BETTLES TO THE PACIFIC--THE ALATNA, KOBUK PORTAGE, KOBUK VILLAGE,
KOTZEBUE SOUND
ALL our preparations were long since made. Our Indian guide had been
sent back to Fort Yukon from Coldfoot, and here we engaged a young
Esquimau with his dog team and sled, to go across to Kotzebue Sound with
us. There was also a young Dane who wished to go from the Koyukuk
diggings to the diggings at Candle Creek on the Seward Peninsula, and
him we were willing to feed in return for his assistance on the trail.
The supplies had been carefully calculated for the journey, the
toboggans were already loaded, and we waited but a break in the cold
weather to start.
Our course from Bettles would lead us sixty-five miles farther down the
Koyukuk to the mouth of the Alatna. The visit to the native village and
the burial of the poor fellow frozen to death would take us ten miles
farther down than that, and we would return to the Alatna mouth. Then
the way would lie for fifty miles or so up that stream, and then over a
portage, across to the Kobuk River, which we should descend to its mouth
in Kotzebue Sound; the whole distance being about five hundred miles
through a very little travelled country. We learned indeed, that it had
been travelled but once this winter, and that on the first snow. It was
thought at Bettles that we might possibly procure some supplies at a
newly established mission of the Society of Friends about half-way down
the Kobuk River, but there was no certainty about it, and we must carry
with us enough man-food to take us to salt water. Our supply of dog fish
we might safely count upon replenishing from the natives on the Kobuk.
Another thing that caused some thought was the supply of small money.
There was no silver and no currency except large bills on the Koyukuk,
and we should need money in small sums to buy fish with. So the agent
weighed out a number of little packets of gold-dust carefully sealed up
in stout writing-paper like medicine powders, some worth a dollar, some
worth two dollars, the value written on the face, and we found them
readily accepted by the natives and very convenient. Two years later I
heard of some of those packets, unbroken, still current on the Kobuk.
At last, on the 26th of January, we got away. The thermometer stood only
a few degrees above -50 deg. when we left, but the barometer had been
falling slowly for a couple of days, and I was convinced the cold spell
was over. With our three teams and four men we made quite a little
expedition, but dogs and men were alike soft, and for the first two days
the travel was laborious and slow; then came milder weather and better
going.
[Sidenote: THE KOYUKUK "TOWNS" OF '98]
We passed the two ruined huts of Peavey, the roofs crushed by the
superincumbent snow. In the summer of 1898 a part of the stream of gold
seekers, headed for the Klondike by way of Saint Michael, was deflected
to the Koyukuk River by reports of recent discoveries there. A great
many little steamboat outfits made their way up this river late in the
season, until their excessive draught in the falling water brought them
to a stand. Where they stopped they wintered, building cabins and
starting "towns." In one or two cases the "towns" were electrically lit
from the steamboat's dynamo. The next summer they all left, all save
those who were wrecked by the ice, and the "towns" were abandoned. But
they had got upon the map through some enterprising representative of
the land office, and they figure on some recent maps still. Peavey,
Seaforth, Jimtown, Arctic City, Beaver City, Bergman, are all just names
and nothing else, though at Bergman the Commercial Company had a plant
for a while.
We passed the mouth of the Alatna, where were two or three Indian
cabins, and went on the remaining ten miles to Moses' Village, where the
body of the man frozen to death had been brought. Moses' Village, named
from the chief, was the largest native village on the Koyukuk River, and
we were glad, despite our haste, that we had gone there. The repeated
requests from all the Indians we met for a mission and school on the
Koyukuk River and the neglected condition of the people had moved me the
previous year to take up the matter. This was my first visit, however,
so far down the river.
We found the coffin unmade and the grave undug, and set men vigorously
to work at both. The frozen body had been found fallen forward on hands
and feet, and since to straighten it would be impossible without
several days' thawing in a cabin, the coffin had to be of the size and
shape of a packing-case; of course the ground for the grave had to be
thawed down, for so are all graves dug in Alaska, and that is a slow
business. A fire is kindled on the ground, and when it has burned out,
as much ground as it has thawed is dug, and then another fire is
kindled. We had our own gruesome task. The body should be examined to
make legally sure that death came from natural causes. With difficulty
the clothes were stripped from the poor marble corpse, my companion made
the examination, and as a notary public I swore him to a report for the
nearest United States commissioner. This would furnish legal proof of
death were it ever required; otherwise, since there is no provision for
the travelling expenses of coroners, and the nearest was one hundred and
forty or one hundred and fifty miles away, there would have been no
inquest and no such proof.
[Sidenote: A WILDERNESS TRAGEDY]
The man had delayed his return to Bettles too long. When his food was
exhausted and he had to go, there came on that terrible cold spell. A
little memorandum-book in his pocket told the pitiful story. Day by day
he lingered hoping for a change, and day by day there was entry of the
awful cold. He had no thermometer, but he knew the temperature was -50 deg.
or lower by the cracking noise that his breath made--the old-timer's
test. At last the grub was all gone and he must go or starve. The final
entry read: "All aboard to-morrow, hope to God I get there." The Indians
estimated that he had been walking two days, and had "siwashed it" at
night somewhere beside a fire in the open without bedding. Holes were
burned in his breeches in two places, where, doubtless, he had got too
near the fire. He had nothing whatever to eat with him save a piece of
bacon gnawed to the rind. There were only two matches in his pocket, and
they were mixed up with trash of birch-bark and tobacco, so it is likely
he did not know he had them. He had lit all the fires he could light and
eaten all the food he had to eat. Still he was plugging along towards
the native village nine miles away. Then he lost the trail, probably in
the dark, for it was faint and much drifted, and had taken off his
snow-shoes to feel with his moccasined feet for the hardened snow that
would indicate it. That was almost the end. He had gone across the river
and back again, feeling for the trail, and then, with the deadly
numbness already upon his brain, had wandered in a circle. The date of
his starting in the memorandum-book and the distance travelled made it
almost certain that, at some moment between the time when those three
moons floated in the sky and the time when that cross glared on the
horizon, he had fallen in the snow, never to rise again. Fifty-eight
below zero and a wind blowing!
One supposes that the actual death by freezing is painless, as it is
certainly slow and gradual. The only instance of sudden gelation I ever
heard of is in Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus," where the skipper,
having answered one question, upon being asked another,
"Answered never a word,
For a frozen corpse was he."
