uncivilised," self-respecting kind, to which reference has been
made, come in from outlying points, and the contrast between them and
their more sophisticated kinfolk of the town is all in their favour.
[Sidenote: JIMMY]
Such a gathering had already taken place in preparation for the
Christmas holidays when we reached Fort Yukon on the 15th of December.
It would have been pleasant to spend Christmas with them, but we were
due two hundred and fifty miles away, at Bettles, for that feast, if by
any means we could get there. So we lingered but the two days necessary
to equip ourselves. Jimmy had torn our bedding to pieces on the night of
the mishap; it was lashed on the outside of the load, and he had
scratched and clawed it to make a nest for himself until fur from the
robe and feathers from the quilts were all over the trail. The other
dogs, not so warmly coated as he, had been content to sleep in the snow.
Jimmy's character was gradually revealing itself. A well-bred trail dog
will not commit the canine sacrilege of invading the sled. That is a
"Siwash" dog's trick. So there was fresh bedding to manufacture, as well
as supplies for two hundred miles to get together.
A mail once a month went at that time from Fort Yukon to the Koyukuk,
and there was little other travel. The course lay fifty or sixty miles
across country to the Chandalar River, about one hundred miles up that
stream, and then across a divide to the South Fork of the Koyukuk, and
across another to the Middle Fork, on which Coldfoot is situated. It is
not possible to procure any supplies, save sometimes a little fish for
dog food and that not certainly, between Fort Yukon and Coldfoot, so
that provision for the whole journey must be taken.
[Sidenote: THE CHANDALAR]
A new Indian guide had been engaged as far as Coldfoot, and we set
out--three men, two toboggans, and seven dogs; four on the larger
vehicle and three on the smaller, one of the dogs brought by our guide.
Three miles from Fort Yukon we crossed the Porcupine River and then
plunged into the wilderness of lake and swamp and forest that stretches
north of the Yukon. A portage trail, as such a track across country is
called to distinguish it from a river trail, has the advantage of such
protection from storm as its timbered stretches afford. For miles and
miles the route passes through scrub spruce that has been burned over,
with no prospect but a maze of charred poles against the snow, some
upright, others at every angle of inclination. Then comes a lake, with
difficulty in finding the trail on its wind-swept surface and sometimes
much casting about to discover where it leaves the lake again, and then
more small burned timber. Wherever the route is through woods, living or
dead, it is blazed; when it strikes the open, one is often at a loss.
After three or four days of such travel, sometimes reaching an old cabin
for the night, sometimes pitching the tent, one is rejoiced at the
sight of distant mountains and at the intimation they bring that the
inexpressible dreariness of the Yukon Flats is nearly past; and
presently the trail opens suddenly upon the broad Chandalar.
The Hudson Bay voyageurs are responsible for many names in this part of
Alaska, and Chandalar is a corruption of their "Gens de large." The
various native tribes received appellations indicating habitats. A tribe
that differed from most northern Indians, in having no permanent
villages and in living altogether in encampments, was named "Gens de
large," and the river which they frequented took their name.
It is one of the second-rate tributaries of the Yukon, and in general
its waters are swift and shallow, not navigable for light-draught
steamboats for more than one hundred and fifty miles, save at flood, and
not easily navigable at all. It is these swift shallow streams that are
so formidable in winter on account of overflow water, and the Chandalar
is one of the most dreaded.
[Sidenote: DIPHTHERIA]
Ten miles along the river's surface brought us to the Chandalar native
village, a settlement of half a dozen cabins and twenty-five or thirty
souls. The people came out to meet us, and said they were just about to
bury a baby, and asked me to conduct the funeral. Because we had not
done a day's march and were under compulsion to push on at our best
speed, I did not unlash the sled but went just as I was up the hill with
the sorrowful procession to the little graveyard. On the way down I
asked as best I could of what sickness the baby had died, and I felt
some uneasiness when the throat was pointed to as the seat of disease.
When, presently, I was informed that two others were sick, and of the
same complaint, my uneasiness became alarm. I went at once to see them,
and the angry swollen throats patched with white membrane which I
discovered left no room for doubt that we were in the presence of
another outbreak of diphtheria. That disease had scourged the Yukon in
the two preceding years. Twenty-three children died at Fort Yukon in the
summer of 1904, half a dozen at Circle in the following winter, though
that outbreak was grappled with from the first; and all along the river
the loss of life was terrible.
There was no question that we must give up all hope of reaching Bettles
for Christmas and stay and do what we could for these people. So we made
camp on the outskirts of the village, and I went to work swabbing out
the throats with carbolic acid and preparing liquid food from our grub
box. There was nothing to eat in the village but dried fish and a little
dried moose, and these throats like red-hot iron could hardly swallow
liquids. The two patients were a boy of sixteen and a grown woman. It
was evident that unless we could isolate them the disease would probably
pass through the whole village, and, indeed, others might have been
infected already. It was likely that we were in for a siege of it, and
our supply of condensed milk and extract of beef would soon be
exhausted. Moreover, at Fort Yukon was the trained nurse who had coped
with the epidemic there and at Circle, while we had virtually no
experience with the disease at all. It was resolved to send back to Fort
Yukon for supplies and for the nurse.
The next morning Mr. Knapp and the native boy took the dogs and the sled
and started back. With no load save a little grub and bedding, they
could make the journey in two days, a day must be allowed for
preparations, and, with the aid of another dog team, two days more would
bring them back. Five days was the least they could be gone. It was
asking a great deal of this lady to abandon her Christmas festival,
preparations for which had long been making, and to come sixty-five
miles through the frozen wilderness in a toboggan; but I felt sure she
would drop everything and come.
