CHANDALAR VILLAGE TO BETTLES, COLDFOOT, AND THE KOYUKUK
AT five o'clock in the morning of the 27th of December, hours before any
kind of daylight, while the faint "pit-pat" of all-night dancing still
sounded from the chief's cabin, we dropped down the steep bank to the
river surface and resumed our journey. Ahead was a man with a candle in
a tin can, peering for the faint indications of the trail on the ice;
the other two were at the handle-bars of the toboggans. It is strange
that in this day of invention and improvement in artificial
illumination, a candle in a tin can is still the most dependable light
for the trail. A coal-oil lamp requires a glass which is easily broken,
and the ordinary coal-oil that comes to Alaska freezes at about 40 deg.
below. In very cold weather a coal-oil lantern full of oil will go out
completely from the freezing of its supply. All the various acetylene
lamps are useless because water is required to generate the gas, and
water may not be had without stopping and building a fire and melting
ice or snow. The electric flash-lamp, useful enough round camp, goes out
of operation altogether on the trail, because the "dry" cell that
supplies its current is not a dry cell at all, but a moist cell, and
when its moisture freezes is dead until it thaws out again. No extremity
of cold will stop a candle from burning, and if it be properly sheltered
by the tin can it will stand a great deal of wind. The "folding pocket
lantern," which is nothing but a convenient tin can with mica sides, is
the best equipment for travel, but an empty butter can or lard can is
sometimes easier to come by.
The Chandalar is wide-spread in these parts, with several channels, and
the trail was hard to follow. One track we pursued led us up a bank and
along a portage and presently stopped at a marten trap; and we had to
cut across to the river and cast about hither and thither on its broad
surface to find the mail trail.
[Sidenote: THE CHANDALAR GAP]
All the rivers that are confluent with the Yukon in the Flats enter that
dreary region through gaps in the mountains that bound the broad plain.
These gaps are noted for wind, and the Chandalar Gap, which had loomed
before us since daybreak, is deservedly in especial bad repute. The most
hateful thing in the Arctic regions is the wind. Cold one may protect
one's self against, but there is no adequate protection against wind.
The parkee without opening front or back, that pulls on over the head,
is primarily a windbreak, and when a scarf is wrapped around mouth and
nose, and the fur-edged hood of the parkee is pulled forward over cap
and scarf, the traveller who must face the wind has done all he can to
protect himself from it.
[Illustration: SUNRISE ON THE CHANDALAR-KOYUKUK PORTAGE.]
Unfortunately, in the confusion of striking the tent and packing in the
dark, my scarf had been rolled up in the bedding, and, since the wind
was not bad until we approached the Gap in the evening, I had not
troubled about it. Now, as we drew nearer and nearer, the wind rose
constantly. The thermometer was at 38 deg. below zero, and wind at that
temperature cuts like a knife. But to get my scarf meant stopping the
whole procession and unlashing and unloading the sled, and the man who
unlashed in that wind would almost certainly freeze his fingers. So I
gave up the thought of it, turned my back to the wind while I tied my
pocket handkerchief round mouth and nose, drew the strings of my parkee
hood close, and then faced it again to worry through as best I could.
The ice is always swept clear of snow in the Gap. The river narrows
within its jaws, the ragged rocks rise up to the bluffs on either hand,
and the blue-streaked ice stretches between. We all suffered a good
deal. Against that cruel wind it was impossible to keep warm. The hands,
though enclosed in woollen gloves, and they in blanket-lined moose-hide
mitts, grew numb; the toes, within their protection of caribou sock with
the hair on, strips of blanket wrapping, and mukluks stuffed with hay,
tingled with warning of frost-bite; the whole body was chilled. We all
froze our faces, I think, for the part of the face around and between
the eyes cannot be covered. I froze my cheeks, my nose, and my Adam's
apple, the last a most inconvenient thing to freeze.
[Illustration: COLDFOOT ON THE KOYUKUK.]
[Sidenote: A COLD LODGING]
The cabin was just the other side of the Gap, and it was well that it
was no farther, for we were weary with our thirty-mile run and
dangerously cold with the exposure of the last hour. It was rather a
large cabin as trail cabins go, with a rickety sheet-iron stove in the
middle, burned full of holes, and it was hours before the fire began to
make any impression on the obstinate, sullen cold of that hut. When we
went to bed the frost still stood thick and heavy on the walls all over
the room. A log building, properly constructed, is a warm building, but
slowness in parting with heat means slowness in receiving heat, and a
log cabin that has been unoccupied for a long time in very cold weather
is hard to heat in one evening.