But if the actual death be painless, the long conscious fight against it
must be an agony; for a man of any experience must realise the peril he
is in. The tingling in fingers and toes and then in knees and elbows is
a warning he recognises only too well. He knows that, unless he can
restore warmth by restoring the circulation, he is as good as frozen
already. He increases his pace and beats his arms against his breast.
But if his vitality be too much reduced by hunger and fatigue and cold
to make more than a slight response to the stimulation, if the distance
to warmth and shelter be too great for a spurt to carry him there, he is
soon in worse case than before. Then the appalling prospect of perishing
by the cold must rise nakedly before him. The enemy is in the breach,
swarming over the ramparts, advancing to the heart of the fortress, not
to be again repelled. He becomes aware that his hands and feet are
already frozen, and presently there may be a momentary terrible
recognition that his wits begin to wander. Frantically he stumbles on,
thrashing his body with his arms, forcing his gait to the uttermost, a
prey to the terror that hangs over him, until his growing horror and
despair are mercifully swallowed up in the somnolent torpidity that
overwhelms him. All of us who have travelled in cold weather know how
uneasy and apprehensive a man becomes when the fingers grow obstinately
cold and he realises that he is not succeeding in getting them warm
again. It is the beginning of death by freezing.
We buried the body on a bench of the bluff across the river from the
native village, the natives all standing around reverently while the
words of committal were said, and set up a cross marked with
lead-pencil: "R. I. P.--Eric Ericson, found frozen, January, 1906." Two
or three years later a friend sent me a small bronze tablet with the
same legend, and that was affixed to the cross. There are many such
lonely graves in Alaska, for scarce a winter passes that does not claim
its victims in every section of the country. That same winter we heard
of two men frozen on the Seward Peninsula, two on the Yukon, one on the
Tanana, and one on the Valdez trail. This day I recorded a temperature
of 10 deg., the first plus temperature in thirty-nine days, and that
previous rise above zero was the first in twenty days.
[Sidenote: NEGLECTED NATIVES]
That night we gathered all the natives, and after long speech with poor
interpretation I ventured to promise them a mission the next year. Some
of them had been across to the Yukon years before and had visited the
mission at Tanana. Some had been baptized there. Some had never seen a
clergyman or missionary of any sort before, and had never heard the
gospel preached. We were touched by one old blind woman who told of a
visit to a mission on the Yukon, and how she learned to sing a hymn
there. Her son interpreted: "She say every night she sing that hymn for
speak to God." She was encouraged to sing it, and it turned out to be
the alphabet set to a tune! After much pleading and with some
hesitation, I baptized seventeen children, comforting myself with the
assurance of the coming mission, which would undertake their Christian
training and instruction.
Back next day at the mouth of the Alatna, I was again impressed with the
eligibility of that spot as a mission site. It was but ten miles above
the present native village, and, with church and school established, the
whole population would sooner or later move to it. This gives
opportunity for regulating the building of cabins, and the advantage of
a new, clean start. Moreover, the Alatna River is the highway between
the Kobuk and the Koyukuk, and the Esquimaux coming over in increasing
numbers, would be served by a mission at this place as well as the
Indians. I foresaw two villages, perhaps, on the opposite sides of the
river--one clustered about the church and the school, the other a little
lower down--where these ancient hereditary enemies might live side by
side in peace and harmony under the firm yet gentle influence of the
church. So I staked a mission site, and set up notices claiming ground
for that purpose, almost opposite the mouth of the Alatna, which, in the
native tongue, is Allakaket or Allachaket.
[Sidenote: THE INLAND ESQUIMAUX]
There was some trail up the Alatna and we made fair headway on its
surface, stopping two nights at Kobuk huts. We are out of the Indian
country now, and shall see no more Indians until we are back on the
Yukon. The mode of life, the habits, the character of the races are very
different--the first Esquimau habitation we visited proclaiming it.
These inland Esquimaux, though some of the younger ones have never seen
salt water--our guide, Roxy, for one--are still essentially a salt-water
people. Their huts, even in the midst of trees, are half-underground
affairs, for they have not learned log-building; the windows are of
seal gut, and seal oil is a staple article of their diet. Their clothing
is also marine, their parkees of the hair-seal and their mukluks of the
giant seal. Communications are always kept up with the coast, and the
sea products required are brought across. The time for the movement of
the Kobuks back and forth was not quite yet, though we hoped we should
meet some parties and get the benefit of their trail. Just before we
left the Alatna River we stopped at Roxy's fish cache and got some green
fish, hewing them out of the frozen mass with the axe. The young man had
fished here the previous summer, had cached the fish caught too late to
dry in the sun, and they had remained where he left them for four or
five months. Most of them had begun to decay before they froze, but that
did not impair their value as dog food, though it rendered the cooking
of them a disagreeable proceeding to white nostrils. This caching of
food is a common thing amongst both natives and whites, and it is rarely
that a cache is violated except under great stress of hunger, when
violation is recognised as legitimate. Doughty, in his _Arabia Deserta_,
mentions the same custom amongst the Arabs; Sven Hedin amongst the
Tartars. Sparsely peopled waste countries have much the same customs all
over the world. Even the outer garb in the Oriental deserts has much
resemblance to our parkee; both burnoose and parkee are primarily
windbreaks, and it makes little difference whether the wind be charged
with snow or sand.
At midday on the 3d of February we left the Alatna River and took our
way across country for the Kobuk. We had now no trail at all save what
had been made a couple of months before by the only other party that had
crossed the portage this winter, and it was buried under fifteen or
sixteen inches of snow. There was quite a grade to be climbed to reach
the plateau over which our course lay, and the men, with rope over the
shoulder, had to help the dogs hauling at the sled. Indeed, over a good
deal of this portage, from time to time, the men had to do dog work, for
the country is rolling, one ridge succeeding another, and the loose,
deep snow made heavy and slow going. One man must go ahead breaking
trail, and that was generally my task, though when the route grew
doubtful and the indications too faint for white man's eye, Roxy took my
place and I took his gee pole, and slipped his rope around my chest.
Breaking trail would not be so laborious if one could wear the large
snow-shoes that are used for hunting. But the hunting shoe, though it
carries the man without fatigue, does not help the dogs. The small shoe
known as the trail shoe, packs the snow beneath it, and by the time the
trail breaker has gone forward, then back again, and then forward once
more, the snow is usually packed hard enough to give the dogs some
footing. Footing the dog must have or he cannot pull; a dog wallowing in
snow to his belly cannot exert much traction on the vehicle behind him.
