this house, making garden, gathering berries, drying fish, hunting and
getting ready for the winter. Almost all our wants are supplied right
here. From the middle of April till the middle of October we don't see
a human being, except now and then an Indian, or a stray prospector."
"What a lonesome life!" I exclaimed.
"Now, Doctor, I know you don't mean that," protested Nina. "Why, this
is the most companionable place in the world. It is full of friendly
creatures. The winter before I was married I spent three months in
San Francisco. I nearly died, I was so lonely and homesick. I'd meet
thousands of people on the streets every day, and not get a word or
smile from one of them. I wouldn't give my little 'Red' for the whole
crowd."
"Who's Red?" I asked.
Nina leaned forward and made a squeaking noise with her lips. Instantly
a little furry creature of a bright scarlet color, with a short tail,
jumped out of a box in the corner, ran to her and up her hand and arm
to her shoulder and then down to her knee, where he stood stiffly erect
like a soldier at attention. He was so quick and comical in his motions
and so full of tricks that he kept us laughing.
"I had three Reds," explained Nina, "but a weasel got two of them
before I got the weasel. I have had many other pets besides the
wood-mice. There isn't a creature in all the forest that would do me
harm unless I hurt it first. And I don't have a grudge against any of
them, except the hawks and owls that come after my chickens."
The most striking feature about the cabin, however, was the abundance
and variety of furs and other trophies of the chase. Adorning and
almost covering one end of the room was an enormous moose head. At the
other end was a wonderful caribou head. Over the windows were beautiful
heads of the white mountain sheep, the bighorn of the Northwest.
But the pelts! Great bunches of mink, marten, fisher, otter, muskrat
and beaver; scores of red fox, with here and there a priceless black or
silver fox; lynx, wolf, wolverine and black bear.
"We have four lines of traps, each five miles long," explained Nina;
"and Joe and I each take two lines every other day, spending the
alternate days caring for the skins. We are making bear traps now,
getting ready for Bruin when he comes out of his den. We have about
four thousand dollars' worth of furs caught this winter, and we'll make
it five before warm weather."
But the most imposing objects of all in the cabin were two tremendous
rugs--the skins of the _ursus gigas_ or Kodiak bear--the largest of
existing carnivorous mammals. Joe had learned something of taxidermy,
and the heads were nicely preserved, the big teeth and claws showing,
the skins being lined with red blankets. The largest of these rugs was
over twelve feet long, the distance from nose to tail over ten feet,
the lateral spread being almost as great. The fur was a rich brown in
color, deep, thick and soft.
At my exclamation of wonder and admiration, Joe began eagerly to tell
me the story of the rugs; but his wife stopped him.
"Better wait till after supper, Joe," she said.
Ah, that supper! The supreme physical pleasure of it lingers in my
memory still. Moose soup with potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions
from their garden in it; fresh grayling, caught in the fall and frozen;
ruffed grouse pie; roast mountain sheep--the best meat that grows;
omelet made of eggs laid that day; moose-nose cheese, delicately
pickled; fine sour-dough bread with raspberry jam and currant jelly;
pie made of fresh blueberries, the berries having been picked in the
fall and preserved by the simple process of pouring water on them and
letting them freeze. All of these viands, except the bread, being the
products of Nina's labor or marksmanship, made them doubly sweet. Where
else in the world could you get a meal like that--or the appetite to
devour it all?
"Well," began Joe, when, sated, I lay back in the easy-chair curiously
fashioned of moose horns, while the young couple washed the dishes,
"I'm mighty proud of them rugs. They're Nina's, both of 'em, and I
reckon there's no other girl in the world would of tackled the job she
did, and got away with it. It scares me every time I think of it, and I
don't know whether I'd oughter scold her or pet her up."
"Nonsense!" protested his wife; "you know you'd have done exactly as I
did if you'd been here."
"Maybe I would," he retorted, "but I wouldn't of let _you_ take that
risk."
[Illustration: Five Kodiak Bears
The bear to the right is twice the size of a Grizzly]
"It was the first of last November," he resumed. "I'd taken the two
sleds and all the dogs, as soon as I thought the ice was strong enough,
and I'd gone two hundred miles to the store at Ophir to lay in our
winter's outfit. The ice towards the coast wasn't strong enough to make
safe mushin', and Nina was all alone here for more'n three weeks. I
knowed she would make the reg'lar round of the traps and keep things
goin' just as usual. She's never learned to be afraid--that girl.
"Well, one mornin' she was gettin' breakfast, when she heard a little
noise outside. She opened the door, and there, within twenty-five feet
of her, were three big Kodiak bears. Two of them stood up on their hin'
feet when she opened the door, while the other kept smellin' around for
grub."
"Goodness, Nina!" I exclaimed. "What was your first thought when you
saw the big brutes so close?"
"Well," she answered, smiling, "my first thought was, 'What beautiful
rugs those are on the backs of the bears! I want those rugs.'"
"Yes," Joe went on, "and so she stepped slowly back, inch by inch
into the house, and softly closed the door so as not to _scare_ the
bears--they as big as a house and her such a leetle mite of a thing.
She took down that 30-40 Winchester, there, and filled the magazine
full (it chambers ten); and then she done a plumb foolish thing. I know
darned well what I'd 'a' done. I'd 'a' poked the moss out between the
logs, there, and stuck my rifle through and had some 'vantage."
"What did Nina do?" I asked.