For those five days I was busied in close attention to the patients and
in strenuous though not altogether availing efforts to maintain a
quarantine of the cabin in which they lay. There was little more that I
could do than swab out the throats and administer food every two hours.
As the disease advanced it was increasingly painful to swallow and
exceedingly difficult to induce the sufferers to make the attempt or to
open their mouths for the swabbing. After two or three days the woman
seemed to have passed the crisis of the disease and to be mending, but
the boy, I thought, grew worse. One becomes attached to those to whom
one ministers, and this poor, speechless boy, with his terrible throat
and the agony in his big black eyes, appealed to me very strongly
indeed. It was torture to move his head or to open his mouth, and I had
to torture him continually.
Every night I gathered the people for Divine service. Here was a little
community far off in the wilds that had carefully conserved and handed
on to their children the teaching they had received no less than thirty
years before. The native Bibles and prayer-books and hymnals were
brought out, bearing dates of publication in the seventies; one of their
number acted as leader, and what he read was painfully followed in the
well-thumbed books. They lifted their voices in a weird transformation
of familiar tunes, with quavers and glides that had crept in through
long, uncorrected use, and amongst the prayers said was one for "Our
Sovereign lady Queen Victoria, and Albert Edward, Prince of Wales." I
tried to explain that Queen Victoria was dead, that they were not living
under British rule, and I took a pencil and struck out the prayers for
the royal family from the books. But there was doubt in their minds and
a reluctance to alter in any particular the liturgy that had been taught
them, and it is quite likely that intercessions for a defunct sovereign
of another land still arise from the Chandalar village. One cannot but
feel a deep admiration for the pioneer missionaries of this
region--Bishop Bompas, Archdeacon MacDonald, and the others--whose
teaching was so thorough and so lasting, and who lived and laboured here
long before any gold seeker had thought of Alaska, when the country was
an Indian country exclusively, with none of the comforts and
conveniences that can now be enjoyed. It was to a remote cabin on the
East Fork of this river that Archdeacon MacDonald retired for a year to
make part of his translation of the Bible, according to the Indian
account.
[Sidenote: THE SHORTEST DAY]
At noon on the 21st of December, the shortest day, there is a note in my
diary that I saw the sun's disk shining through the trees. Although
fully half a degree of latitude north of the Arctic Circle, the
refraction is sufficient to lift his whole sphere above the horizon. One
speculates how much farther north it would be possible to see any part
of the sun at noon on the shortest day; but north of here, throughout
Alaska, is broken and mountainous country. We were on the northern edge
of the great flat of the interior.
The fifth day at the village was Christmas Eve. My boy was in a critical
condition, very low and weak, with a temperature that stayed around 101 deg.
and 102 deg.. As night approached I watched with the greatest anxiety for
the party from Fort Yukon, and, just as the last lingering glow of the
long twilight was fading from the south, there was a distant tinkle of
bells on the trail, and faintly once and again a man's voice was raised
in command and I knew that relief was at hand.
The nurse had dropped everything and had come, as I felt sure she would.
Gathering medicines and supplies and hiring a native dog team and
driver, she had left immediately, and the round trip had been made in
the shortest time it was possible to make it. It was a tremendous relief
to see her step out of the rugs and robes of the toboggan and take
charge of the situation in her quiet, competent way. A small, outlying
cabin was selected for a hospital, the family that occupied it bundled
out into a tent, and the two sick persons carefully moved into it, with
whom and the mother of the sick boy the nurse took up her abode. Then
there was the Christmas-tree in the chief's cabin, with little gifts for
the children sent out from the mission at Fort Yukon some time before,
and a dance afterward, for Christmas festivities must go on, whatever
happens, at a native village. I took James's pocket-knife to him after
the celebration was over, and I think he really tried to smile as he
thanked me with his eyes.
The next day after the services, although it was Christmas Day, we set
to work on the disinfecting of the large cabin in which the sick had
lain. Stringing bedclothes and wearing apparel on lines from wall to
wall, and stuffing up every crack and cranny with cotton, we burned
quantities of sulphur, that the nurse had brought with her, all day
long.
A recent article in a stray number of a professional journal picked up
in the office of a medical missionary, devoted column after column to
the uselessness of all known methods of disinfection. Sulphur,
formaldehyde, carbolic acid, permanganate of potash, chloride of lime,
bichloride of mercury--the author knew not which of these "fetiches" to
be most sarcastic about. It may be that the net result of our copious
fumigation was but the bleaching of the coloured garments hung up, but
at least it did no harm. One sometimes wishes that these scientists who
sit up so high in the seat of the scornful would condescend to a little
plain instruction.
The anti-diphtheritic serum is now kept in readiness at all our
missions in Alaska, and the disease seems to have ceased its
depredations; but it has taken terrible toll of the native people.
[Sidenote: THE MISSIONARY NURSE]
We wished to stay with the nurse until the sickness should be done, but
she would not hear of it, and insisted upon the resumption of our
journey. It did not seem right to go off and leave this lonely woman,
sixty-five miles from the nearest white person, to cope with an outbreak
of disease that might not yet have spent itself, although there had been
no new case for a week. "You've done your work here, now leave me to do
mine. You'll not get to Point Hope this winter if you stay much longer."
"Aren't you afraid to stay all by yourself?" I asked, somewhat
fatuously.
"Afraid? Afraid of what? You surely don't mean afraid of the natives?"
I did not know what I meant; it seemed not unnatural that a woman with
such prospect before her should be a little timid, but she was resolute
that we go, and we went.
Not until the next summer did I learn the upshot--both patients
recovered and there was no other case. Six years later, when these words
are written, I have just baptized a son of the boy who lay so ill, who
would have perished, I think, had we not reached the Chandalar village
just in time.