THE "FIRST ICE"--AN AUTUMN ADVENTURE ON THE KOYUKUK
IT is not attempted in this narrative to give separate account of all
the journeys with which it deals. That would involve much repetition and
tedious detail. Our long journey has been described from start to
finish, taking the reader far north of the Yukon, then almost to the
extreme west of Alaska, and then round by the Yukon to mid-Alaska again.
It is proposed now to give sketches of such parts of other journeys as
do not cover the same ground, and they will lie, with one exception,
south of the Yukon. While visiting many of the same points every winter,
it has been within the author's good fortune and contrivance to include
each year some new stretch of country, sometimes searching out and
visiting a new tribe of natives, and blazing the way for the
establishment of permanent missionary work amongst them. To these
initial journeys belongs a zest that no subsequent travels in the same
region ever have; there is a keen interest in what every new turn of a
trail shall bring, every new bend of a river; there is eagerness rising
with one's rising steps to excitement for the view from a new mountain
pass; above all, there is deep satisfaction coupled with a sense of
solemn responsibility in being the first to reach some remote band of
Indians and preach to them the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There
are few men nowadays on the North American continent to whom that
privilege remains.
A period of nearly three years elapses between the beginning of the
journey that has already been described and the short sketch of a
journey that follows. Many things had happened in those three years. It
had been the happy duty of the writer to return to the Koyukuk late in
the winter of 1906-7, empowered to build the promised mission for the
hitherto neglected natives of that region. Pitching tent at a spot
opposite the mouth of the Alatna, with the aid of a skilled carpenter
and a couple of axemen brought from the mining district above, and the
labour of the Indians, the little log church and the mission house were
put up and prepared for the two ladies--a trained nurse and a
teacher--who should arrive on the first steamboat. The steamboat that
brought them in carried him out on its return trip, and the next year
was spent in the States making known the needs of the work in Alaska and
securing funds for its advancement.
[Sidenote: DOCTOR GRAFTON BURKE]
On my return I brought with me a young physician, Doctor Grafton Burke,
as a medical missionary, and a half-breed Alaskan youth, Arthur, who had
been at school in California, as attendant and interpreter. A
thirty-two-foot gasoline launch designed for the Yukon and its
tributaries was also brought and was launched at the head of Yukon
navigation at Whitehouse. The voyages of the _Pelican_ on almost all the
navigable waters of interior Alaska do not belong to a narrative
concerned solely with winter travel, but her maiden voyage ended in an
unexpected and rather extraordinary journey over the ice which is
perhaps worth describing. After the voyage down the Yukon, and up and
down the Tanana, it was purposed to take the boat up the Koyukuk to the
new mission at the Allakaket, where dogs and gear had been left, and put
her in winter quarters there. The delays that associate themselves not
unnaturally with three novices and a four-cylinder gasoline engine, had
brought the date for ascending the Koyukuk a little too late for safety,
though still well within the ordinary season of open water. The
possibility of an early winter closing the navigation of that stream
before the _Pelican_ reached her destination had been entertained and
provided against, though it seemed remote. Three dogs, needed anyway to
replace superannuated members of the team, had been bargained for at
Tanana and accommodations for them arranged, and a supply of dog fish
stowed on the after deck of the launch. But when we went to pay the
arranged price and receive the dogs, the vender's wife and children set
up such a remonstrance and plaintive to-do that he went back on his
bargain and we did not get the dogs. There was no time to hunt others,
to linger was to invite the very mishap we sought to guard against, so
we pulled out dogless, reached the mouth of the Koyukuk on the 17th of
September and, having taken on board the supply of gasoline cached
there, turned our bow up the river the next morning. For five days we
pushed up the waters of that great, lonely river, and by that time we
were some twenty-five miles above Hogatzakaket, three hundred and
twenty-five miles from the mouth and one hundred and twenty-five miles
from the mission, at the camp of a prospector who had recently poled up
from the Yukon. We woke on board the launch the next morning to find ice
formed all around us and ice running in the river. The thermometer had
gone to zero in the night.
[Sidenote: THE RUNNING ICE]
A very brief attempt to make our way against the running ice showed the
danger of doing so, for the thin cakes had knife-edges and cut the
planking of the boat so that she began to leak. Then there came to me
with some bitterness that I had earnestly desired a thin steel
armour-plating at the water-line, but had allowed myself to be persuaded
out of it by her builders. So again my forethought had been of no
avail--though, of course, lightness of draught _was_ the first
consideration. We put back to the camp and proceeded to flatten out and
cut up all the empty cans and tinware we could find and nail it along
the water-line of the boat, but the prospector persuaded us to wait a
day or two. He had never seen a river close with the first little run of
ice. He looked for a soft spell and open water yet. It was foolish to
risk the boat against the ice. So we waited; and night after night the
thermometer fell a little lower and a little lower, until presently a
sheet of ice stretched across the whole river in the bend where we lay.
We were frozen in. The remote possibility we had feared and sought to
guard against had happened. Navigation had ceased on the Koyukuk at the
earliest date anybody remembered, the 23d of September. Three days more
had surely taken us to the mission where they had long expected us; now
we should have to make our way on foot, without dogs, on the dangerous
"first ice," as it is called, taking all sorts of chances, pulling a
Yukon sled, with tent and stove, grub and bedding, "by the back of the
face."