When we started next morning the thermometer stood at 45 deg. below zero,
but we were out of the wind region and did not mind the cold. It is
curious that a few miles on either side of that Gap the air will be
still, while in the Gap itself a gale is blowing. Seven times I have
passed through that Gap and only once without wind. The great Flats were
now behind us, we had passed into the mountains, and for the remainder
of our long journey we should scarce ever be out of sight of mountains
again. Up the river, with its constant trouble of overflow, going around
the open water whenever we could, plunging through it in our mukluks
when it could not be avoided--with the care of the dogs' feet that the
cold weather rendered more than ever necessary when they got wet, and
the added nuisance of throwing the toboggans on their sides and beating
the ice from them with the flat of the axe wherever water had been
passed through--for two days we followed its windings, the thermometer
between -45 deg. and -50 deg., the mountains rising higher and the scenery
growing more picturesque as we advanced. At the end of the second day
from the Gap we were at the mouth of the West Fork of the Chandalar, and
after passing up it for fifteen or sixteen miles we left that
watercourse to cross the mountains to the South Fork of the Koyukuk
River.
Then began hard labour again. A toboggan is not a good vehicle for
crossing summits. Its bottom is perfectly flat and smooth, polished like
glass by the friction of the snow. If the trail be at all "sidling" (and
mountain trails are almost always "sidling"), the toboggan swings off on
the side of the inclination and must be kept on the trail by main force.
The runners of a sled will grip the surface, if there be any
inequalities at all, but a toboggan swings now this way and now that,
like a great pendulum, dragging the near dogs with it. Again and again
we had to hitch both teams to one toboggan to get up a sidling pitch
while all hands kept the vehicle on the trail, and our progress was
painful and slow. In soft snow on a level surface like the river bed or
through the Flat country, generally, the toboggan is much the more
convenient vehicle, for it rides over the snow instead of ploughing
through it, but on hard snow anywhere or on grades the toboggan is a
nuisance. Thus wallowing through the deep snow at the side of the
toboggans to hold them in place we sweated and slaved our way mile after
mile up the gradual ascent until we reached the spot, just under a
shoulder of the summit, where there was dry spruce and green spruce for
camping, the dry for fire and the green for couch, and there we halted
for the night.
[Sidenote: JOHN MUIR]
Next morning we crossed the low pass and dropped down easily into the
wide valley of the Koyukuk South Fork, with a fine prospect of mountains
everywhere as far as the eye could see. I had stood and gazed upon those
same mountains on my journey of the previous winter, my first winter in
Alaska, and had seen a most remarkable sight. As we began the descent
and a turn of the trail gave a new panorama of peaks I did not at first
realise the nature of the peculiar phenomenon I was gazing at. Each peak
had a fine, filmy, fan-shaped cloud stretching straight out from it into
the sky, waving and shimmering as it stretched. The sun was not above
the horizon, but his rays caught these sheer, lawn-like streamers and
played upon them with a most delicate opalescent radiance. Then all at
once came to my mind the recollection of a description in John Muir's
_Mountains of California_ (surely the finest mountain book ever written)
of the snow banners of the Sierra Nevada, and I knew that I was looking
at a similar spectacle. It meant that a storm was raging on high,
although so far we were sheltered from it. It meant that the dry,
sand-like snow of the mountain flanks was driven up those flanks so
fiercely before the wind that it was carried clean over them and beyond
them out into the sky, and still had such pressure behind it that it
continued its course and spread out horizontally, thinning and spreading
for maybe a mile before it lost all coherence and visibility. As far as
I could see mountain peaks I could see the snow banners, all pointing
one way, all waving, all luminous and shimmering in the sun-rays. It was
a very noble sight, and I gazed a long while entranced, not knowing how
ominous it was. When we reached the valley and left the shelter of the
gulch we struck the full force of that fearful gale, and for two days
and nights of incessant blizzard we lay in a hole dug out of a sand-bank
(for we had no tent that year), the trail lost, the grub box nearly
empty, and no fire possible to cook anything with had the grub box been
full.
The valley before us--to resume the narrative--is a high, wind-swept
region of niggerhead and swamp, the catch-basin of the South Fork of the
Koyukuk River. The trail descends one of its southern draws, follows up
the main valley awhile, crosses it, and leaves by one of its northern
draws to pass over the mountains that separate its drainage from the
main fork of the Koyukuk. The cold had given place to wind, and though
the gale did not approach the fierceness of last year's storm, it gave
great trouble in following the track. These high headwater basins are
always windy; the timber is scrubby spruce with many open places, and in
such open places the trail is soon obliterated altogether.
When the light fails this casting about for blazes whenever a clump of
spruce is reached becomes increasingly slow and difficult and at last
becomes hopeless. The general direction determined, it might be thought
that the traveller could ignore the tracks of previous passage and
strike out for himself, but he knows that the trail, however rough, is
at least practicable, whereas an independent course may soon lead to
steep gullies or cut banks, or may entangle him in some thicket that he
must resort to the axe to pass through. Moreover, even two or three
passages through the snow in the winter will give some bottom to a
trail; a bottom that, when the wind-swept areas are passed and the
snow-shoes are resumed, both he and his dogs will be thankful for.
