THE SEWARD PENINSULA--CANDLE CREEK, COUNCIL, AND NOME
ONE day's rest was not a great deal after the distance we had come--and
that day fully occupied with business--but since Point Hope was
abandoned some sort of schedule must be made for the Seward Peninsula,
and where Sunday shall be spent is always an important factor in
arranging these itineraries. There was just time to reach Candle for the
next Sunday and it was decided to attempt it. Hans would accompany me as
far as Candle, where he hoped to find work. It meant two days of
forty-five miles each, for it is ninety miles from Kikitaruk to Candle,
but they told us it could be done.
So the reluctant adieus made, letters despatched, some mailed here at
Kikitaruk, some to be carried back to Bettles and mailed there--these
latter getting outside long before the former--we started at seven in
the morning instead of six, as we had planned, on the journey down the
shore of Kotzebue Sound. That hour's delay turned out to be a calamity
for us.
The trail was smooth along the beach until Cape Blossom was reached, and
I had the first riding of the winter, Hans and I alternately running and
jumping on the sled. There was a portage across the cape, and three or
four miles below it was the wreck of the river steamer _Riley_, which
used to make a voyage up the Kobuk with supplies for the miners at the
Shungnak. The thermometer was at -38 deg. when we started, and the same
light but keen breeze was blowing that had annoyed us on the other side
of the peninsula. What a barren, desolate region it is!--low rocks
sinking away to the dead level of the snow-field on the one hand,
nothing but the ice-field on the other.
[Sidenote: A BAD NIGHT]
[Sidenote: CAMPED IN THE OPEN]
We were bound for an igloo forty-five miles from the mission, the only
shelter between Kikitaruk on the peninsula and Kewalik on the mainland,
and we had been warned that the igloo would be easy to miss if it grew
dark as it would be almost indistinguishable from the snow-drifts of the
shore. Some directions from a multitude of counsellors remembered in one
sense by Hans and in another by me, added to our uncertainty as to just
where the igloo lay. The wind increased in force as the evening advanced
and the last time I looked at the thermometer it still registered -38 deg..
The sun set over the sound with another of those curious distortions
which had before proved ominous to us. It was flattened and swollen out
like a pot-bellied Chinese lantern, with a neck to it and an irregular
veining over its surface that completed the resemblance. The wind
increased until the air was full of flying snow and it grew dark, and
still there was no sign of the igloo. Only slowly and with much
difficulty could the trail be followed, and that meant we were soon not
moving fast enough to keep warm in the fierce wind. At last we lost the
trail altogether, and sometimes we found ourselves out on the rough ice
of the sound and sometimes wallowing in a fresh snow-drift on the shore.
I became possessed with the fear that we had passed the igloo. I was
positive that we were told at the mission that we should reach it
_before_ the high bluffs were passed, and we had passed them a long way
and had now but a shallow shelf to mark the coast-line. It is strange
how long that delusion about passing his destination will pursue the
Alaskan traveller. Presently the dogs dropped off a steep bank in the
dark, and only by good fortune we were able to keep the heavy sled from
falling upon them, for they were dead tired and lay where they dropped.
With freezing fingers I unhitched the dogs while Hans held the sled, and
we lowered it safely down. But it was plain that it was dangerous to
proceed. We could not find the trail again and were growing alarmingly
cold. We were "up against it," as they say here, "up against it good and
strong." We had a tent but no means of putting it up, a stove but
nothing to burn in it, a grub box full of food but no way to cook it. So
the first night of coast travel was to show us the full rigour and
inhospitality of the coast and to make us long for the interior again.