The notion of snow-shoeing as a sport always seems strange to us on the
trail, for to us it is a laborious necessity and no sport at all. The
trail breaker thus goes over most of the ground thrice, and when he is
anxious at the same time to get a fairly accurate estimate by the
pedometer of the distance travelled, he must constantly remember to
upend the instrument in his pocket when he retraces his steps, and
restore it to its recording position when he attacks unbroken snow
again. Also he must take himself unawares, so to speak, from time to
time, and check the length of his stride with the tape measure and alter
the step index as the varying surfaces passed over require.
Conscientiously used, with due regard to its limitations, the pedometer
will give a fair approximation of the length of a journey, but a man can
no more tell how far he has gone by merely hanging a pedometer in his
pocket than he can tell the height above sea-level of an inland mountain
by merely carrying an aneroid barometer to the top.
[Sidenote: THE SUNRISE AND THE MOUNTAINS]
It was on this Alatna-Kobuk portage that we saw the most magnificent
sunrise any of us could remember. It had been cloudy for some days with
threat of snow which did not fall. We were camped in a little hollow
between two ridges, and I had been busy packing up the stuff in the tent
preparatory to the start, when I stepped out with a load of bedding in
my arms, right into the midst of the spectacle. It was simple, as the
greatest things are always simple, but so gorgeous and splendid that it
was startling. The whole southeastern sky was filled with great luminous
bands of alternate purple and crimson. At the horizon the bands were
deeper in tone and as they rose they grew lighter, but they maintained
an unmixed purity of contrasting colour throughout. I gazed at it until
the tent was struck and the dogs hitched and it was time to start, and
then I had to turn my back upon it, for our course lay due west, and I
was breaking trail. But on the crest of the rising ground ahead there
burst upon my delighted eyes a still more astonishing prospect. We were
come to the first near view of the Kobuk mountains, and the reflected
light of that gorgeous sunrise was caught by the flanks of a group of
wild and lofty snow peaks, and they stood up incandescent, with a vivid
colour that seemed to come through them as well as from them. To right
and left, mountains out of the direct path of that light gave a soft
dead mauve, but these favoured peaks, bathed from base to summit in
clear crimson effulgence, glowed like molten metal. It was not the
reflected light of the sun, but of the flaming sky, for even as I
looked, a swift change came over them. They passed through the tones of
red to lightest pink, not fading but brightening, and before my
companions reached me the sun's rays sprang upon the mountains from the
horizon, and they were golden.
It seems almost foolish to the writer and may well seem tedious to the
reader, to attempt in words the description of such scenes; yet so deep
is the impression they produce, and so large the place they take in the
memory, that to omit them would be to strike out much of the charm and
zest of these arctic journeys. Again and again in the years that have
passed, the recollection of that pomp of colour on the way to the Kobuk
has come suddenly upon me, and always with a bounding of the spirit. I
can shut my eyes now and see that incomparable sunrise; I can see again
that vision of mountains filling half the sky with their unimaginable
ardency, and I think that this world never presented nobler sight.
Surely for its pageantry of burning, living colour, for purity and depth
and intensity of tint, the Far North with its setting of snow surpasses
all other regions of the earth.
[Sidenote: TRAVELLING KOBUK LADS]
That same day we met a couple of Kobuk youths on their way to the
Koyukuk, and they gave us the greatest gift it was in the power of man
to give us--a trail! There is no finer illustration of the mutual
service of man to man than the meeting of parties going opposite ways
across the unbroken snows. Each is at once conferring and receiving the
greatest of favours, without loss to himself is heaping benefit on the
other; is, it may be--has often been--saving the other, and being
himself saved. No more hunting and peering for blazes, no more casting
about hither and thither when open stretches are crossed; no more three
times back and forth to beat the snow down--twenty miles a day instead
of ten or twelve--the boys' trail meant all that to us. And our trail
meant almost as much to them. So we were rejoiced to see them, sturdy
youths of sixteen or seventeen, making the journey all by themselves. My
heart goes out to these adventurous Kobuks, amiable, light-hearted,
industrious; keen hunters, following the mountain-sheep far up where the
Indian will not go; adepts in all the wilderness arts; heirs of the
uncharted arctic wastes, and occupying their heritage. If I were not a
white man I would far rather be one of these nomadic inland Esquimaux
than any other native I know of.
That same day we crossed two headwater forks of the Kokochatna, as the
Kobuks call it, or the Hogatzitna as the Koyukuks call it, or the Hog
River, as the white men call it, a tributary of the Koyukuk that comes
in about one hundred and fifty miles below the Alatna. As we came down a
steep descent to the little east fork, it showed so picturesque and
attractive, with clumps of fine open timber on an island, that it
remains in my mind one of the many places from the Grand Canon of the
Colorado almost to the Grand Canon of the Noatak, where I should like to
have a lodge in the vast wilderness.
We had but crossed the west fork when we knew that we were close to the
watershed between the Kobuk and the Koyukuk, between the streams that
fall into Kotzebue Sound and those that fall by the Koyukuk and the
Yukon Rivers into Bering Sea; and because it seemed a capital geographic
feature, it was disappointing that it was so inconspicuous. Indeed, we
were not sure which of two ridges was the actual divide. Beyond those
ridges there was no question, for the ground sloped down to Lake
Noyutak, a body of water some three and a half miles in length and of
varying breadth that drains into the Kobuk. Here in a cabin we found
three more young Kobuks, and spent the night, getting our first view of
the Kobuk River next day, not from an eminence, as I had hoped, but only
as we came down a bank through thick timber and opened suddenly upon it.
By the pedometer I made the portage forty-six miles.
[Sidenote: THE KOBUK RIVER]
The upper Kobuk is a picturesque river, the timber being especially
large and handsome for interior Alaska. We reached it just above the
mouth of the Reed River, tributary from the north. The weather was
warm--too warm for good travelling--the thermometer standing at 15--- deg.,
20 deg., and one day even 30 deg. above zero all day long, so that we were all
bareheaded and in our shirt-sleeves. From time to time, as the course of
the river varied, we had distant views of the rocky mountains of the
Endicott Range, or, as it might be written, the Endicott Range of the
Rocky Mountains, for such, in fact, it is--the western and final
extension of the great American cordillera. On the other side of those
mountains was the Noatak River, flowing roughly parallel with the Kobuk,
and discharging into the same arm of the sea.