[Sidenote: CAMP MAKING]
So we made a camp as it darkened to night, not far from the spot where I
had "siwashed" with an Indian companion the previous winter, the wind
blowing half a gale at 20 deg. below zero.
Making camp under such circumstances is always a very disagreeable
proceeding. It takes time and care to make a comfortable camp, and time
and care in the wind and the cold involve suffering. Two suitable trees
must be selected between which the tent is to be suspended by the
ridge-rope, and the snow must all be scraped away by the snow-shoes, or,
if it be too deep, beaten down. Then while one man unlashes and unpacks
the sleds, another cuts green spruce and lays it all over the tent
space, thicker and finer where the bed is to be. Then up goes the tent,
its corner ropes and its side strings made fast to boughs, if there be
such, or to stakes, or to logs laid parallel to the sides. Then the
stovepipe is jointed and the stove set up on the edge of green billets
properly shaped. Meanwhile the axe-man, the green boughs cut, has been
felling and splitting a dry tree for stove wood, and the whole
proceedings are rushed and hastened towards getting a fire in that
stove. Sometimes it is a question whether we shall get a fire before we
freeze our fingers or freeze our fingers before we get a fire. The fire
once going, we are safe, for however much more work there is in the
open, and there is always a good deal more, one can go to the tent to
get warm. Enough stove wood must be cut, not only for night and morning,
but for cooking the dog feed. The dog pot, filled with snow, into which
the fish are cut up, is put upon the outdoor fire as soon as man-supper
begins cooking in the tent. When it boils, the rice and tallow must be
added, and when the rice has boiled twenty minutes the whole is set
aside to cool. Meanwhile the two aluminum pots full of snow, replenished
from time to time as it melts, are put upon the stove in the tent as the
necessary preliminary to cooking. Sometimes ice, and more rarely water,
may be had, and then supper is hastened. If we are camped on the river
bank sometimes a steel-pointed rifle-bullet fired straight down into the
ice will penetrate to the water below and allow a little jet to bubble
up. Melting snow is a tedious business at best; but, since three times
out of four when camping it must be done, the aluminum pots are a
treasure. There is still work for every one as well as the cook. Snow
must be banked all round the tent to keep out the wind. Little heaps of
spruce boughs must be cut for the dogs' beds; it is all we can do for
them whatever the weather, and they appreciate it highly. It may be that
dog moccasins must be taken off and strung around the stove to dry, and
before supper is ready the inside ridge-rope of the tent is heavy with
all sorts of drying man-wear: socks, moccasins, scarfs, toques,
mittens. One of the earliest habits a man learns on the trail is to hang
up everything to dry as soon as he takes it off. Why should it be hung
up to dry unless it has got wet? the writer was once asked, in detailing
these operations. Because there is no other way to remove the ice with
which everything becomes incrusted in very cold weather.
[Sidenote: CAMP COOKING]
As his snow melts the cook throws into the pot a few handfuls of
evaporated potatoes, a handful of evaporated onions, and smaller
quantities of evaporated "soup vegetables," and leaves them to soak and
simmer and resume their original size and flavour. By and by he will cut
up the moose meat or the rabbits or birds, or whatever game he may have,
and throw it in, and in an hour or an hour and a half there will be a
savoury stew that, with a pan of biscuits cooked in an aluminum
reflector beside the stove and a big pot of tea, constitutes the
principal meal of the day. Or if the day has been long and sleep seems
more attractive even than grub, he will turn some frozen beans, already
boiled, into a frying-pan with a big lump of butter, and when his meat
is done supper is ready. Beans thus prepared eaten red hot with grated
cheese are delicious to a hungry man. With the stove for a sideboard,
food may always be eaten hot, and that is one advantage of camp fare.
The men satisfied, the dogs remain, and while two of the party wash
dishes and clean up, the third feeds the dogs. Their pot of food has
been cooling for an hour or more. They will not eat it until it is cold
and a mess of rice will hold heat a long time even in the coldest
weather. When it is nearly cold it is dished out with a paddle into the
individual pans and the dogs make short work of it. There are some who
feed straight fish, and, if the fish be king salmon of the best quality,
the dogs do well enough on it. But on any long run it is decidedly
economical to cook for the dogs--not so much from the standpoint of
direct cost as from that of weight and ease of hauling. An hundred
pounds of fish plus an hundred pounds of rice plus fifty pounds of
tallow will go a great deal farther than two hundred and fifty pounds of
fish alone. There is little doubt, too, that in the long run the dogs do
better on cooked food. It is easier of digestion and easier to apportion
in uniform rations. Rice and fish make excellent food. The Japs took
Port Arthur on rice and fish. The tallow answers a demand of the climate
and is increased as the weather grows colder. Man and dog alike require
quantities of fat food in this climate; it is astonishing how much bacon
and butter one can eat. When the dogs have eaten, and each one has made
the rounds of all the other pans to be sure nothing is left, they retire
to their respective nests of spruce bough and curl themselves up with
many turnings round and much rearranging of the litter. Feet and nose
are neatly tucked in, the tail is adjusted carefully over all, the hair
on the body stands straight up, and the dogs have gone to bed and do not
like to be disturbed again.