Wood can almost always be found there within a few miles, if it be not
immediately at hand, and no one properly appreciates the hospitality of
a clump of spruce-trees until he has spent a night of storm lying out on
this barren coast. We turned the dogs loose and threw them a fish
apiece, unlashed the sled, and got out our bedding. I had been sleeping
in robes, Hans in a shedding caribou-hide sleeping-bag that was my pet
aversion. When he crawled out in the morning he was so covered with hair
that he looked like a caribou, and the miserable hairs were always
getting into the food. We fished them out of the coffee, pulled them out
of the butter, and picked them out of the bread. But now in that
sleeping-bag he had an enormous advantage. We lay side by side on the
snow in the lee of the sled, and, tuck myself up with blanket and robe
as I would, it was impossible to keep the swirling snow from coming in.
I called the dogs to me and made them lie on my feet and up against my
side, and so long as they lay still I could get a little warmth, but
whenever they rose and left me I grew numb again. But Hans in his
sleeping-bag was snoring. The bag is the only bedding on the coast.
Added to the physical discomfort of that sleepless, shivery night was
some mental uneasiness. There was no telling to what height the storm
might rise, nor how long it might continue. Sometimes travellers
overtaken in this way on the coast have to lie in their sleeping-bags
for three days and nights before they can resume their journey. The only
interest the night held was the thought that came to me that as nearly
as I could tell we camped exactly on the Arctic Circle. The long night
dragged its slow length to the dawn at last and the wind moderated a
little at the same time, so with the first streak in the east I awoke
Hans, we gathered our poor dogs together, rolled up the snow-incrusted
bedding, and resumed our journey. Two miles farther on was the igloo!
Our calls awoke some one and we were bidden to enter. Descending a
ladder and crawling through a dark passage we came in to the grateful
warmth and shelter. The chamber was crowded with sleeping Esquimaux and
reeked with seal oil and fish, but Hans said it "looked good and smelled
good to him," and so it did to me also. One has to lie out on that coast
in a storm to appreciate the value of mere shelter. We went at once to
cooking, for we had eaten nothing but a doughnut or two in twenty-four
hours, and surely never meal was more relished than the reindeer steaks
and the coffee we took amongst those still sleeping Esquimaux. I should
have liked to spend the day and the next night there, for they were
friendly and kindly, but the wind had moderated somewhat and there was
still a chance to reach Candle for Sunday. With the offer of a sack of
flour at Kewalik we induced a couple of Esquimaux to accompany us, for I
knew we had to cross the mouth of a bay over the ice to reach the
mainland and I wanted to take no more chances.
Our company, again raised to four, started out about nine, and until the
Choris Peninsula was reached the trail still skirted the shore. It is
strange that Kotzebue, who named this peninsula of a peninsula for the
artist who accompanied his expedition in 1816, should have left the main
peninsula itself unnamed, and that the British expedition which named
Cape Blossom ten years later should have failed to supply the omission.
It still bears no name on the map. We portaged across the Choris
Peninsula and at the end of the portage took a straight course across
the mouth of Escholtz Bay (Escholtz was Kotzebue's surgeon) for Kewalik
on the mainland, passing Chamisso Island, named for Kotzebue's poet
friend. There is something very interesting to me in this voyage of
Kotzebue's, and I have long wished to come across a full narrative of
it. But the bitter wind that swept across that ice-sheet with the
thermometer at -30 deg. brought one's thoughts back to one's own condition.
My hands I could not keep warm with the gear that had sufficed for 50 deg.
and 60 deg. below in the interior, and I was very glad to procure from one
of our native companions a pair of caribou mitts with the hair inside,
an almost invulnerable gauntlet against cold. If that wind had been in
our faces instead of on our sides I am sure we could not have travelled
at all. At last we won across the ice and brought up at a comfortable
road-house at Kewalik, about ten miles from Candle. Here we lay
overnight, taking the opportunity of thawing out and drying the
frost-crusted bedding, leaving the short run into town for the morning.