But first there was the launch to pull out and make snug for the winter
and safe against the spring break-up. A convenient little creek mouth
with easy grade offered, which was one of the reasons I had not pushed
on the few more miles we could have made. Here were eligible winter
quarters; farther on we might have trouble in putting the boat in
safety; here also was a kindly and capable man willing to assist us.
It was our great good fortune to find this man at this spot. A steamboat
he had signalled as she entered the mouth of the Koyukuk had passed him
by unheeded, and he had been left to make his way six hundred miles up
to the diggings, with his winter's outfit in a poling boat. He had
accomplished more than half the task, and, warned by the approach of
winter, had stopped at this place a few days before we reached it, and
had begun the building of a little cabin; meaning to prospect the creek,
which had taken his eye as having a promising look. The cabin we helped
him finish was the twenty-first cabin he had built in Alaska, he
informed us.
There is something very impressive about the quiet, self-reliant,
unrecorded hardihood of the class of which this man was an excellent
type. We asked him why he had no partner, and he said he had had several
partners, but they all snored, and he would not live with a man that
snored. He had prospected and mined in many districts of Alaska during
nearly twenty years. Once he had sold a claim for a few hundred dollars
that had yielded many thousands to the purchaser, and that was as near
wealth as he had ever come. But he had always made a living, always had
enough money at the close of the summer to buy his winter's "outfit" and
try his luck somewhere else.
[Sidenote: THE PROSPECTOR]
Singly, or in pairs, men of this type have wandered all over this vast
country: preceding the government surveys, preceding the professional
explorer, settling down for a winter on some creek that caught their
fancy, building a cabin, thawing down a few holes to bed-rock, sometimes
taking out a little gold, more often finding nothing, going in the
summer to some old-established camp to work for wages, or finding
employment as deck-hand on a steamboat.
With an axe and an auger they have dotted their rough habitations all
over the country; with a pick and a shovel and a gold pan they have
tested the gravels of innumerable creeks. They know the drainage slopes
and the practicable mountain passes, the haunts of the moose and the
time and direction of the caribou's wanderings. The boats they have
built have pushed their noses to the heads of all navigable streams; the
sleds they have made have furrowed the remotest snows. In the arts of
the wilderness they are the equal of the native inhabitant; in endurance
and enterprise far his superior. The more one learns by experience and
observation what life of this sort means, and realises the demands it
makes upon a man's resourcefulness, upon his physique, upon his good
spirits, upon his fortitude, the more one's admiration grows for the
silent, strong men who have gone out all over this land and pitted
themselves successfully against its savage wildness. Often in stress for
the necessaries of life, there are yet no men as a class more
free-handed and generous; trained to do everything for themselves, there
are none more willing to help others.
It is no small task to pull a four-ton boat out of the water with only
such wilderness tackle as we could devise. We made ways of soft timbers,
squaring and smoothing them; we cut down many trees for rollers; we dug
and graded the beach. Then, having altogether unloaded her and built a
high cache of poles and a platform for her stuff, and having chopped the
ice from all around her, we rigged a Spanish windlass and wound that
boat out of the water with the half-inch cable she carried, and up on
the ways and well into the mouth of the little creek. Then we levelled
her up and thoroughly braced her and put her canvas cover all over her,
and she lay there until spring and took no harm at all.
Arthur had meantime been making a sled of birch, intending to pull it
himself while the doctor and I pulled a Yukon sled borrowed from our
friend the prospector. By the 6th of October all our dispositions were
made for departure, and the ice seemed strong enough to warrant trusting
ourselves to it; but we waited another two days, the thermometer still
reaching a minimum each night somewhere around zero. When we said
good-bye to our friend Martin Nelson (sometimes one wonders if anywhere
else in the world can be found men as kind and helpful to strangers) and
started on our journey, it soon appeared that Arthur's sled was more
hindrance than help. There was no material to iron the runners save
strips of tin can, and these could not be beaten so smooth that they did
not drag and cut on the ice. So the load was transferred to our sled and
the little sled abandoned, and we took turns at the harness. This was
the order of the journey: one man went ahead with an axe to test the
ice; one man put the rope trace about his shoulders; one man pushed at
the handle-bars which had been affixed to the sled. It was fortunate
that amidst the equipment on the launch were two pairs of ice-creepers.
Without them any sort of pulling and pushing on the glare ice would have
been impossible.
We soon found that the bend in which we had frozen was no sort of index
of the general condition of the river. Much of it was still wide open,
and every elbow between bends was piled high with rough ice from
pressure jams. There was shore ice, however, even in the open bends,
along which we were able to creep; and, though the ice-jams gave
considerable trouble, yet we did very well the first day and camped at
dark with eighteen or nineteen miles to our credit, in the presence of a
great, red, smoky sunset and a glorious alpenglow on a distant snow
mountain.
The next day was full of risks and difficulties. We were to learn more
about the varieties and vagaries of ice on that journey than many
winters' travel on older ice would teach.