[Sidenote: DOG-HARNESS]
Therein lies the cruelty of depriving them of their tails, which used
to be the general custom in this country. The old tandem harness almost
required it, as the breath of the dog behind condensed upon the tail of
the dog in front until he was carrying around permanently a mass of ice
that was a burden to him and rendered his tail useless for warmth. But
the rig with a long mid rope, to which the dogs are attached by
single-trees in such manner that they may at will be hitched abreast or
one ahead of the other as the trail is wide or narrow, is superseding
the tandem rig, and one sees more bushy tails amongst the dogs. The
thick, long-haired tail of the dog in this country is indeed his
blanket, and in cold weather the tailless dog is at a great
disadvantage.
It was said that all the dogs retired to the nests of spruce bough; it
should have been all but one. It is Lingo's special charge to guard the
sled and his special privilege to sleep on it. Turning around and
curling up on the softest spot he can find of the unlashed and partly
unloaded toboggan, he will not touch anything it contains nor permit any
other dog to touch it.
The northern skies are clouded the next morning, the first day of the
new year, and there is a ruddy dawn that is glorious to behold. The
white earth gives back a soft rose tint, as an organ pipe gives back a
faint tone to the strong vibration of another pipe in pitch with it. We
shall not see the sun himself any more for many weeks, but we see his
light upon the flanks of the mountains for an hour or so around noon.
The bold, shapely peaks of the South Fork of the Koyukuk turn their
snows to pink fire as his rays slowly descend their sides, and the
whole scene is exquisitely beautiful. What a wonderful thing colour is!
When the skies are overcast this is a dead black-and-white country in
winter, for spruce, the prevailing wood, is black in the mass at a
little distance. Gaze where one will, there is naught but black and
white. The eye becomes tired of the monotony and longs for some warmer
tone. That is surely the reason why all those who live in the country
cherish some gay article of attire, why the natives love brilliant
handkerchiefs, why the white man also will choose a crimson scarf.
Trudging at the handle-bars, I have found pleasure in the red pompons of
the dogs' harness, in the gay beading of mitten and hind-sack. And that
is why a lavish feast of colour such as this dawn stirs one's spirit
with such keen delight. It gives life to a dead world.
But the wind is still bitter and interferes sadly with one's enjoyment.
All through the valley, up the creek by which we leave it, past the twin
lakes on the low summit, the wind grows in force, and when we leave
Slate Creek for the present and make a "portage" over a mountain
shoulder to strike the creek again much lower down, the wind has risen
to a gale that overturns the toboggans and makes the men fight for their
footing. The actual physical labour of it is enormous, and there can be
no rest; it is too bitterly cold in that blast to stop. For a mile or
two we struggle and slave to beat our way around that mountain shoulder
and then drop down to the creek again. The blessed relief it is to get
out of the fury of that wind into the comparative shelter of the creek,
to be done with the ceaseless toil of holding the heavy toboggans from
hurtling down the hillside, to be able to keep one's feet without
continually slipping and falling on the wind-hardened snow, no words can
adequately convey. We are all frozen again a little; this man's nose is
touched, that man's cheeks, and the other man's finger.
[Sidenote: THE KOYUKUK GOLD CAMP]
On the middle fork of the Koyukuk, at the mouth of Slate Creek, Coldfoot
sits within a cirque of rugged mountain peaks, the most northerly postal
town in the interior of Alaska, the most northerly gold-mining town in
the world, as it claims. It sprang into existence in 1900 and flourished
for a season or two with the usual accompaniments of such florification.
In 1906 it was already much decayed, and is now dead. Ever since its
start the Koyukuk camp has steadily produced gold and given occupation
to miners numbering from one hundred and fifty to three hundred, but the
scene of operations, and therefore the depot for supplies, has
continually changed. In 1900 the chief producing creek was Myrtle, which
is a tributary of Slate Creek, and the town at the mouth was in eligible
situation, though much over-built from the first. Then the centre of
interest shifted to Nolan Creek, fifteen miles farther up the river,
which is a tributary of Wiseman Creek, and the town of Wiseman sprang up
at the mouth of that creek. The post-office, the commissioner's office,
and the saloon, the stores and road-houses, migrated to the new spot,
and Coldfoot was abandoned. Now the chief producing creek is the Hammond
River, still farther up the Koyukuk, and if its placer deposits prove
as rich as they promise it is likely that a town will spring up at the
mouth of the Hammond which will supersede Wiseman.
There has never been found a continuous pay-streak in the Koyukuk camp.