[Sidenote: CANDLE CREEK]
The diggings on Candle Creek yield to the Koyukuk diggings only as the
most northerly gold mining in the world. Although the general methods
are the same in all Alaskan camps, local circumstances introduce many
differences. In all Alaskan camps the ground is frozen and must be
thawed down. The timber of the interior renders wood the natural fuel
for the production of the steam that thaws the ground, but the scarcity
of wood on the Seward Peninsula substitutes coal. There is coal on the
peninsula itself, but of very inferior quality, mixed with ice. One may
see chunks of coal with veins of ice running through them thrown upon
the fire. The wood of the interior is a great factor in its commercial
and domestic economy, and its absence on the Seward Peninsula makes
great change not only in the natural aspect of the country but in the
whole aspect of its industrial and domestic life also. Wood-chopping for
the stove and the mill, wood-sawing, wood-hauling employ no small
percentage of all the white men in the interior--occupations which do
not exist at all on the peninsula. But its encompassment by the sea, its
peninsularity, is the dominating difference between the Seward Peninsula
and the interior, and does indeed make a different country of it
altogether. All prices are very much lower on the peninsula because
ships can bring merchandise directly from the "outside." Thus amongst
those who have money to spend there is a more lavish scale of living
than in the interior towns, and luxuries may be enjoyed here that are
out of the question there. Perhaps, conversely, it is true that life on
the peninsula is somewhat harder for the poorer class. Whether a railway
from salt water to the mid-Yukon would redress this great difference in
the cost of everything may be doubted. Railways do not usually operate
at less than water-rates. There will probably always be an advantage in
the cost of living and mining in favour of the Seward Peninsula camps.
There had been no public religious service of any sort in Candle, with
its several hundreds of population, in three years, so there was special
satisfaction in having reached the place for Sunday when many miners
were in town from the creeks, and an overflowing congregation was
readily assembled. And there was great pleasure in three days' rest at
the hospitable home of a friend while the temperature remained below
-40 deg., exacerbated by a wind that rendered travelling dangerous.
Moreover, by waiting I had company on the way, and now that I was
without native attendant or white companion, and disposed, if possible,
to make the journey right across the peninsula to Council and then to
Nome without engaging fresh assistance, I was doubly glad of the
opportunity of travelling with two men bound for the same places and
acquainted with the route.
[Sidenote: THE SEWARD PENINSULA]
Travelling, like so many other things, is very different on the Seward
Peninsula. The constant winds beat down and harden the snow until it has
a crust that will carry a man anywhere. There are only two means by
which snow becomes crusted; one is this packing and solidifying by the
wind, and the other is thawing and freezing again. There is much less
wind in the interior than on the coast, and usually much less snowfall,
and the greater part of the surface of the country is protected by
trees; the climate, being continental instead of marine, is not subject
to such great fluctuations of temperature. A thaw sufficiently
pronounced or sufficiently prolonged to put a stout crust on the snow
when freezing is resumed, is a very rare thing in the interior and a
common thing on the coast. So a striking difference in travel at once
manifests itself; in the interior all the snow is soft except on a
beaten trail itself, while in the Seward Peninsula all the snow is alike
hard. The musher is not confined to trails--he can go where he pleases;
and his vehicle is under no necessity of conforming in width to a
general usage of the country--it may be as wide as he pleases. Hence the
hitching of dogs two and three abreast; hence the sleds of twenty-two,
twenty-four, or twenty-six inches in width. My tandem rig aroused the
curiosity of those who saw it. Hence many other differences also.
Hitherto we had not dreamed of watering the dogs since snow fell; now I
found their mouths bloody from their ineffectual attempts to dig up the
hard snow with their teeth, and had to water them night and morning. It
is not the custom on the Seward Peninsula to cook for the dogs, and dog
mushers there argue the needlessness of that trouble. But the true
reason is other and obvious. It is difficult for the traveller to get
enough wood to cook for himself, let alone the dogs. On the Seward
Peninsula skis are extensively used when there is soft snow; the
prevalence of brush almost everywhere in the interior renders them of
little use--and they are, therefore, little used, snow-shoes being
universal.