[Illustration: THE START OVER THE "FIRST ICE."]
[Illustration: "ROUGH GOING."]
[Sidenote: THE START]
At times, for a few hundred yards, the sled would glide with little
effort over smooth, polished ice; then would come a long sand-bar, the
side of which we had to hug close, and the ice upon it was what is
called "shell-ice," through several layers of which we broke at every
step. As the river fell, each night had left a thin sheet of ice
underneath the preceding night's ice, and the foot crashed through the
layers and the sled runners cut through them down to the gravel and sand
at the bottom. Then would come another smooth stretch on which we made
good time. But as we advanced up the river the current was swifter and
swifter and the ice conditions grew steadily worse. Here was a steep-cut
bank with just about eighteen or twenty inches of ice adhering to it and
the black, rushing water beyond. We must either get our load along that
shelf or unload the sled and pack everything over the face of a rocky
bluff. Arthur passed over it first, testing gently with the axe, and
found it none too strong. But the alternative was so toilsome that we
resolved to take the chance. The doctor put the trace over his
shoulders, Arthur took the handle-bars, while I climbed to a ledge of
the rocks and, with a rope made of a pair of camel's-hair puttees
unwound for the purpose and fastened to the sled, took all the weight I
could and eased the sled over the worst place where the ice sloped to
the water. If the ice had broken I might have held the sled from sinking
until one of the others came to me, or I might not; the boys would
probably have gone in too. It was a most risky spot and the sort of
chance no one would think of taking under ordinary circumstances. As it
was, the ice broke under Arthur's feet, and only by throwing his weight
on the sled did he save himself a ducking. But we got the load safely
across.
A good run of perhaps a mile, and then we had to go back at least half a
mile, for the ice played out altogether on our side of the river as we
reached the Batzakaket, and there was open water in the middle. To reach
the shore ice that was continuous on the other side, we had to "double"
the open water. With such varying fortune the day passed, and we camped
on the level ice of a little creek tributary to the right bank, having
made perhaps another nineteen miles.
When I awoke in the morning my heart sank at the tiny, creeping patter
of fine snow on the silk tent. Snow was one thing I greatly dreaded, for
there was not a pair of snow-shoes amongst us! A little snow would not
do much harm, but if once snow began to fall we might have a foot or two
before it ceased, and then we should be in bad case. It stopped before
noon, but the half-inch that fell made the sled drag much heavier. The
actual force to be exerted was not the most laborious feature of pulling
that sled; it was the jerk, jerk, jerk on the shoulders. A dog's four
legs give him much smoother traction than a man's two legs give, just as
a four-cylinder engine will turn a propeller with much less vibration
than a two-cylinder engine. Every step forward gave an impulse that
spent itself before the next impulse was given, and the result was that
the shoulders grew sore.
We came that morning to the longest and roughest ice-jam we had so far
encountered. It was as though a thousand bulls had been turned loose in
a mammoth plate-glass warehouse. Jagged slabs of ice upended everywhere
in the most riotous confusion, and it was impossible to pick any way
amongst them, so a man had to go ahead and hew a path. It was while thus
engaged that the doctor fell and injured his knee so severely on a sharp
ice point that he hobbled in pain the rest of the trip. This was a very
serious matter to us, for, though he insisted on still taking his trick
at the traces, his effectiveness as a motive power was much diminished;
and we had no sooner thus hewed and smashed our way through that jam
than we had to hew and smash it across to the other side again in our
search for passage.
[Sidenote: "BY THE BACK OF THE FACE"]
Then we came to a place where, in order to cut off a long sweeping curve
of the river with open water and bad shore ice, we went through a dry
slough and had to drag those iron runners over gravel and stones, where
sometimes it was all the three of us could do to move the sled a few
feet at a time. Yet all along the banks were willows, and if we had only
known then what we know now we would have cut down and split some
saplings and bound them over the iron, and so have saved three fourths
of that labour.
[Sidenote: BEAR MEAT AND BEANS]
So the day's run was short, though the most exhausting yet, and we were
all thoroughly tired out when we pitched the tent. I have note of a
great supper of bear meat and beans, the meat the spoil of our friend
the prospector's gun. It is one of the compensations of human nature
that the satisfaction of appetite increases in pleasure in proportion to
the bodily labour that is done. With food abundant and at choice, I do
not like bear meat and will not eat beans. Yet my diary bears special
note of the delicious meal they furnished on this occasion. Put any
philosopher in the traces, or set him ahead of the dog team on
show-shoes, breaking trail all day, and towards evening it is odds that
his mind is not occupied with deep speculations about the infinite and
the absolute, but rather with the question of what he will have for
supper. Particularly should the grub be a little short, should fresh
meat give out, or, above all, should sugar be "shy," it is astonishing
how one's mind runs on eating and what elaborate imaginary repasts one
partakes of. Yet of all food that a man ever eats there is none that is
so relished and gives such clear gustatory pleasure as the plain, rough
fare of the camp--provided it be well cooked. Greatly as we were in need
of sleep, we got little, for the doctor's knee pained him all night and
poor Arthur developed a raging toothache that did not yield until
carbolic acid had been thrice applied.