The division of the labour of camping amongst four gave us all some
leisure at night, and I found time to read through again _The Cloister
and the Hearth_ and _Westward Ho!_ with much pleasure, quite agreeing
with Sir Walter Besant's judgment that the former is one of the best
historical novels ever written. There are few more attractive roysterers
in literature to me than Denys of Burgundy, with his "_Courage,
camarades, le diable est mort!_" This matter of winter reading is a
difficult one, because it is impossible to carry many books. My plan is
to take two or three India-paper volumes of classics that have been read
before, and renew my acquaintance with them. But reading by the light of
one candle, though it sufficed our forefathers, is hard on our
degenerate eyes.
The days were much lengthened now, and the worst of the winter was
done. There would still be cold and storm, but hardly again of the same
intensity and duration. When the traveller gets well into February he
feels that the back of the winter is broken, for nothing can take from
him the advantage of the ever-lengthening days, the ever-climbing sun.
On the afternoon of the third day on the Kobuk we reached a cabin
occupied by two white men, the first we had seen since we left Bettles,
and we were the first white men they had seen all the winter. They were
waiting for the spring, having a prospecting trip in view; simply
spending the winter eating up their grub. There was nothing whatever to
read in the cabin, and they had been there since the freeze-up! They
welcomed us, and we stayed overnight with them, and that night there was
a total eclipse of the moon, of which we had a fine view. We had an
almanac which gave the time of totality at Sitka, and we knew the
approximate longitude of our position, so we were able to set our
watches by it.
The next two days are noted in my diary as two of the pleasantest days
of the whole journey--two of the pleasantest days I ever spent anywhere,
I think. A clear, cloudless sky, brilliant sunshine, white mountain
peaks all about us, gave picture after picture, and the warm, balmy air
made travelling a delight. There are few greater pleasures than that of
penetrating into a new country, with continually changing views of
beauty, under kindly conditions of weather and trail. In the yellow rays
of the early sun, the spruce on the river bank looked like a screen of
carved bronze, while the slender stems of birches in front of the
spruce looked like an inlaying of old ivory upon the bronze, the whole
set upon its pedestal of marble-like snow. The second day we took a
portage of nine or ten miles across a barren flat and struck the river
again just below a remarkable stretch of bank a mile or so in length,
with never a tree or a bush or so much as the smallest shrub growing on
it. Thick timber above suddenly ceased, thick timber below suddenly
began again, and this bare bank reached back through open, barren flat
to a low pass in the mountains. It was a bank of solid ice, so we were
told later, and I remembered to have heard of ice bluffs on the Kobuk,
and wished that the portage had struck the river above this spot instead
of below it, that there might have been opportunity to examine it.
[Sidenote: THE MISSION]
[Sidenote: ENGLISH AND ESQUIMAU]
A little farther down the river and we were at the new mission of the
Society of Friends, where a cordial reception awaited us and, luxury of
luxuries, a warm bath! Again and again the wash-tub was emptied and
fresh water was heated until we all had wallowed to our heart's content.
The rude log buildings of the mission had been begun the previous fall,
and were not yet complete, but they were advanced enough for occupation,
and the work of the mission went actively on. It was in charge of rather
an extraordinary man. He gave us a sketch of his life, which was full of
interest and matter for thought. For many years he was a police officer
and jailer in the West. Then he sailed on a whaler and thus became
acquainted with the Esquimaux. He was converted from a life of
drunkenness and debauchery--though one fancied his character was not
really ever so bad as he painted it--at a "Peniel" mission in a
Californian town. He went in out of mere idle curiosity, just recovered
from a spree, and was so wrought upon that when he came out he was a
different creature, a new man, the old life with its appetite for
vicious indulgence sloughed off and left behind him, and he now
possessed with a burning desire to do some such active service for God
as aforetime he had done for the devil. After three or four months of
some sort of training in an institution maintained by the California
Society of Friends--a body more like the Salvation Army, one judges,
than the old Quakers--he volunteered for service at a branch which the
old-established mission of the Society at the mouth of the Kobuk desired
to plant two hundred miles or so up the river, and had come out and had
plunged at once into his task. So here he was, some six or seven months
installed, teacher, preacher, trader in a small way, and indefatigable
worker in general. Pedagogical training or knowledge of "methods" he had
none at all, but the root of the matter was in him, and surely never was
such an insatiable school-teacher. Morning, noon, and night he was
teaching. While he was cooking he was hearing lessons; while he was
washing the dishes and cleaning the house he was correcting exercises in
simple addition. In the schoolroom he was full of a genial enthusiasm
that seemed to impart instruction by sheer dynamic force. "Boot," the
lesson book said. There was no boot in the schoolroom, all were shod in
mukluks. He dives into his dwelling-house attachment and comes back
holding up a boot. "Boot," he says, and "boot" they all repeat.
Presently the word "tooth" was introduced in the lesson. Withdrawing a
loose artificial tooth of the "pivot" variety from his upper jaw, he
holds it aloft and "tooth!" he cries out, and "toot!" they all cry, and
he claps it back into his head again.
We were present on Sunday at the services. There was hearty singing of
"Pentecostal" hymns with catchy refrains, but we were compelled to
notice again what we had noticed amongst the little bands of these
people on the Koyukuk when we set them to singing, that the English was
unintelligible; and since it conveyed no meaning to us could have had
little for them. This is the inevitable result of ignoring the native
tongue and adopting the easy expedient of teaching the singing of hymns
and the recitation of formulas like the commandments in English. For a
generation or two, at least, the English learned, save by children at a
boarding-school, where nothing but English is spoken, is fragmentary and
of doubtful import in all except the commonest matters of speech. And at
such boarding-schools there is danger of the real misfortune and
drawback of natives growing up to live their lives amongst natives,
ignorant of the native tongue. There is no quick and easy way of
stamping out a language, thank God; there is no quick and easy way of
imparting instruction in a foreign language. By and by all the Alaskan
natives will be more or less bilingual, but the intimate speech and the
most clearly understood speech will still be the mother tongue. The
singing done, there was preaching through an interpreter, and then each
individual present "gave testimony," which consisted for the most part
in the recitation of a text of Scripture. Then there were individual
prayers by one and another of the congregation, and then some more
singing. The only hymn I could find in the book that I knew was the fine
old hymn, "How Firm a Foundation," and that was sung heartily to the
"Adeste Fideles." They are naturally a musical race, picking up airs
with great facility, and they thoroughly enjoy singing.
[Sidenote: THE "DOUBLE STANDARD"]
After the service the missionary confided some of his troubles to me. He
had lately learned through his interpreter that the burden of most of
the individual prayers was that the supplicator might "catch plenty
skins" and be more successful in hunting than his fellows; and though he
had done his best to impress upon them the superior importance of making
request for spiritual benefit, he was afraid they had made no change.