So, as in nearly all such matters everywhere, local peculiarities, local
differences, local customs, usually arise from local conditions, and the
wise man will commonly conform so soon as he discovers them. There is
almost always a sufficient reason for them.
[Sidenote: A "SIDLING" TRAIL]
The journey from Candle to Council was a surprisingly swift one. We
covered the one hundred and thirty miles in three days, far and away the
best travelling of the winter so far, but the usual time, I found. The
hard snow gives smooth passage though the interior of the peninsula is
rugged and mountainous; two prominent elevations, the Ass's Ears,
standing up as landmarks during the first day of the journey. The route
crossed ridge after ridge with steep grades, and the handling of the
heavy sled alone was too much for me. Again and again it was overturned,
and it was all that I could do, and more than I ought to have done, to
set it up again. The wind continued to blow with violence, and shelter
from it there was none. One hillside struggle I shall always remember.
The trail sloped with the hill and the wind was blowing directly down
it. I could keep no footing on the marble snow and had fallen heavily
again and again, in my frantic efforts to hold sled and dogs and all
from sweeping down into a dark ravine that loomed below, when I
bethought me of the "creepers" in the hind-sack, used on the rivers in
passing over glare ice. With these irons strapped to my feet I was able
to stand upright, but it was only by a hair's breadth once and again
that I got my load safely across. When I was wallowing in a hot bath at
Council two days later I found that my hip and thigh were black and blue
where I had fallen, though at the time, in my anxiety to save the dogs
and the sled, I had not noticed that I had bruised myself. So, judging
great things by little, one understands how a soldier may be sorely
wounded without knowing it in the heat and exaltation of battle.
Then for a while there would be such travel as one sees in the
children's picture-books, where the man sits in the sled and cracks his
whip and is whisked along as gaily as you please--such travel as I had
never had before; but there was no pleasure in it--the wind saw to
that.
On the second day we crossed "Death Valley," so called because two men
were once found frozen in it; a bleak, barren expanse, five or six miles
across, with a great gale blowing right down it, charged not only with
particles of hard snow but with spicules of ice and grains of sand. Our
course was south and the gale blew from the northwest, and the right
side of one's body and the right arm were continually numb from the
incessant beating of the wind. The parkee hood had to be drawn closely
all the time, and the eyes were sore from trying to peer ahead through
the fur edging of the hood. One grows to hate that wind with something
like a personal animosity, so brutal, so malicious does it seem. An
incautious turn of the head and the scarf that protected mouth and nose
was snatched from me and borne far away in an instant, beyond thought of
recovery. It seems to lie in wait, and one fancies a fresh shrill of
glee in its note at every new discomfiture it can inflict. There is
nothing far-fetched in the native superstition that puts a malignant
spirit in the wind; it is the most natural feeling in the world. I said
so that night in camp, and one of my companions mentioned something
about "rude Boreas," and I laughed. The gentle myths of Greece do not
fit this country. The Indian name means "the wind beast," and is
appropriate.
A savage, forbidding country, this whole interior of the Seward
Peninsula, uninhabited and unfit for habitation; a country of naked rock
and bare hillside and desolate, barren valley, without amenities of any
kind and cursed with a perpetual icy blast.