Soon after we started the next day, the river narrowed and swept round a
series of mountain bluffs and we began to have the gloomiest
expectations of trouble. It seemed certain that ice would fail us for
passage, and we would have to pack our sled and its load by slow relays
over the mountain. But to our delight we passed between the bluffs on
good, firm, smooth ice, and it was not until we emerged on the flat
beyond that our difficulty began. So it is again and again on the trail.
Almost always it is the unexpected that happens; almost always it is
something quite different from what our apprehensions have dwelt upon
that arises to hinder and distress us. A tongue of level land that
struck far out into the water, a cut mud bank with a current so swift
that no ice at all had formed along it, interposed an obstacle that it
took hours to circumvent. We had to leave the sled and cut a trail
through the brush for half a mile along this peninsula in order to reach
a stretch of the river where the ice was resumed, and the little snow
that had fallen being quite insufficient to give the sled good passage,
we had an exceedingly arduous job in getting it across.
A mile or two of good going brought us in view of the smoke of a human
habitation. What a blessed sight often and often this waving column of
blue smoke in the distance is! Sometimes it means life itself to the
Alaskan musher, and it always means warmth, shelter, food,
companionship, assistance; all that one human being can bring to
another. "The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn" never "breaks on
the traveller faint and astray" with half the rejoicing that comes with
the first sight of mere smoke. "I believe I see smoke," cried Arthur,
with the quick vision of the native. "Where? Where?" we eagerly
inquired, and the doctor left the handle-bars and limped forward to the
boy ahead with the axe. "Away yonder on that bank," pointed Arthur. "I
see it! I see it!" the doctor shouted; "we're coming to a house, we're
coming to people!" The trip was a severe apprenticeship to Alaskan life
for a man straight from the New York hospitals, although before the
accident to his knee I had declared that if only they could be trained
to live on dry fish I thought a team of young doctors would haul a sled
very well. He was delighted at coming upon the first inhabited house we
had seen since we helped Nelson to build his little cabin--and _that_
was only the second inhabited house in three hundred miles.
[Sidenote: BREAKING THROUGH]
But, perhaps because we grew less cautious in our excitement, almost
immediately after we had spied the smoke of the cabin we got into one of
the worst messes of the whole trip. Arthur had pushed ahead and we had
followed with a spurt, and almost at the same time all three of us
became aware that we were on dangerous ice. Arthur cried, "The ice is
breaking; go back!" just as we began to feel it swaying under our feet.
I shouted to the doctor, "Go _on_ to the bank quick!" and pushed with
all my might, and we managed to make a few yards more towards shallow
water, over ice that bent and cracked at every step, before it gave way
and let down the sled and the men into two feet of water. Arthur had run
safely over the breaking ice and had gained the bank, and as I write, in
my mind's eye I can see the doctor, who had been duly instructed in the
elementary lessons of the trail, standing in the water and calling to
Arthur: "Make a fire quick; make a fire. I'm all wet!"
But it was not necessary to make a fire, for the thermometer was no
lower than 10 deg. or 15 deg. above zero, and the chief trouble was not the
wetting of our legs but the wetting of the contents of the sled. Along
the bank was stronger ice, and we managed, though not without much
difficulty, to get the sled upon it and to make our way to the Indian
cabin.
As soon as old "Atler" (I have never been quite sure of what white
man's name that is a corruption) knew who we were, his hospitality,
which had been ready enough at first sight, became most cordial and
expansive. While we pulled off our wet clothing his wife hung it up to
dry and had the kettle on and some tea making, and he and Arthur got out
our wet bedding and festooned it about the cabin. Most fortunately the
things that would have suffered most from water did not get wet. So
there we lay all the afternoon, having made no more than six miles, and
there we lay all the next day, which was Sunday.
There was a sort of awful interest that centred upon one member of this
family, a boy of seven or eight years. The previous spring he had killed
his uncle by the accidental discharge of a .22 rifle, shooting him
through the heart. The gun had been brought in loaded and cocked and had
been set in a corner of the cabin, and the child, playing with it, had
pulled the trigger. The carelessness of Indians with firearms is the
frequent cause of terrible accidents like this. The child was still too
young to realise what he had done, but one fancies that later it will
throw a gloom on his life.
To my great relief and satisfaction I was able to arrange here for a
young Indian man to accompany us with his one dog. He was a native of
those parts and knew every bend and turn of the river. We were, indeed,
in great need of help. The doctor's knee grew worse rather than better,
and Arthur was suffering the return of an old rheumatism in his leg. I
was the only sound member of the party, and my shoulders were galled by
the rope and my feet tender and sore from continual wearing of the
crampons. We were now not quite half-way--some sixty miles lay behind us
and sixty-five before--and we had been travelling four days.