"Our people 'outside,'" he said, "don't understand these folk, and I'm
not sure that I thoroughly understand them myself." "They're all
'converted,'" he said; "they all claim to have experienced a change of
heart, but some of them I know are not living like converted people, and
sometimes I have my doubts about most of them." My sympathy went out to
him in his loneliness and his earnestness and his disappointments. I
pointed out that the emotional response to emotional preaching was
comparatively easy to get from any primitive people, but that to change
their whole lives, to uproot old customs of sensual indulgence, to
engraft new ideas of virtue and chastity was a long, slow process
anywhere in the world. It was chiefly in the matter of sexual morality
that his doubts and difficulties lay, and I was able to assure him that
his experience was but the common experience of all those who had
laboured for the uplifting of savage people. Indeed, how should it be
otherwise? Until quite lately there was almost promiscuous use of women.
A man receiving a traveller in his dwelling overnight proffered his wife
as a part of his hospitality; the temporary interchange of wives was
common; young men and young women gratified themselves without rebuke;
children were valuable however come by, and there was no special
distinction between legitimate and illegitimate offspring. As one
reflects on these conditions and then looks back upon conditions amongst
white people, it would seem that all the civilised races have done is to
set up a double standard of sexual morality as against the single
standard of the savage. It can hardly be claimed that the average white
man is continent, or even much more continent than the average Esquimau,
but he has forced continence upon the greater part of his women,
reserving a dishonoured remnant for his own irresponsible use. And there
are signs that some of those who nowadays inveigh against the white
man's double standard are in reality desirous of substituting, not the
single standard of the Christian ideal, but the single standard of the
savage. In the mining camps the prostitute has a sort of
half-way-recognised social position, and in polite parlance is referred
to as a "sporting lady"--surely the most horribly incongruous phrase
ever coined; she often marries a miner who will tell you that she is as
good as he is, and she is received afterwards by all but a few as a
"respectable married woman."
There had been some trouble of this sort at this mission. The great
northern gold seekers' wave of '97 and '98 threw a numerous band of
prospectors up the Kobuk as well as up the Koyukuk. The wave had receded
and left on the Kobuk but one little pool behind it, a handful of men
who found something better than "pay" on the Shungnak, a few miles away.
And there was much criticism of the missionary's methods amongst them.
Word of the arrival of strangers had brought some of them to Long Beach,
and on Sunday night I had opportunity of addressing them, with a view to
enlisting their sympathy, if possible. What if mistakes were made, what
if some of the methods employed were open to question? Here was a man
who beyond doubt was earnestly labouring in the best way he knew for the
improvement of these natives. Such an effort demanded the co-operation
of every right-feeling man.
[Sidenote: PERSONAL CLEANLINESS]
After all, however grand the physical scenery, the meteorological
phenomena, may be, the people of any country are the most interesting
thing in it, and we found these Esquimaux extraordinarily interesting.
Dirty they certainly are; it is almost impossible for dwellers in the
arctic regions to be clean in the winter, and the winter lasts so long
that the habit of winter becomes the habit of the year. White and native
alike accept a lower standard of personal cleanliness than is tolerated
outside. I remember asking Bishop Rowe, before I came to Alaska: "What
do you do about bathing when you travel in the winter?" To which he
replied laconically: "Do without." It is even so; travellers on the
Alaskan trails as well as natives belong to the "great unwashed." In the
very cold weather the procuring of water in any quantity is a very
difficult thing even for house dwellers. Every drop of it has to be
carried from a water-hole cut far out on the ice, up a steep grade, and
then quite a little distance back to the dwelling--for we do not build
directly upon these eroding banks. The water-hole is continually
freezing up and has to be continually hewed free of ice, and as the
streams dwindle with the progress of winter, new holes must be cut
farther and farther out. On the trail, where snow must usually be melted
for water, it is obvious that bathing is out of the question; even the
water for hands and face is sparingly doled by the cook, and two people
will sometimes use the same water rather than resort to the painful
though efficient expedient of washing with snow. If this be so despite
aluminum pots and a full kit of camp vessels, it is much more so with
the native, whose supply of pots and pans is very limited. I have seen a
white man melt snow in a frying-pan, wash hands and face in it, throw it
out, fry bacon and beans in it, then melt more snow and wash his cup and
plate in it. There is, however, this to be said anent the disuse of the
bath in this country, that in cold weather most men perspire very little
indeed, and the perspiration that is exuded passes through to the outer
garments and is immediately deposited upon them as frost; and there is
this further to be said about dirt in general, that one blessed property
of the cold is to kill all odours.
One grows tolerant of dirt in this country; there is no denying it, and
it is well that it is so; otherwise one would be in a chronic state of
disgust with oneself and every one else. So the dirt of the native,
unless specially prominent and offensive, is accepted as a matter of
course and ignored. This obstacle overcome, the Esquimaux are an
attractive and most interesting race, and compare to advantage with the
Indians in almost every particular. They are a very industrious people.
Go into an Esquimau's hut at almost any time when they are not sleeping,
and you will find every individual occupied at some task. Here is a man
working in wood or bone with the ingenious tools they have evolved; here
are women working in skin or fur, and some of them are admirable
needlewomen; here, perhaps, is another woman chewing mukluks--and many a
white man who has kept his feet dry in overflow water is grateful to the
teeth that do not disdain this most effective way of securing an
intimate union between sole and upper. Even the children are busy: here
is a boy whittling out bow and arrow--and they do great execution
amongst rabbits and ptarmigan with these weapons that entail no cost of
powder and shot; here is a girl beating out threads from sinew with a
couple of flat stones. Some of us, troubled with unconscientious
tailors, wish that a law could be passed requiring all buttons to be
sewn on with sinew--they never come off.
[Sidenote: A LIGHT-HEARTED FOLK]
They are a very light-hearted people, easily amused, bubbling over with
laughter and merriment, romping and skylarking with one another at every
intermission of labour. One of my white travelling companions on this
journey was in the habit of using a little piece of rabbit skin to
protect his nose in cold or windy weather. The care of the nose is
sometimes very troublesome indeed, it freezes more readily than any
other portion of the body; and a little piece of rabbit skin, moistened
and applied to the nose, will stay there and keep it warm and
comfortable all day. But it does not exactly enhance one's personal
attractions.