[Sidenote: DEATH VALLEY]
The valley crossed and its ridge surmounted, a still more heart-breaking
experience was in store. We descended the frozen bed of a creek from
which the wind had swept every trace of snow so that the ice was
polished as smooth as glass. The dogs could get no footing and were
continually down on their bellies, moving their legs instinctively but
helplessly, like the flippers of a turtle, while the wind carried dogs
and sled where it pleased. The grade was considerable and in bends the
creek spread out wide. Nothing but the creepers enabled a man to stand
at all, and creepers and brake together could not hold the sled from
careering sideways across the ice, dragging the dogs with it, until the
runners struck some pebble or twig frozen in the ice and the sled would
be violently overturned. Twice with freezing fingers I unlashed that
sled lying on its side, and took out nearly all the load before I could
succeed in getting it upright again, losing some of the lighter articles
each time. The third time was the worst of all. The brake had been
little more than a pivot on which sled and dogs were swung to leeward,
but now the teeth had become so blunt that, though I stood upon it with
all my weight, it would not hold at all nor check the sideways motion
under the impulse of the wind. Right across the creek we went, dragging
the dogs behind, jerking them hither and thither over the glassy
surface. I saw the rocks towards which we were driving, but was
powerless to avert the disaster, and hung on in some hope, I suppose, of
being able to minimise it, till, with a crash that broke two of the
uprights and threw me so hard that I skinned my elbow and hurt my head,
we were once more overturned. Never since I reached manhood, I think,
did I feel so much like sitting down and crying. It seemed hopeless to
think about getting down that creek until the wind stopped, and one
doubts if the wind ever does stop in that country. But there was no good
sitting there like a shipwrecked mariner, nursing sores and misfortunes;
presently one would begin to feel sorry for oneself--that last resort of
incompetence. And the bitter wind is a great stimulus. It will not
permit inaction. So I was up again, fumbling at the sled lashings as
best I could with torpid fingers, when one of my companions, uneasy at
my delay, very kindly made his way back, and with his assistance I was
able to get the sled upright again without unloading and hold it
somewhat better on its course until another bend or two brought us to
the partial shelter of bluffs and, a little farther, to the cabin where
we were to spend the night. I understood now why my companions had a
sort of hinged knife-edge fastened to one runner of their sled. By the
pressure of a foot the knife-edge engaged the ice and held the sled on
its course. This is another Seward Peninsula device.
[Sidenote: THE KINDLY SWEDE]
I have it in my diary that "a Swede named Petersen was very kind to us
at the cabin, cooking for us and giving us cooked dog feed." Blessed
Swede named Petersen!--there are hundreds of them in Alaska--and I shall
never forget that particular one's kindness--the only man I met in the
Seward Peninsula who still persisted in cooking dog feed whenever he
could. He had cooked up a mess of rice and fish enough to last his three
or four dogs several days while he sojourned at this cabin, and he gave
it all to us and would take nothing for it. His language was what
Truthful James calls "frequent and painful and free." I ignored it for a
while, loath to take exception to anything a man said who had been so
kind. But at last I could stand it no longer--it took all the savour out
of his hospitality--and I said: "I hope you won't mind my saying it, for
I'd hate to give offence to a man who has been so good to strangers as
you have, but I wish you'd cut out that cursing; it hurts my ears." He
sat silent a moment looking straight at me, and I was not sure how he
had taken it. Then he said: "Maybe you been kinder to me saying that,
than I been to you. That's the first time I ever been call down for
cursin'. I don't mean nothin' by it; it's just foolishness and I goin'
try to cut it out."
The dogs had done but ill on the dry fish, accustomed as they were to
cooked food, and they ate ravenously of their supper. Only the previous
night Lingo had betrayed his trust for the first and last time. Coming
out of the cabin just before turning in, to take a last look round, I
saw Lingo on top of the sled eating something, and I found that he had
dug a slab of bacon out of the unlashed load and had eaten most of it. I
knew he was hungry, missing the filling, satisfying mess he was used to,
and I did not thrash him, I simply said, "Oh, Lingo!" and the dog got
off the sled and slunk away, the very picture of conscious, shamefaced
guilt. That was the only time he did such a thing in all the six years I
drove him.