[Sidenote: "ONE-EYED WILLIAM"]
Divine service being done on Sunday morning, the whole of it well
interpreted by Arthur to the great satisfaction of the Indians, he and
"One-Eyed William," our recruit, started out to survey to-morrow's
route. In this reconnaissance William broke through some slush ice at
the greatest depth of the river in seeking a safe place to cross, and,
had Arthur not been with him, would almost certainly have drowned, for
the current was very swift and the man, like most Indians, unable to
swim a stroke;--though, indeed, swimming is of little avail for escape
out of such predicament and is a poor dependence in these icy waters
winter or summer. More beans boiled and a batch of biscuits baked
against our departure, and evening prayer said and interpreted, we were
ready for bed again.
Our visit was a great delight to old Atler. An inflamed eye was much
relieved by the doctor's ministrations, and the natural piety which he
shares with most Indians was gratified at the opportunity of worship and
instruction. A good old man, according to his lights, I take Atler to
be, well known for benevolence of disposition and particularly priding
himself on being a friend of the white man. He told us of one unworthy
representative of that race he had helped a year ago. The man had come
out of the Hogatzitna (Hog River) country, entirely out of food, himself
and a couple of dogs nigh to starvation, and Atler had taken care of him
for several days while he recuperated and had given him grub and dog
fish enough to get him to Bettles, one hundred and thirty miles away,
where he could purchase supplies. The old Indian had robbed his own
family's little winter stock of "white-man's grub" that this stranger
might be provided, and had never heard a word from him since, though he
had promised to make return when he reached Bettles.
Unfortunately Alaska's white population is sprinkled with men like this,
men without heart and without conscience, and it is precisely such
rascals who are loudest in their contemptuous talk of the Indians. It is
such men who chop down the woodwork of cabins rather than be troubled to
take the axe into the forest a few rods away, who depart in the morning
without making kindling and shavings, careless how other travellers may
fare so themselves be warm without labour; who make "easy money" in the
summer-time by dropping down the Yukon with a boat-load of "rot-gut"
whisky, leaving drunkenness and riot at every village they pass; who
beget children of the native women and regard them no more than a dog
does his pups, indifferent that their own flesh and blood go cold and
hungry. They are the curse and disgrace of Alaska, and they often go
long time insolent and unwhipped because our poor lame law is not nimble
enough to overtake them; "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness
for ever," one's indignation is sometimes disposed to thunder savagely
with Saint Jude; and indeed there needs a future punishment to redress
the balance in this country.
[Sidenote: FIDO]
At break of day our reinforced company was off, Arthur and "One-Eyed
William" going ahead to sound the ice and pick the way, the dog "Fido"
(such a name for a Siwash dog!) and myself in the traces, the doctor at
the handle-bars. The rest had benefited the doctor's knee, but walking
was still painful and he needed the support of the handle-bars all day.
What a great difference that one strong, willing little dog made! His
steady pulling kept the sled in motion and relieved one's shoulders of
the galling jerk of the rope at every step. The going was "not too bad,"
as they say here, all day, though it carried one rather severe
disappointment. William had told us of a portage he thought we could
take that would cut off eight or nine miles of the river; but when we
reached it the snow upon it proved insufficient to afford a passage, for
it was a rough niggerhead flat, and we had to swing around the outer
edges of the great curves the river makes, where alone was ice, with
trouble and danger at every crossing.
The decision as to whether we should halt or go forward, as to whether
ice was safe or unsafe, as to whether we should cross the river or stay
where we were--every decision that concerned the secure advance of the
party--I put wholly upon William, and would not permit myself or any
other to question his judgment or to argue it with him. There was no
sense in half-measures; this young man knew the river as none of us did,
knew ice as none of us did, and we must put ourselves entirely in his
hands. The debate that had become usual at every doubtful course arose
at the portage just referred to, but it was at once suppressed by the
announcement that hereafter no one could have the floor but William, and
that when he had spoken the matter was settled. Day by day I think we
all came to a keener realisation of how very dangerous a journey we were
making; it lay heavily on my mind that I had brought these two young
men--whether by mishap or mismanagement--into real peril of their lives.
Again and again I blamed myself for the delays that had deferred our
start up the Koyukuk, again and again I wished that we had waited longer
before leaving the _Pelican's_ winter quarters. I had even contemplated
a week's stay at Atler's, to give the river a chance to get into better
shape, but unless there came a very much sharper spell than we had had
so far a week would not make much difference, and our grub began to run
short and Atler was none too well supplied. So it seemed best to push
on.
The next day was full of toil and difficulty. There was no good ice to
make fine time over that day. Starting in the grey dawn, for mile after
mile we had to haul the sled over crumbly shell-ice that broke through
to gravel; and when the shell-ice was done we came to a new bend where a
rapid current washed a steep mud bank. There was just a little shelf of
ice, but the brush overhung it so that the passage of the sled was not
possible. William and Arthur started with the axes to clear away the
brush, but it seemed to me foolish to do that unless the ledge held out
and led somewhere, for the turn of the bank threw it out of sight. So
they went forward cautiously along that ledge to the end--and an end
they found, sure enough, so that had we followed the axemen with the
sled we should have had to creep all the way back again. There was
nothing for it but to cut another land trail on a bench that we could
reach where the sled was stopped but that could not be reached at all
farther on. A long and slow and laborious job it was, that took most of
the morning, to cut that trail and then get the load over it to ice
again.