We had stopped for camp and were all together for the first time in four
or five hours, when Roxy noticed this rabbit-skin nose protector, upon
which the breath had condensed all the afternoon until two long icicles
depended from it, one on each side, reaching down below the mouth; and
he fell straightway into a fit of laughter that grew uncontrollable; he
rolled on the snow and roared. A little annoyed at this exhibition, I
spoke sharply: "What's the matter with you, Roxy; what on earth are you
cutting up like that for?" Checking himself for a moment, he pointed to
my companion and said, "Alleesame _walrus_," and went off into another
paroxysm of laughter, rolling about and roaring. At intervals all the
evening he would break out again, and when we sat down to eat it
overcame him once more and he rushed outside where he could give vent to
his mirth with less offence.
The boy was straightforward and conscientious. We were camped over
Sunday once, and Roxy had noticed many marten tracks in the
neighbourhood. He had brought a few traps along with him to set out as
we went and pick up on his return, and he wanted to know if I thought he
might set some that day, although it was the day of rest. Careful not to
interfere in any way with the religious instruction any native has
received from any source, I told him that was a matter for him to decide
himself; that each man was responsible for his own conduct. The boy
thought awhile--and he did not set his traps. Now that young man had
never received any instruction at a mission; all his teaching had been
from other Esquimaux. This same question of working on Sunday was the
cause of some of the difficulty between the missionary at Long Beach and
the miners at Shungnak. The sluicing or "cleaning-up" season is short,
and mining operators generally consider that they cannot afford to lose
an hour of it. The Kobuks employed by these miners quit their work on
Sunday, and that brought the operations to a standstill. There was
something to be said on the miners' side, but I rejoiced that the
Esquimau boys showed such steadfastness to their teaching. "If you
cannot use them six days in the week, if it has to be seven or none,
then do as the miners on the Yukon side do, consider the country
uninhabited, and make your arrangements as though there were no Kobuks."
That was my advice, and this may be read in connection with Mr.
Stefanson's caustic comments on the same rigidity of observance.
We left Long Beach with a grateful feeling for the hospitality with
which we had been received and with a substantial respect for the
earnest missionary effort that was being put forth there. We were able
to replenish our grub supply and also to exchange our two toboggans for
one large sled, for we were out of the toboggan country again and they
had already become a nuisance, slipping and sliding about on the trail.
Our host was up early with a good breakfast for us, and speeded the
parting guest, which on the trail is certainly an essential part of true
hospitality, with all the honours; the natives lined up on the bank and
the younger ones running along with us for a few hundred yards.
[Sidenote: THE JADE MOUNTAINS]
Soon after we left the mission we went up a series of terraces to a
desolate, barren, wind-swept flat, the portage across which cut off a
great bend of the river and saved us many miles of travel. To our right
rose the Jade Mountains, whence the supply of this stone which used to
be of importance for arrow-heads and other implements was obtained and
carried far and wide. A light crust on the snow broke through at every
step, though the snow was not deep enough and the ground too uneven to
make snow-shoes useful; so we all had more or less sore feet that night
when we regained the river and made our camp near the mouth of the
Ambler, another tributary from the north.
The next day was an exceedingly long, tedious day. The Kobuk River,
which in its upper reaches is a very picturesque stream, began now to be
as monotonous as the lower Yukon. It had grown to considerable size, and
the bends to be great curves of many miles at a stretch, one of which,
a decided bend to the north of the general westerly direction of the
river, we were three full hours in passing down. It was while traversing
this bend that we witnessed a singular mirage that lent to the day all
the enlivenment it had. Before us for ten or twelve miles stretched the
broad white expanse of the river bed, shimmering in the mellow sunlight,
and far beyond, remote but clear, rose the sharp white peaks of the
mountains that divide the almost parallel valleys of the Kobuk and the
Noatak. As we travelled, these distant peaks began to take the most
fantastic shapes. They flattened into a level table-land, and then they
shot up into pinnacles and spires. Then they shrank together in the
middle and spread out on top till they looked like great domed
mushrooms. Then the broad convex tops separated themselves entirely from
their stalk-like bases and hung detached in the sky with daylight
underneath. And then these mushroom tops stretched out laterally and
threw up peaks of their own until there were distinct duplicate ranges,
one on the earth and one in the sky. It was fascinating to watch these
whimsical vagaries of nature that went on for hours. A change in one's
own position, from erect to stooping, caused the most convulsive
contortions, and when once I lay down on the trail that I might view the
scene through the lowest stratum of the agitated air, every peak shot up
suddenly far into the sky like the outspreading of one's fingers, to
subside as suddenly as I rose to my feet again. The psalmist's query
came naturally to the mind, "Why hop ye so ye hills?" and our Kobuk boy
Roxy, whose enjoyment of fine landscapes and strange sights was always
a pleasure to witness, answered the unspoken question. "God make
mountains dance because spring come," he said prettily enough.
Then we crossed another portage and cut off ten miles of river by it,
and when we reached the river again I wanted to stop, for it grew
towards evening and here was good camping-ground. But we had lately met
some travelling Kobuks and they had told Roxy of a cabin "just little
way" farther on, and I yielded to the rest of the company, who would
push on to it and thus avoid the necessity of making camp. That native
"just little way" is worse than the Scotch "mile and a bittock"; indeed,
the natives have poor notion of distance in general, and miles have as
vague meaning to them as kilometres have to the average Anglo-Saxon.
[Sidenote: A BELATED CAMP]
On and on we pushed, mile after mile, and still no cabin. In the
gathering dusk we would continually think we saw it; half-fallen trees
or sloping branches simulating snow-covered gables. At last it grew
quite dark, and when there was general agreement that we must seek the
cabin no longer, but camp, there was no place to camp in. Either the
bank was inaccessible or there was lack of dry timber. We went on thus,
seeking rest and finding none, until seven-thirty, and then made camp by
candle-light, in a poor place at that, having trudged thirty-five miles
that day. A night-made camp is always an uncomfortable camp, and an
uncomfortable camp means a miserable night, which to-morrow must pay
for. We did not get to bed till nearly midnight, and it was
nine-forty-five when we started out next morning, and we made only
fifteen miles that day.
The Kobuk valley continued to open out wider and wider and the mountains
right and left to recede. The Jade Mountains were now dim and distant
behind us, and new ranges were coming into view. The people on this
lower river are very few. It was just about one hundred miles from Long
Beach when we reached the next native village, a miserable collection of
pole dwellings, half underground, with perhaps a score of inhabitants.