Council was past its prime at the time of this visit, but just as we
entered the town, at the end of the third day's run, it seemed in danger
of going through all the stages of decadence with a rush to total
destruction out of hand, for a fire had broken out in a laundry, and
with the high wind still blowing it looked as though every building was
doomed. Of two chemical engines possessed by the town one refused to
work, but the vigour and promptness of the people in forming two lines
down to the river, and passing buckets with the utmost rapidity, coped
with the outbreak just in time to prevent its spreading beyond all
control. Tired as we were, we all pitched in and passed buckets until
parkees and mitts and mukluks were incrusted with ice from water that
was spilled. Efficient protection is a matter of great difficulty and
expense in Alaskan towns, and there is not one of them that has escaped
being swept by fire. The buildings are almost necessarily all of wood,
the cost of brick and stone construction being prohibitive. No one can
guarantee ten years of life to a placer-mining town, and there would be
no warrant for the expenditure of the sums required for fireproof
building even were the capital available. But the rapidity with which
they are rebuilt, where rebuilding is justified, is even more remarkable
than the rapidity with which they are destroyed.
A Saturday and Sunday were very welcome at Council, and the courtesy of
the Presbyterian minister, who gave up his church and his congregations
to me, Esquimaux in the morning and white at night, was much
appreciated.
[Sidenote: NORTON SOUND]
In warmer weather, the thermometer no lower than -5 deg. at the start, but
with the same gale blowing that had blown ever since we left Candle,
though it had shifted towards the northeast, we got away on Monday
morning, bound for Nome, ninety miles away, hoping to reach the half-way
house that night. Five or six hours' run over good trails, with no
greater inconvenience than the acceleration of our pace by the wind on
down grades, until the sled frequently overran the dogs with
entanglements and spillings, brought us to the seacoast at Topkok, and a
noble view opened up as we climbed the great bluff. There Norton Sound
spread out before us, its ice largely cleared away and blown into Bering
Sea by the strong wind that had prevailed for nearly a week, its waves
sparkling and dashing into foam in the March sunshine; the distant
cliffs and mountains of its other shore just visible in the clear air.
It was an exhilarating sight--the first free water that I had seen since
the summer, and it seemed rejoicing in its freedom, leaping up with glee
to greet the mighty ally that had struck off its fetters.
But from this point troubles began to grow. We dropped down presently to
the shore and passed along the glare surface of lagoon after lagoon, the
wind doing what it liked with the sled, for it was impossible to handle
it at all. Sometimes we went along broadside on, sometimes the sled
first and the dogs trailing behind, moving their silly, helpless paws
from side to side as they were dragged over the ice on their bellies.
When we had passed these lagoons the trail took the beach, running
alongside and just to windward of a telephone-line, with rough shore
ice to the left and bare rocks to the right. Again and again the already
injured sled was smashed heavily against a telephone pole. I would see
the impact coming and strive my utmost to avert it, but without a gee
pole, and swinging the sled only by the handle-bars, it was more than I
could do to hold the sled on its course against the beam wind that was
forcing it towards the ice and the telephone poles; and a gee pole could
not be used at the rate we had travelled ever since we left Candle. Mile
after mile we went along in this way. I do not know how many poles I hit
and how many I missed, but every pole on that stretch of coast was a
fresh and separate anxiety and menace to me. I think I would have been
perfectly willing to have abolished and wiped out the whole invention of
the telephone so I could be rid of those hateful poles. What were
telephone poles doing in the arctic regions anyway? Telephone poles
belonged with electric cars and interurban trolley-lines, not with dog
teams and sleds.
Then it grew dark and the wind increased. I did not know it, but I was
approaching that stretch of coast which is notorious as the windiest
place in all Alaska, a place the topography of which makes it a natural
funnel for the outlet of wind should any be blowing anywhere in the
interior of the peninsula. My companions were far ahead, long since out
of sight. I struggled along a little farther, and, just after a
particularly bad collision and an overturning, I saw a light glimmering
in the snow to my right. It was a little road-house, buried to the eaves
and over the roof in snow-drift, with window tunnels and a door tunnel
excavated in the snow. I was yet, I learned, five miles from Solomon's,
my destination, but I hailed this haven as my refuge for the night and
went no farther, more exhausted by the struggle of the last two or three
hours than by many an all-day tramp on snow-shoes. It was a miserable,
dirty little shack, but it was tight; it meant shelter from that
pitiless wind. That night the thermometer stood at 7 deg., the first plus
temperature in twenty-two days.