By noon we were opposite the Red Mountain, one of the well-known Koyukuk
landmarks, and on the site of an old Indian fishing camp. William and
Arthur had made a great fire when we came up, and we heated some beans
and made some tea and ate lunch. A mile farther on was the cabin of a
white man, and we paid him a brief visit and got a little tea from him,
for ours was nearly gone. It did me good to hear him sing the praises of
Deaconess Carter, the trained nurse at the mission. She had taken him
in, crippled with rheumatism, and had cured him. Already the new mission
was proving a boon to whites as well as natives. We made no more than
four or five miles farther when, coming to spruce with no more in sight
for a long distance, we pitched the tent, all very tired.
That night the thermometer went to 5 deg. below zero, the coldest weather of
the season so far. As a consequence the next day we had a new and very
disagreeable trouble. The cold weather, by increasing the amount of
running ice in the still open stretches, had brought about a jam that
had raised the level of the water and caused an overflow of the ice--a
very common phenomenon of a closing river. We picked our way wet-foot
much of the day, and towards evening came to a complete _impasse_ in the
middle of the river, with open water in front and on one hand, and new
thin ice on the other. So we had to turn round and go back again a long
way, the mid-river being the only traversable place, until, when it
seemed that we should have to go round another bend to reach a crossing,
Arthur proposed that he and William, who wore mukluks, should carry the
doctor and me, who wore moccasins across the overflow, and then rush the
sled across; and this we did, wetting its contents somewhat, however. We
camped immediately, for we had landed on impassable gravel.
[Sidenote: THE RED MOUNTAIN]
That night the thermometer went to 20 deg. below zero, and we took good hope
that the cold, which began to approach the real cold of winter, would
put an end to overflow; but, on the contrary, it only aggravated the
trouble. For the first mile or two there was nothing for it but to go
through it, and at 20 deg. below it is a miserable business to be wading in
moccasins even for an hour. We had rearranged our load so that it stood
up somewhat higher, but we could not avoid wetting the things on the
bottom of the sled, and the ice formed about it very inconveniently.
Moreover, the little dog, who had a great dislike to wetting his feet,
began to give us a good deal of trouble, and at one time nothing but the
admirable presence of mind and prompt action of William saved us from
losing our whole load. We had reached a strip of new, dry ice formed the
night before, with black, rushing water on the left, towards which the
slippery surface sloped. Presently as we advanced we began to encounter
a little overflow water, coming from the bank on the right, seeping up
between the ice and the bank; and that dog, to avoid wetting his feet in
the overflow, deliberately turned towards the open water and set the
sled sliding in the same direction. Without the crampons, which we had
not used for the past few days, it was impossible to hold the sled
against the dog's traction, and in another moment we should have lost
everything, for the dog paid no heed to our voices, when William with a
blow of his axe cut the rope by which the dog pulled, and, grasping the
sled and throwing himself full length on the ice, managed to stop it on
the very brink of the water. It was a close shave, but once more we were
safe; and the doctor, in the exuberance of his gratitude, said that
night: "If William wants a glass eye I'll send to New York to get him
one." But when William learned that the glass eye was a mere matter of
looks and would in no wise improve his vision, he lost interest in it.
Looks do not count for much amongst the Koyukuk Indians.
[Illustration: ARTHUR AND DOCTOR BURKE.]
[Illustration: SAINT JOHN'S-IN-THE-WILDERNESS, ALLAKAKET, KOYUKUK
RIVER.]
That night was a long way off yet, however; we had other risks to run,
other labours. Here were two islands in the river, and the current,
running like a mill-race and burdened with ice cakes, swept around the
shore of one of them leaving the passage between them quite dry. There
was no shore ice at all where the channel was, and it was so
ugly-looking a reach that had there been any there I am sure we should
not have ventured it. There was nothing for it but to drag the sled half
a mile over the gravel, and we did it, the most heart-breaking labour
of the whole trip. It took us exactly an hour to make that half mile.
William did not know the trick of the split willows either, so we all
four of us sweated for our ignorance. Shortly after, our guide pointed
out the spot where poor Ericson's frozen body was found, two years and
eight months before.
[Sidenote: A NARROW ESCAPE]
[Sidenote: RUBBER ICE]
Near the Kornuchaket (or the mouth of Old Man Creek), where the Koyukuk
receives a considerable tributary, we approached the most dangerous
travelling we had had yet. The river here is swift and deep, and there
are several islands set in it. Most of its surface was frozen, but the
ice was very thin. William stopped the procession before we reached the
bad stretch and went hastily over a part of it. Under his single weight
we could see the ice-sheet undulating. It had been our rule that ice was
not safe unless it took three blows of the axe to bring water, but this
ice gave water at a blow. When William returned he made quite an
harangue, which Arthur interpreted. He thought we could make it past the
mouth of the creek, and if we could we should find good going to Moses'
Village. But we must go just as fast as we could travel; we must not let
the sled stop an instant. The ice would bend and crack; but he thought
if we went quickly we could get across. So for nearly a quarter of a
mile we rushed that sled over "rubber" ice that swayed and cracked and
yielded under our feet and under the sled, until we reached the bank of
one of the islands, and then again we launched her and ran with her to
the shore. Once one of my feet broke through, and immediately the water
welled up all around--with the steamboat channel underneath--but
without pause we increased our speed and made the strong shore ice
safely at last. No man will ever doubt the plasticity, the "viscosity"
of ice, as it used to be styled in the old glacier controversies, who
has passed over the "rubber" ice that forms under certain circumstances
and at certain seasons on these rivers.