It is what is known as a "pocket" camp. Now and again a "spot" is found
which enriches its discoverers, while on the claims above and below that
spot the ground may be too poor to work at a profit; for ground must be
rich to be worked at all in the Koyukuk. It is the most expensive camp
in Alaska, perhaps in the world. This is due to its remoteness and
difficulty of access. Far north of the Arctic Circle, the diggings are
about seventy-five miles above the head of light-draught steamboat
navigation, and more than six hundred miles above the confluence of the
Koyukuk with the Yukon. Transshipped at Nulato to the shoal-water
steamboats that make three or four trips a season up the Koyukuk,
transshipped again at Bettles, the head of any steamboat navigation,
freight must be hauled on horse scows the remaining seventy-five miles
of the journey; and all that handling and hauling means high rates. The
cost of living, the cost of machinery, the general cost of all mining
operations is much higher than on the Yukon or on the other tributaries
of that river. The very smallness of the camp is a factor in the high
prices, for there is not trade enough to induce brisk competition with
the reduction of rates that competition brings.
[Sidenote: MINERS' GENEROSITY]
Yet the smallness and the isolation of the camp have their
compensations. There is more community life, more _esprit de corps_
amongst the Koyukuk miners than will be found in any other camp in
Alaska. Thrown upon their own resources for amusement, social gatherings
are more common and are made more of, and hospitality is universal. Like
all sparsely settled and frontier lands, Alaska is a very hospitable
place in general, but the Koyukuk has earned the name of the most
hospitable camp in Alaska. Since the numbers are small, and each man is
well known to all the others, any sickness or suffering makes an
immediate appeal and brings a generous response. Again and again the
unfortunate victim of accident or disease has been sent outside for
treatment, the considerable money required being quickly raised by
public subscription. There is probably no other gold camp in the world
where it is a common thing for the owner of a good claim to tell a
neighbour who is "broke" to take a pan and go down to the drift and help
himself.
Until my visit of the previous year no minister of religion of any sort
had penetrated to the Koyukuk, and, save for one journey thither by
Bishop Rowe, my annual visits have been the only opportunities for
public worship since. It will suffice for the visit now describing as
well as for all the others to say that the reception was most cordial
and the opportunity much appreciated. We went from creek to creek and
gathered the men and the few women in whatever cabin was most
convenient, and no clergyman could wish for more attentive or interested
congregations.
[Illustration: THE UPPER KOYUKUK.]
Upon our return to Coldfoot from the creek visits the thermometer stood
at 52 deg. below zero, although it had been no lower than 38 deg. below when we
left the last creek, some fifteen miles away. As a general rule, the
temperature on these mountain creeks, which are at some considerable
elevation above the river into which they flow, will read from 10 deg. to
15 deg. higher than on the river, and if one climbed to the top of the peaks
around Coldfoot, the difference then would probably be 20 deg. or 25 deg.. At
the summit road-house between Fairbanks and Cleary City in the Tanana
country in cold weather the thermometer commonly reads 20 deg. above the one
place and 10 deg. or 15 deg. above the other.
[Illustration: THE BARREN SHORES OF KOTZEBUE SOUND.]
[Sidenote: LINGO]
This interesting fact, which surprises a good many people, for we are
used to think of elevated places as cold places, is due to the greater
heaviness of cold air, which sinks to the lowest level it can reach; and
the river bed is the lowest part of the country. It would be interesting
to find out to what extent this rule holds good. The ridges and the
hilltops are always the warmest places in cold weather; would this hold
as regards mountain tops?--as regards high mountain tops? Probably it
would hold in the sunshine, but the rapid radiation of heat in the
rarefied atmosphere of mountain tops would swing the balance the other
way after dark. There is no doubt, however, that the coldest place in
cold weather in Alaska is the river surface, and it is on the river
surface that most of our travelling is done. The night we returned to
Coldfoot we put our toboggan up high on the roof of an outhouse to keep
its skin sides from the teeth of some hungry native dogs, leaving some
of the load that was not required within it, covered by the sled
cloth. Later on I saw by the light of the moon Lingo's silhouetted
figure sitting bolt upright on top of the sled, and he gave his short
double bark as I drew near to make me notice that he was still doing his
duty although under difficulties. The dog had climbed up a wood-pile and
had jumped to the top of the outhouse and so to the sled. I thought of
Kipling's _Men That Fought at Minden_:
"For fatigue it was their pride
And they would _not_ be denied
To clean the cook-house floor."
Here at Coldfoot we came first into contact with that interesting tribe
of wandering inland Esquimaux known as the Kobuks, from their occupation
of the river of that name. The Koyukuk has its own Indian people, but
these enterprising Kobuks have pushed their way farther and farther from
salt water into what used to be exclusive Indian territory.