Certainly the conditions of life deteriorated as we descended this
river. The country seems to afford nothing but fish; we were amongst the
ichthyophagi pure and simple. Roxy, bred and born on the upper Kobuk and
never so far down before, is very scornful about it. "Me no likee this
country," he says; "no caribou, no ptarmigan, no rabbits, no timber, no
nothin'." The weather had grown raw and cold again, with a constant
disagreeable wind that took all the fun out of travelling. We passed a
place where a white man was pessimistically picking away at a vein of
coal in the river bluff. "Yes, we been here all winter," he said,
"working on the blamed ledge. I always knowed it was goin' to pinch out,
and now it's begun to pinch. My partner's gone to Candle for more grub,
but I told him it weren't no use. It's pinchin' out right now. I knowed
it afore we started work, but the blamed fool wouldn't listen to me.
'It'll pinch out,' I told him a dozen times; 'you mark my word it'll
pinch out,' I told him, and now it's begun to pinch; and I hope he'll be
satisfied." We were reminded of the many coal-mines from time to time
located on the Yukon, in all or nearly all of which the vein has
"pinched out." The deposits on the coast may be all the fancy of the
magazine writer paints, and may hold the "incalculable wealth" that is
attributed to them, but the coal on the interior rivers seems in scant
measure and of inferior quality.
The same night we reached the native village at the mouth of the
Squirrel River, another northern tributary--the Kobuk receives most of
its waters from the north--and we spent the night and the next day,
which was Sunday, in one of the half-underground huts of the place, in
company with twelve other people. Here we found Roxy's brother, dubbed
"Napoleon" by some white man. They had not seen one another for years,
yet all the greeting was a mutual grunt. The Kobuks are not
demonstrative in their affections, but it would not be right to conclude
the affection lacking. I have seen an old Esquimau woman taking part in
a dance the night after her husband was buried, yet it would have been
unjust to have concluded that she was callous and indifferent. It is
very easy to misunderstand a strange people, and very hard to understand
them thoroughly.
[Sidenote: THE CANINE INTRUDER]
The roof of the tent was dome-shaped and it was lit by a seal-gut
skylight. In the morning while I was conducting Divine service and
attempting most lamely by the mouth of a poor interpreter to convey some
instruction, a dog fight outside adjourned to the roof and presently
both combatants came tumbling through the gut window into the midst of
the congregation. They were unceremoniously picked up and flung out of
the door, a few stitches with a needleful of sinew repaired the window,
and the proceedings were resumed. These gut windows have their
convenience as well as their inconvenience. When the hut gets too warm
and close even for Esquimaux, the seal gut is folded back and the outer
air rushes in to the great refreshment of the occupants; when the hut is
cool enough the gut is replaced. A skylight is far and away the best
method of illuminating any single-story structure, and this membrane is
remarkably translucent, while the snow that falls or frost that forms
upon such a skylight is quickly removed by beating the hand upon the
drum-like surface. All glass windows must be double glazed, or else in
the very cold weather they are quickly covered with a thick deposit of
frost from the condensation of the moisture inside the room, and then
they admit much less light than gut does. One of its unpleasant features
is the way the membrane snaps back and forth with a report like a pistol
whenever the door is opened and shut, but on the whole it is a very good
substitute for glass indeed.
[Sidenote: SLEEPING CUSTOMS]
These river Esquimaux vary greatly in physical appearance. While many of
them are somewhat undersized and all have small feet and hands, some are
well-developed specimens of manhood. "Riley Jim," the chief of this
tribe, would be counted a tall, stalwart man anywhere. And while many
have coarse, squat features, here and there is one who is decidedly
attractive in appearance. A sweet smile which is often upon the face,
and small, regular white teeth, greatly help to redeem any countenance.
A youth of about eighteen at the Squirrel River would properly be called
handsome, one thinks--though amongst native people one grows a little
afraid of forgetting standards of comparison; and his wife--for he was
already a husband--was a decidedly pretty girl. A word ought to be said
which applies to all the Esquimaux we met. Although many people live in
one hut and there is no possible privacy, yet we saw no immodesty of any
sort. They sleep entirely nude--probably our own great-grandparents did
the same, at least the people of Defoe and Smollet did, for nightshirts
and pyjamas are very modern things. There is much to be said from an
hygienic point of view in favour of that custom as against turning in
"all standing" as the Indian generally does, or sleeping in the day
underwear as most white men do. But although every one of a dozen people
in cabin after cabin that we stayed at on the Kobuk River above and
below this place, of both sexes and all ages, would thus strip
completely and go to bed, there was never any exposure of the body at
all. It may be, of course, that our presence imposed a greater care in
this respect, but it did not so impress us; it seemed the normal thing.
Another noticeable feature of the lives of all these people was their
devoutness in the matter of thanks before and after meat. Some of them
would not so much as give and receive a drink of cold water without a
long responsive grace.
As we went on down the river the country grew bleaker and drearier and
the few scattered inhabitants were living more and more the life of the
seacoast. The dwellings resembled igloos more than cabins, being
completely covered with snow and approached by underground passages,
with heavy flaps of untanned sealskin to close them. When we passed a
fork of the river we knew that we were entering the delta of the Kobuk,
and that another day would take us to the mission on Kotzebue Sound. It
was a long, hard day, in which we made forty miles, but an interesting
one. With a start at six, we were at the mouth by nine-thirty. The
spruce which had for some time been dwarfing and dwindling gave place to
willows, the willows shrank to shrubs, the shrubs changed to coarse
grass thrusting yellow tassels through the snow. The river banks sank
and flattened out and ceased, and we were on Hotham Inlet with the long
coast-line of the peninsula that forms it stretching away north and
south in the distance. Roxy's bewilderment was amusing. He stopped and
gazed about him and said: "Kobuk River all pechuk!" ("Pechuk" means
"played out.") "What's the matter, no more Kobuk River?" I think his
mind had never really entertained the notion of the river ending, though
of course he must often have heard of its mouth in the salt water. He
was out of his country, his bearings all gone, a feeling of helpless
insecurity taking the place of his usual confidence, and I think he said
no more all that day.
We had to traverse the ice of Hotham Inlet northward to its mouth,
double the end of the peninsula, and then travel south along the coast
to the mission at Kikitaruk, the peninsula being too rugged to cross.