We would never, I am sure, have attempted that ice had not William been
with us. We would have struck a blow with the axe and declared it
unsafe. Of course, it was unsafe; the whole journey was unsafe, but I am
convinced that this thin, continuous sheet of ice, cushioned actually
upon the surface of the water out of which it was growing, was really
safer than much of the thicker but brittle, unsupported ice we had
unhesitatingly come over. Chemists tell us that certain substances in
the act of formation, which they call nascent substances, are
extraordinarily active and potent, and it may be that ice in the same
state has a special tenacity of texture which belongs to that state
alone. I wish that I could have measured the thickness of that ice.
Where my foot went through I know it was very thin, but its thickness I
will not venture to guess. There was the distinct feeling that the water
was bearing the ice up and when it was punctured the water welled up
with pressure behind it.
Beyond the Kornuchaket much more snow had fallen, and a few miles
brought us to Moses' Village, called grandiosely "Arctic City," since a
trader had established a store and a road-house there. At this spot a
new overland mail trail from Tanana strikes the Koyukuk, and, although
ten or twelve miles remained, we felt that our journey was done. My sled
dogs were there, and, as I had not seen them for more than a year, that
was a joyful reunion. Nanook's bark of welcome, which no one but I ever
got with quite the same inflection, was as grateful to me as all the
licking and slobbering of the others, for Nanook is a very independent
beast, reserved in his demonstrations and not wearing his heart on his
sleeve, so to speak. They were all glad to see me--Old Lingo and Nig,
and even "Jimmy the Fake." Billy was dead. For fifteen or sixteen months
they had been boarded here, and, since fish had been very scarce the
preceding summer, their food had been chiefly bacon and rice and tallow,
and there was a bill of close to four hundred dollars against us! Dogs
are very expensive things in this expensive country. When used the
winter through on the trail, and boarded the summer through at a fish
camp, we estimate that it costs one hundred dollars per head per annum
to feed a dog; so that the maintenance of a team of five dogs, which is
the minimum practicable team, will cost five hundred dollars per annum
for food alone.
[Sidenote: SATURATED SNOW]
When we had eaten a good supper and were reclining on spring cots in the
bunk house, there was not one of us but confidently expected to be at
the mission in the next forenoon. For a week past the natives had been
going to and fro in three or four hours. The river was completely closed
above here, and there was much more snow than we found below. So we
hitched our own dogs to our own sled the next morning, when the doctor
had visited a sick person or two, and started out on the last stretch
of the journey. All went well until we had turned the long bend at the
head of which the old, abandoned post of Bergman is situated, just on
the Arctic Circle, but a mile or two beyond we were wallowing in
saturated snow that stretched all across the river right up to the banks
on either side. An overflow was in progress, the water running along the
surface of the ice and soaking up the snow so that there was six inches
of slush all over it. We struggled along awhile, though from the first
it seemed hopeless, and then we gave it up and went back to the
road-house. There would be no passing that stretch of river with the
sled until the cold had dealt with the overflow. It is almost always the
unexpected that happens. The next morning I put on a pair of
snow-shoes--Doctor Burke's knee forbade him their use--and taking
William with me, mushed up through the slush and the snow to the
mission, leaving the others to come on with the team so soon as they
found it practicable.
A mile before we reached the mission was the new village built by the
Esquimaux--"Kobuk town" they call it--and right in front of the village
the Malamute Riffle, a noted difficulty of navigation, was still running
wide open, though all the rest of the river was long closed. Near the
riffle the Kobuks had a fish-trap, and some who were busy getting out
fish saw and recognised me, and the whole population came swarming out
for greetings. It was good to see these kindly, simple people again, to
shake their hands and hear their "I glad I see you," which is the
general native greeting where there is any English at all. Every one
must shake hands; even the babies on their mothers' backs stretch out
their little fingers eagerly, and if they be too small for that, the
mother will take the little hand and hold it out. At the bend we take a
portage and a quarter of a mile brings us to the Allakaket, to the
familiar modest buildings of the mission, with its new Koyukuk village
gradually clustering round it. The whole scene was growing into almost
the exact realisation of my dream when first I camped on this spot two
years and nine months before. There was a distinct thrill of pleasure at
the sight of the church. Built entirely of logs with the bark on, there
was nothing visible anywhere about it but spruce bark, save for the
gleam of the gilded cross that surmounted the little belfry. The roof,
its regular construction finished, was covered with small spruce poles
with the bark on, nailed together at the apex, and where it projected
well beyond the gables its under-side was covered with bark, as well as
the cornice all round that finished it off. Even the window-frames and
the door-panels were covered with bark. It was of the same tone because
of the selfsame substance as the forest still growing around it, and it
gave at the first glance the satisfied impression of fitness. It gave
the feeling that it belonged where it was placed. It is ill praising
one's own work, but I had been keen to see how it would strike me, fresh
from the outside, after a year's absence, and I was very glad indeed
that it pleased me again.