Representatives of both races were at Coldfoot, and as we lay
weather-bound for a couple of days, I was enabled to renew last year's
acquaintance with them, though without a good interpreter not much
progress was made. The delight of these people at the road-house
phonograph, the first they had ever heard, was some compensation for the
incessant snarl and scream of the instrument itself. It was very funny
to see them sitting on the floor, roaring with laughter at one
particularly silly spoken record of the "Uncle Josh at the World's Fair"
order. Over and over again they would ask for that record, and it never
ceased to convulse them with laughter. "He's been enjoyin' poor health
lately, but this mornin' I heard him complain that he felt a little
better"--how sick and tired we got of this and similar jokes drawled out
a dozen times running! The natives did not understand a word of it; it
was the human voice with its pronounced, unusual inflections that
aroused their merriment. The phonograph is becoming a powerful agency
for disseminating a knowledge of English amongst the natives throughout
Alaska, and one wishes that it were put to better use than the
reproduction of silly and often vulgar monologue and dialogue and trashy
ragtime music. As an index of the taste of those who purchase records,
the selection brought to this country points low.
The third day the thermometer stood at -49 deg. and we were free to leave
without actually breaking the rule we had made after the escapade on the
Yukon. Two other teams were going down the river, so we started with
them on the sixty-five mile journey to Bettles. Twenty miles or so below
Coldfoot the Koyukuk passes for several miles in a narrow channel
between steep rock bluffs, with here and there great detached masses
standing in the middle of the river. One has a grotesque resemblance to
an aged bishop in his vestments and is known as the Bishop Rock; another
a more remote likeness to an Indian woman, and this is known as the
Squaw Rock. This part of the river, which is called the canon of the
Koyukuk, though it is not a true canon, is very picturesque, and because
of frequent overflow, offers glare ice and swift passage to the
traveller when it does not embarrass him with running water. We were
fortunate enough to pass it without getting our dogs' feet wet, and made
the half-way road-house in a brilliant moon that rendered travelling at
night pleasanter than during the day.
[Sidenote: TRAVELLING AT "50 BELOW"]
The next day we started again at near 50 deg. below, but because there was a
good trail and a road-house for noon, the travelling was rather pleasant
than otherwise. If there be a warm house to break the day's march and
eat in, where ice-incrusted scarfs and parkees and caps and mittens may
be dried out, with a warm outhouse where the dogs may rest in comfort,
travelling in such weather is not too risky or too severely trying. The
continual condensation of the moisture from the breath upon everything
about the head and face is a decided inconvenience, and when it
condenses upon the eye-lashes, and the upper and the lower lashes freeze
together, the ice must be removed or it is impossible to open the eyes.
This requires the momentary application of the bare hand, and every time
it goes back into the mitten it carries some moisture with it, so that
after a while mittens are wet as well as head-gear; moreover, there is
always a certain perspiration that condenses. One gets into the habit of
turning the duffel lining of the moose-hide mitts inside out and hanging
them up the moment one gets inside a cabin. Round every road-house stove
there is a rack constructed for just that purpose.
There is no more striking phenomenon of the arctic trail than the
behaviour of smoke in cold weather. As one approaches a road-house, and
to greater degree a village or a town, it is seen enveloped in mist,
although there be no open water to account for it, and the prospect in
every other direction be brilliantly clear. It is not mist at all; it is
merely the smoke from the stovepipes. And the explanation is simple,
although not all at once arrived at. Smoke rises because it is warmer
than the air into which it is discharged; for that and no other reason.
Now, when smoke is discharged into air at a temperature of 50 deg. below
zero, it is deprived of its heat immediately and falls to the ground by
its greater specific gravity. The smoke may be observed just issuing
from the pipe, or rising but a few feet, and then curling downward to be
diffused amidst the air near the ground.
It was to such a smoke-enveloped inn that we pulled up to warm and
refresh ourselves and our team for the twenty miles that remained of the
day's march. We had almost reached the limit of Koyukuk road-houses.
Bettles being the head of navigation, and merchandise late in the season
finding water too shallow for transport to the diggings, there is more
or less freighting with dog teams and horses all the winter. This travel
keeps open the road-houses on the route. From an "outside" point of view
they may appear rough and the fare coarse. The night accommodation is a
double row of bunks on each side of a long room with a great stove in
the middle. Sometimes there is straw in the bunks, sometimes spruce
boughs; in the better class even sometimes hay-stuffed mattresses. But
to the weary traveller, who has battled with the storm or endured the
intense cold for hours at a stretch, they are glad havens of refuge;
they are often even life-saving stations.