By morning the gale had greatly diminished, and by the time I reached
Solomon's and rejoined my companions it was calm, the first calm since
we left the middle Kobuk. We had some rough ice to cross to avoid a long
detour of the coast, and then we were back on the shore again and it
began to snow. The snow was soon done and the sun shone, but the new
coating of dazzling white gave such a glare that it was necessary to put
on the snow glasses for the first time of the winter--and that is always
a sign winter draws to a close.
[Sidenote: DOGS AND REINDEER]
On the approach to Nome we had our first encounter with reindeer, and at
once my dog team became unmanageable. I had had some trouble that
morning with a horse. A new dog I procured at Kikitaruk had never seen a
horse before, and made frantic efforts to get at him, leaping at his
haunches as we passed by. But when they saw the reindeer the whole team
set off at a run, dragging the heavy sled as if it were nothing. The
Esquimau driving the deer saw the approaching dogs and hastily drew his
equipage off the trail farther inshore, standing between the deer and
the dogs with a heavy whip. What the result would have been had the
dogs reached the deer it is hard to say. I had kept my stand on the step
behind the sled and managed to check its wild career with the brake and
to throw it over and stop the approach before the carnivora reached
their immemorial prey. Herein lies one of the difficulties of the
domestication of reindeer in Alaska, a country where so far dogs have
been the only domestic animals. Again, as we entered the outskirts of
Nome the incident was repeated, and only the hasty driving of the
reindeer into a barn prevented the dogs from seizing the deer that time.
[Sidenote: NOME]
Jimmy was long deposed from his ineffectual leadership and a little dog
named Kewalik--the one I obtained at Kikitaruk--was at the head of the
team. Kewalik had never seen so many houses before; hitherto almost
every cabin he had reached on his journeys had been a resting-place, and
he wanted to dive into every house we passed. At Candle and Council
both, our stopping-place had been near the entrance to the little town.
But now we had to pass up one long street after another and I had
continually to drag him and the team he led first from a yard on this
side of the road and then from one on the other. The dog was perfectly
bewildered and out of his head by the number of people and the number of
houses he saw. We were indeed a sorry, travel-worn, unkempt, uncivilised
band, man and dogs, with an old, battered vehicle, and we felt our
incongruity with the new environment as we entered the metropolis of the
luxury and wealth of the North. Here we passed a jeweller's shop, the
whole window aglow with the dull gleam of gold and ivory--the terrible
nugget jewellery so much affected in these parts and the walrus ivory
which is Alaska's other contribution of material for the ornamental
arts. Here we passed a veritable department store, its ground-floor
plate-glass window set as a drawing-room, with gilded, brocaded chairs,
marquetry table, and ormolu clock, and I know not what costliness of rug
and curtain. It was all so strange that it seemed unreal after that long
passage of the savage wilds, that long habitation of huts and igloos and
tents. Hitherto we had often been fortunate could we buy a little flour
and bacon; here the choice comestibles of the earth were for sale. I
looked askance at my greasy parkee as I passed shops where English
broadcloth and Scotch tweeds were displayed; at my worn, clumsy mukluks
when I saw patent-leather pumps. But Nome knows how to welcome the
wanderer from the wilderness and to make him altogether at home. There
could be no warmer hospitality than that with which I was received by
the Reverend John White and his wife, than that which I had at many a
home during my week's stay.
Nothing in the world could have caused the building of a city where Nome
is built except the thing that caused it: the finding of gold on the
beach itself and in the creeks immediately behind it. It has no harbour
or roadstead, no shelter or protection of any kind; it is in as bleak
and exposed a position as a man would find if he should set out to hunt
the earth over for ineligible sites.