Three considerable rivers drain into Hotham Inlet, roughly parallel in
their east and west courses, the Noatak, the Kobuk, and the Selawik, so
that its waters must be commonly more fresh than salt, for its bounds
are narrow and the extensive delta of its eastern shore would argue its
depth slight. Ahead of us, as we travelled north making a bee-line for
the end of the peninsula, all the afternoon, loomed the rocky promontory
of Krusenstern, one of Kotzebue's capes, and far beyond, stretching up
the dim coast-line, lay the way to Point Hope. It was with a sinking of
the heart that I gazed upon it, for I knew already, though I had not
announced a decision, that the road to Point Hope could not be my road
that year. All day long the thermometer stood between -40 deg. and -30 deg., and
the constant light sea-breeze kept scarfs wrapped closely about mouths
and noses, which always means disagreeable travel. When the company
stopped at noon to eat a little frozen lunch, I was too chilly to cease
my movement and pressed on. The day of that blessed comfort of the
trail, the thermos flask, was not yet. By two-thirty we had reached Pipe
Spit, which still further contracts the narrow entrance of the inlet,
and turning west for a mile or two rounded the point and then turned
south for ten miles along the coast. Just about dark we reached the
mission and stood gazing out over the rough ice of Kotzebue Sound to the
Arctic Ocean, having made the forty miles in ten and a half hours. We
had come about one thousand miles from Fairbanks, all of it on foot and
most of it on snow-shoes.
[Sidenote: THE ARCTIC OCEAN]
So here was my first sight of the Arctic Ocean. All day long I had
anticipated it, and it stirred me,--a dim, grey expanse stretching vast
and vague in the dusk of the evening. The old navigators whose stories I
had read as a boy passed before me in their wonderful, bold sailing
vessels, going in and out uncharted waters that steamships will not
venture to-day--Kotzebue, Beechey, Collinson, McClure--pushing
resolutely northward.
Less happy had been my first sight of the Pacific Ocean, five years
before. I had the ill luck to come upon it by way of that Western Coney
Island, Santa Monica, and from the merry-go-rounds and cheap eating
places Balboa and Magellan and Franky Drake fled away incontinent and
would not be conjured back; though, indeed, the original discoverers
would have had yet further occasion to gaze at one another "with a wild
surmise" if they had seen shrieking companies "shooting the chutes." But
here was vastness, here was desolation, here was silence; jagged ice
masses in the foreground and boundless expanse beyond, solemn and
mysterious. The Arctic Ocean was even as I had pictured it.
The missionary in charge at Kikitaruk had been informed by letter of our
projected journey during the previous summer and had long expected us.
We were received with kindness and hospitality, and after supper began
at once our acquaintance with his work, for there was a service that
night which it was thought we should attend. I spoke for a few minutes
through an excellent interpreter and then spent a couple of hours
nodding over the stove, overcome with sleep, while there was much
singing and "testimony."
[Sidenote: TOTAL-ABSTINENCE ESQUIMAUX]
The Californian Society of Friends, established here a number of years
with branches at other points on Kotzebue Sound, has done an excellent
work amongst the Esquimaux. If they had accomplished nothing else it
would stand to the everlasting credit of the Society's missionaries that
they have succeeded in imbuing the natives under their charge with a
total aversion to all intoxicating liquor. We had come down from the
remotest points to which the influence of these people has extended; we
had met their natives five hundred miles away from their base of
instruction, and everywhere we found the same thing. It was said by the
white men on the Koyukuk that a Kobuk could not be induced to take a
drink of whisky. It seemed to us a pity that the force of this most
wholesome doctrine should be weakened by the unsuccessful attempt to
include tobacco in the same rigorous prohibition. In several cabins
where we stayed there was no sign of smoking until members of our party
produced pipes, whereupon other pipes were furtively produced and the
tobacco that was offered was eagerly accepted. From any rational point
of view the putting of whisky and tobacco in the same category is surely
a folly. There can be few more harmless indulgences to the native than
his pipe, and no one knows the solace of the pipe until he has smoked it
around the camp-fire in the arctic regions after a hard day's journey.
The decision to turn my back on Point Hope was, I think, the most
painful decision I ever made in my life; with all my heart I wanted to
go on. It was only one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy
miles away. The journey had been made in three or four days; but we
were now come to a country where travel is impossible in bad weather and
where bad weather prevails; and that journey might quite as likely take
two weeks. I worked over the calendar in my diary, figuring how many
days of travel still remained, allowing reasonable margins, and I could
not see that I had much more than time to get back to Fairbanks before
the break-up, which for sufficient reason I regarded as my first duty.
The day of rest at Kikitaruk was Washington's birthday, the 22d of
February. Eight weeks would bring us to the 19th April, by which time
the trails would be already breaking up. Counting out Sundays, that left
forty-eight days of travelling with something like twelve hundred miles
yet to make without going to Point Hope--an average of about twenty-five
miles a day. I knew that we had made no such average in the distance
already covered, and though I knew also that travelling improved
generally as the season advanced, I did not know how very much better
going there is on the wind-hardened snows of the coast when travelling
is possible at all. Again and again I have regretted that I did not take
the chance and push on, but at the time I decided as I thought I ought
to decide, and one has no real compunctions when that is the case.
[Sidenote: THE RESOLUTION TO TURN SOUTH]
So a first-hand knowledge of our own most interesting work among the
Esquimaux was not for me on that occasion--and there has arisen no
opportunity since. Mr. Knapp, who had planned to spend the rest of the
winter at Point Hope, would get a guide and a team here and turn north
after some days' rest, while I would turn south. Roxy was impatient to
return to Bettles. "Me no likee this country," was all that could be got
out of him. So I paid him his money and made him a present of the .22
repeating rifle with which he had killed so many ptarmigan on the
journey, outfitted him with clothes, grub, and ammunition, and let him
go; saying good-bye with regret, for he was a good boy to us all the
way.
It was late on the night of our single day of rest when I got to bed,
for there had been squaring up of accounts and much writing, and when I
went to bed I did not sleep. Again and again I reviewed the decision I
had come to and fought against it, though such is far from my common
habit. Even as I write, years after, the bitter rebellious reluctance
with which I turned south comes back to me. I wished the hospital at
Fairbanks at the bottom of the deep blue sea. I protested I would go on
and complete my journey, even though it involved "thawing out" at Tanana
and getting to Fairbanks on a steamboat in the summer. I had a free
hand, a kindly and complaisant bishop, and none would call me strictly
to account. Then I realised that it was merely pride of purpose,
self-willed resolution of accomplishing what had been essayed--in a
word, personal gratification for which I was fighting, and with that
realisation came surrender and sleep.