[Sidenote: METEOROLOGICAL]
While we lay at the road-house the clear sky clouded and the thermometer
rose. This is an unfailing sequence. Clear, bright weather is cold
weather; cloudy weather is warm weather. The usual explanation, that the
cloud acts as a blanket that checks the radiation of heat from the
earth, is one of those explanations that do not explain. There is no
heat to radiate. The cloud is a mass of moist air, which is warm air,
introducing itself from some milder region. So the cloud brings the
heat; and the lower layers of atmosphere extract it and thereby
discharge the moisture. For an hour or two around noon the thermometer
stood at -35 deg. and there was a light fall of snow; then the skies cleared
because they were discharged of all their moisture, and the thermometer
went down to -50 deg. again. It is a beautifully simple process and
sometimes takes place two or three times a day. Every time the sky
clouds, the thermometer rises; every time the sky clears, the
thermometer falls. And because the barometer gives notice of changes in
the density of the atmosphere, it is valuable in forecasting temperature
in our winters. A steady rise in the barometer means a steady fall in
the thermometer; a fall in the barometer in a time of great cold
infallibly prophesies warmer weather; even such rapid changes as the one
given above are anticipated. So well is this established, that during
"50 deg.-below spells" at Fairbanks, impatient, weather-bound travellers and
freighters would busy the hospital telephone with inquiries about the
barometer, the hospital having the only barometer in the country.
After another long, cold run, on the night of Friday, the 12th of
January, we reached Bettles, the place we had planned to spend Christmas
at. We were unable to stir from Bettles for two solid weeks, for during
the whole of that time the thermometer never rose above 50 deg. below zero.
The long wait at Bettles would have been excessively tedious had it not
been for the kind hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Grimm, the
Commercial Company's agent and his wife, and this is but one of many
times that I have been under obligation to them for cordial welcome and
entertainment, for needs anticipated, and every sort of assistance
gladly rendered. We had been expected many days; the Christmas
festivities with a gathering of natives of both races had come and gone;
still they looked for us, for in this country one does not give a man up
merely because he is a few weeks behind time, nor hold him to account
for unpunctuality. The natives remained for the most part, and there was
abundant opportunity of intercourse with them and some beginnings of
instruction. As the days passed and all arrangements for our advance
were made, we chafed more and more at the delay, for it was very plain
that the prospect of visiting Point Hope grew less and less; but this is
a great country for teaching patience and resignation.
[Sidenote: PARASELENAE]
Some of the weather during that two weeks' wait was of quite exceptional
severity. One night is fixed for ever in my memory. It is a very rare
thing for the wind to blow in the "strong cold," but that night there
was a wind at 58 deg. below zero. And high up in the heavens was a sight I
had never seen before. The moon, little past her full, had a great ring
around her, faintly prismatic; and equidistant from her, where a line
through her centre parallel with the horizon would cut the ring, were
two other moons, distinct and clear. It was a strangely beautiful thing,
this sight of three moons sailing aloft through the starry sky, as
though the beholder had been suddenly translated to some planet that
enjoys a plurality of satellites, but no living being could stand long
at gaze in that wind and that cold. A perfect paraselene is, I am
convinced, an extremely rare thing, much rarer than a perfect parhelion
("moon-cats" my companion thought the phenomenon should be called,
saving the canine simile for the sun), for in seven years' travel I have
never seen another, and the references to it in literature are few.
The next day at noon, the sun not visible above the distant mountains,
there appeared in the sky a great shining cross of orange light, just
over the sun's position, that held and shone for nigh an hour and only
faded with the twilight. It is not surprising that these appearances
should deeply impress the untutored mind and should be deemed
significant and portentous; they must deeply impress any normal mind,
they are so grand and so strange. The man who has trained his intellect
until it is so stale, and starved his imagination until it is so
shrivelled that he can gaze unmoved at such spectacles, that they are
insignificant to him, has but reduced himself to the level of the dog
upon whom also they make no impression--though even a dog will howl at a
great aurora. Of course we know all about them; any schoolboy can pick
up a primer of physical geography and explain the laws of refraction,
and the ugly and most libellous diagram of circles and angles that shows
just how these lustrous splendours happen; but the mystery beyond is not
by one hair's breadth impaired nor their influence upon the spectator
diminished. In Alaska perhaps more than any other country it is the
heavens that declare the glory of God and the firmament that shows His
handiwork, and the awestruck Indian who comes with timid inquiry of the
import of such phenomena is rightfully and scientifically answered that
the Great Father is setting a sign in the sky that He still rules, that
His laws and commandments shall never lose their force, whether in the
heavens above or on the earth beneath.
[Sidenote: THE STRONG COLD]
The "strong cold" itself is an awe-inspiring thing even to those who
have been familiar with it all their lives; and a dweller in other
climes, endowed with any imagination, may without much difficulty enter
into the feelings of one who experiences it for the first time. It
descends upon the earth in the brief twilight and long darkness of the
dead of winter with an irresistible power and an inflexible menace.
Fifty below, sixty below, even seventy below, the thermometer reads.
Mercury is long since frozen solid and the alcohol grows sluggish. Land
and water are alike iron; utter stillness and silence usually reign.