[Sidenote: A STARVING WHITE MAN]
I had no more than entered upon the warm welcome that waited at Saint
John's-in-the-Wilderness, and was still wondering at the homelike
cosiness which the mission house had assumed under the deft hands of
the two ladies who occupied it, when there came an Indian with word of a
white man he had found starving in the wilderness fifteen miles away.
Another native with a dog team and a supply of immediate food was
hastily despatched to bring the man in, and that night the poor
emaciated fellow, looking like a man of sixty-five or seventy though he
was really no more than forty, crawled out of the sled and tottered into
the house. He had started out from Tanana two months before with two
pack-horses to make his way across to the Koyukuk diggings, had lost his
way and wandered aimlessly in that vast wilderness; one horse had been
drowned, the other he had killed for meat. He had made a raft to come
down the Kornutna (Old Man Creek) to the Koyukuk, knowing that there was
a trading-post near its mouth, and had been frozen in and forced to
abandon it. Since that time he had been living on a few spoonfuls of
meal a day, with frozen berries, and once or twice a ptarmigan, and when
Ned found him was at the last extremity and had given up, intending to
die where he was.
That man's hunger was tremendous, but Miss Carter, having knowledge and
experience of such cases, was apprehensive that if any large quantity of
food were taken at a time there would be serious danger to him. So for a
day or two he ate frequently but sparingly. A little later, as he grew
stronger, to such extremes did his hunger pinch him that he would watch
till there was no one looking and would go into the kitchen and steal
food that was preparing, even taking it out of the frying-pan on the
stove. He would be hungry immediately after having a full meal. In ten
days he was sufficiently recovered to resume his journey to the
diggings, and when I saw him at Coldfoot two months later I did not
recognise him, so greatly had he changed from the poor shrunken creature
that crept into the mission. We all think we have been hungry time and
again; if ever we have gone a few days on short rations we are quite
sure of it; this man had sounded the height and depth and stretched the
length and breadth of it, and none of the rest of us really know what
hunger means. I tried to get him to talk about it, but he said he wanted
to forget it. He said he was ashamed to think of some of the things he
had done and of some of the terrible thoughts that had come to him, and
I pressed him no more. I have always felt that, even in its last
hideousness of cannibalism, only God Himself can judge starvation.
[Sidenote: TWO INTERPRETERS]
Here began my first experience of the difficulties of conducting a
mission at the same place for two different races of natives speaking
totally different languages. Although the Indian language spoken here is
the same as at Tanana, and much of the liturgy, etc., had been put into
that tongue by Mr. Prevost and was therefore available, yet it was found
impracticable to have two sets of services whenever the church was used,
for both races would always attend anyway. Since the mastery of the two
tongues was out of the question, and there were no translations at all
into the Esquimau, it became a question of teaching the Esquimaux to
take part in an Indian service or dropping both vernaculars altogether
and conducting the service in English. After much doubt and experiment
the latter was resolved upon, and the whole service of prayer and praise
is in English. When the lessons are read and the address delivered it is
necessary to use two interpreters; the minister delivers his sentence in
English, then the Koyukuk interpreter puts it in Indian, and when he is
done the Esquimau interpreter puts it into that tongue.
It is a very tedious business, this double interpretation and a
twenty-minute sermon takes fully an hour to deliver, but there is no
help for it. The singing is hearty and enthusiastic though the repertory
is wisely very limited; and here, north of the Arctic Circle, is a
vested choir of eight or ten Kobuk and Koyukuk boys who lead the singing
and lead it very well.
Already the influence of the mission and the school was very marked.
Given the native off by himself like this, in the hands of those in whom
he has learned to place entire confidence, remote from debasing
agencies, and his improvement is evident and his survival assured.
[Illustration: THE DOUBLE INTERPRETATION AT THE ALLAKAKET.]
[Illustration: THE WIND-SWEPT YUKON WITHIN THE RAMPARTS.]
In two days the doctor and Arthur and the team came up, and so was
brought to a happy conclusion a perilous journey over the first ice. One
is often glad to have had experiences that one would by no means repeat,
and this is a case in point. We had learned a good deal about ice; we
had taken liberties with ice that none of us had ever thought before
could be taken with impunity; we had learned to trust ice and at the
same time to distrust it and in some measure to discriminate about it.
The "last ice" is bad, but the "first ice" is much worse, and all
three of us were agreed that we wanted no more travelling over it and no
more pulling of a sled "by the back of the face."
Then followed a very happy, busy time of several weeks while the river
ice was consolidating and the land trails establishing; happy with its
manifold evidences of the rapid advance the natives were making under
Miss Carter's able and beneficent sway, busy with the instruction of
people eager to learn. It was busy and happy for Doctor Burke also; busy
with the many ailments he relieved, happy with the beginnings of an
attachment which two years later culminated in his marriage to Miss
Carter's colleague at this mission.