But Nome is also a fine instance of the way men in the North conquer
local conditions and wring comfort out of bleakness and desolation by
the clever adaptation of means to ends.
The art of living comfortably in the North had to be learned, and it has
been learned pretty thoroughly. People live at Nome as well as they do
"outside." One may sit down to dinners as well cooked, as well
furnished, as well served as any dinners anywhere. The good folk of Nome
delight in spreading their dainty store before the unjaded appetite of
the winter traveller, and it would be affectation to deny that there is
keen relish of enjoyment in the long-unwonted gleam of wax candle or
electrolier upon perfect appointment of glass, silver, and napery, in
the unobtrusive but vigilant service of white-jacketed Chinaman or Jap.
Nome has a great advantage over its only rival in the interior,
Fairbanks, in the matter of freight rates. The same merchandise that is
landed at the one place for ten or twelve dollars a ton within ten or
twelve days of its leaving Seattle, costs fifty or sixty at the other,
and takes a month or more to arrive. But this accessibility in the
summer is exactly reversed in the winter. No practicable route has been
discovered along the uninhabited shores of Bering Sea, and all the mail
for Nome comes from Valdez to Fairbanks and then down the Yukon and
round Norton Sound by dog team. In winter Fairbanks is within seven or
eight days of open salt water; Nome a full month. After navigation
closes in October, the first mail does not commonly reach the Seward
Peninsula until January. So that, with all its comforts and luxuries,
Nome is a very isolated place for eight months in the year.
[Illustration: GOLD-MINING AT NOME.]
[Illustration: PULLING THE "PELICAN" OUT WITH A "SPANISH WINDLASS."]
[Sidenote: MINING AT NOME]
We went out with the dog sled to the diggings a few miles behind the
town, and a busy scene we found, enveloped in steam and smoke. Here an
old beach line had been discovered and was yielding rich reward for the
working. A long line of conical "dumps" marked its extension roughly
parallel with the present shore, and the buckets that arose from the
depths, travelled along a cable, and at just the right moment upset
their contents, continually added to these heaps. All the winter
"pay-dirt" is thus excavated and stored; in the summer when the streams
run the gold is sluiced out. But that phrase "when the streams run"
covers a world of difficulty and expense to the miner. In some places in
this Seward Peninsula, ditches thirty and forty miles long have been
constructed to insure the streams running when and where they are
needed.
There was quite a little to do in Nome. A new sled must be bought, and
another dog, and, above all, some arrangement made about a travelling
companion. I was not willing to hire a native who would have to return
here, and I was resolved never again to travel alone. So I put an
advertisement in the newspaper, desiring communication with some man who
was intending a journey to Fairbanks immediately, and was fortunate to
meet a sober, reliable man who undertook to accompany and assist me for
the payment of his travelling expenses.
The week wore rapidly away, and I began to be eager to depart, mindful
of the eight hundred odd miles yet to be covered. Spring seemed already
here and summer treading upon her heels, for the town was all slush and
mud from a decided "soft snap," the thermometer standing well above
freezing for days in succession.
A visitor to this place is struck by the number of articles made from
walrus ivory exposed for sale, chief amongst them being cribbage-boards.
A walk down the streets would argue the whole population given over to
the incessant playing of cribbage. The explanation is found in the
difficulty of changing the direction of Esquimau activity once that
direction is established. These clever artificers were started making
cribbage-boards long ago and it seems impossible to stop them. Every
summer they come in from their winter hunting with fresh supplies carved
during the leisure of the long nights. The beautiful walrus tusk becomes
almost an ugly thing when it is thus hacked flat and bored full of
holes. The best pieces of Esquimau carving are not these things, made by
the dozen, but the domestic implements made for their own use, and some
of this work is very clever and tasteful indeed, adorned with fine bold
etchings of the chase of walrus, seal, and polar bear.