Bare the hand, and in a few minutes the fingers will turn white and be
frozen to the bone. Stand still, and despite all clothing, all woollens,
all furs, the body will gradually become numb and death stalk upon the
scene. The strong cold brings fear with it. All devices to exclude it,
to conserve the vital heat seem feeble and futile to contend with its
terrible power. It seems to hold all living things in a crushing
relentless grasp, and to tighten and tighten the grip as the temperature
falls.
Yet the very power of it, and the dread that accompanies it, give a
certain fearful and romantic joy to the conquest of it. A man who has
endured it all day, who has endured it day after day, face to face with
it in the open, feels himself somewhat the more man for the experience,
feels himself entered the more fully into human possibilities and
powers, feels an exultation that manhood is stronger even than the
strong cold. But he is a fool if ever he grow to disdain the enemy. It
waits, inexorable, for just such disdain, and has slain many at last who
had long and often withstood it.
On those rare occasions when there is any wind, any movement of the air
at all, there enters another and a different feeling. Into the menace of
a power, irresistible, inflexible, but yet insentient, there seems to
enter a purposeful, vengeful evil. It pursues. The cold itself becomes
merely a condition; the wind a deadly weapon which uses that condition
to deprive its victim of all defence. The warmth which active exercise
stores up, the buckler of the traveller, is borne away. His reserves
are invaded, depleted, destroyed. And then the wind falls upon him with
its sword. Of all of which we were to have instance here on the Koyukuk.
[Sidenote: "FOUND FROZEN"]
In the second week of our stay at Bettles, while Divine service was in
progress in the store building, crowded with whites and natives, the
door opened and, with an inrush of cold air that condensed the moisture
at that end of the room into a cloud and shot along the floor like steam
from an engine exhaust, there entered an Indian covered with rime, his
whole head-gear one mass of white frost, his snow-shoes, just removed,
under his arm, and a beaded moose-skin wallet over his shoulder. Every
eye was at once turned to him as he beat the frost from his parkee hood
and thrust it back, unwrapped fold after fold of the ice-crusted scarf
from his face, and pulled off his mittens. Seeking out the agent, he
moved over to him and whispered something in his ear. It was plain that
the errand was of moment and the message disturbing, and as I had lost
the attention of the congregation and the continuity of my own
discourse, I drew things to a close as quickly as I decently could. That
Indian had come seventy-five miles on snow-shoes in one run, without
stopping at all save to eat two or three times, at a continuous
temperature of 50 deg. below zero or lower, to bring word that he had found
a white man frozen to death on the trail; and on the Koyukuk that feat
will always be counted to Albert the Pilot for righteousness. From the
location and description of the dead man, there was no difficulty in
identifying him. He was a wood-chopper under contract with the company
to cut one hundred cords of steamboat wood against next summer's
navigation at a spot about one hundred miles below Bettles. He had taken
down with him on the "last water" enough grub for about three months,
and was to return to Bettles for Christmas and for fresh supplies. After
a day or two's rest the Indian was sent back with instructions to bring
the body to a native village we should visit, to whipsaw lumber for a
coffin and dig a grave, and we engaged to give the body Christian
burial.
Uneasy at the softening muscles and sinews of this long inaction, I took
snow-shoes and a couple of Kobuks one day and made an ascent of the hill
behind Bettles known as Lookout Mountain, because from its top the smoke
of the eagerly expected first steamboat of the summer may be seen many
miles down the river; being moved to that particular excursion by
dispute among the weather-bound freighters as to the hill's height.
The change of temperature as we climbed the hill was striking. On the
first shoulder we were already out of the dense atmosphere of the valley
and above the smoke gloom of the houses, and as we rose the air grew
milder and milder, until at the top we emerged into the first sunshine
of many weeks and were in an altogether different climate--balmy and
grateful it was to us just come up from the strong cold. The aneroid
showed the altitude about seven hundred feet above Bettles, and I
regretted very much I had not brought the thermometer as well, for its
reading would have been most interesting.
The view from the top was brilliantly clear and far-reaching. The broad
plain across the river was checkered black and white with alternating
spruce thickets and lakes; beyond it and the mountains that bounded it
lay the valley of the south fork which we had crossed fifty or sixty
miles farther up on our journey hither. Right in front of us the middle
fork made its big bend from southwest to south, and to the left, that
is, to the north, the valley of the John River opened up its course
through the sharp white peaks of the Endicott Mountains. It was in this
direction that my eyes lingered longest. I knew that sixty or seventy
miles up this river we could cross the low Anaktuvak Pass into the
Anaktuvak River, which flows into the Colville, and that descending the
Colville we could reach the shores of the Northern Ocean. It was a
journey I had wished to make--and have wished ever since. There are many
bands of Esquimaux on that coast, never visited save by those who make
merchandise of them in one way or another. Please God, some day I should
get there; meanwhile our present hopes lay west, though, indeed, these
grew daily fainter.