"Why, she threw the door wide open and stepped right out in front of
it. Up came all three bears, this time, on their hind feet. Nina's
lightnin' on the snap shot, and before the big he-bear was straightened
up he got it right between the eyes. Down he tumbled, and the other two
was out of sight around the kennel there before she could throw another
shell into the gun and aim." Joe pointed to a log dog-house about two
rods in front of the door.
"Nina raced pell-mell past the kennel to get another shot, and there
she saw the big she-bear, standin' up behind the dog-house, awaitin'
for her, not a gun's length away. Nina swung around and fired
pointblank into the bear's breast. It went down on all-fours and
came for her with open mouth. There was nothing for it but to keep on
shootin'. She worked the lever of her gun mighty fast. She put five
bullets into the beast before she quieted it. She never saw the third
bear again."
"Why, Nina!" I cried, as soon as I could get my breath. "You foolish
child! Your escape was miraculous! It frightens me to hear Joe tell of
it. Weren't you dreadfully scared when you saw that great brute jump at
you like that?"
"Oh, no," laughed the girl. "I was too busy to get scared. But I was
awfully provoked because the other one got away."
Other details of Nina's great adventure followed--how it took her
three days to skin the two bears, she having to climb a tree to adjust
the block and tackle so as to move the heavy carcases; and how Joe
"blubbered" when he got home and saw them, and knew the peril his
beloved had encountered.
Nina is an exceptional woman, but still she is truly a type. There
is something in "that great, big, broad land, way up yonder," that
stiffens the moral fiber, enlarges the spirit and makes the people
unafraid. The white settlers of Alaska, while by no means all saints,
are as a class the strongest, bravest and most resourceful people I
know. I have not heard from my brave little chum for several years. I
presume she is still living her joyous, fearless, Christian life in
what John Muir used to call my "beautiful, fruitful wilderness." Here's
to her; God bless her!
VIII
THE ABSURD WALRUS
Lewis Carroll's famous lines about the Walrus and the Carpenter will
always hold their place at the very top of humorous poems. For besides
being funny they have a quality of truth which the careless reader
little suspects:
"The time has come," the walrus said,
"To talk of many things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings;
And why the sea is boiling hot,
And whether pigs have wings."
The very few men who have been acquainted with the walrus in his native
haunts know that the author of "Alice in Wonderland" in these verses
"hits the nail on the head," and, perhaps unwittingly, gives an insight
into the true character of the walrus as the most inconsistent,
grotesque and absurd of all beasts.
It was my good fortune the summer of 1913 to be one of a company of six
hunters on board the three-masted power schooner, _P. J. Abler_, which
sailed along the Alaskan and Siberian coasts for six thousand miles and
pounded its way northward into the Arctic ice-pack to within sixteen
degrees of the Pole.
The ship itself was of unusual pattern. Her owner called her the
_Mudhen_. Her three masts stood stiff and straight in a row and were
the same height. Her lines were not particularly elegant, and her
small engine could only push her through calm seas at the rate of five
miles an hour. But she was a comfortable ship and had one quality in
particular which overbalanced all the drawbacks and made her the boat
for us--she was built for "bucking ice." She had extra heavy timbers,
especially about her bow. In spite of her slowness, she was an ideal
craft for venturing into Arctic ice-floes. She would come at a good
speed, bow on, against a huge berg and bring up with a jar that would
shake her as a rat shaken by a terrier, and send your plate of polar
bear meat into your lap. Then she would recover from her backward
bounce and calmly proceed on her way undented and unharmed. Mr. Scull
of Philadelphia, who has sailed the world over, could never get used
to bumping the ice. He and I would be bent over the chess board,
absorbed in a difficult situation, when--bang! would go the schooner
against the ice, and recoil, trembling like a hound. I would grab for
the tottering chessmen, while Scull would jump right into the air with
his hair standing straight up on each side of his bald pate like the
ears of a horned owl. He would rush frantically out of the cabin door,
lean far over the vessel's side, train his big eye-glasses on the
ship's bow and watch for signs of her filling. Then he would come back
muttering strange words in any of the five or six languages of which
he is the master, and resume his study of the game, only to repeat
the performance at the next bump. "Oh!" he would say, "it hurts me
more than it hurts the ship"; which was undoubtedly true. I always had
better luck in chess with Scull when we were bucking ice.
The personnel of our party was like some landscapes, varied and
interesting. The commander of the expedition and its manager, was
Captain Kleinschmidt, sailor, miner, hunter, author and moving-picture
man. He chartered the _Abler_ and hired her crew, who were as
cosmopolitan as it is possible for crew to be--the captain, a Swede;
the mate, a Dane; the engineers (brothers) German-Americans; the cook,
a "Jap"; the crew composed of one American, one Russian and five
Eskimos. There were two taxidermists to take care of the birdskins,
bugs, mammals, etc., collected.
Of the four hunters, who, with Captain Kleinschmidt, financed the
expedition, three were from Philadelphia: Scull, our polyglot
interpreter, a publisher of books; Collins, a manufacturer; and
Lovering, a young man who had lived part of his life in Wyoming. The
fourth, Dr. Elting, was a surgeon of reputation from Albany, N. Y. All
were experienced hunters, Scull and Collins having followed trails in
Africa and America, Dr. Elting in the Western States and Canada, and
Lovering in the West. As for myself, the guest without responsibility
or care, "taken along," as the captain said, "to lend dignity to the
expedition," you can call me by my common names: "The Sour-dough
Preacher," "The Mushing Parson," "The Alaska Sky-Pilot," or any of half
a dozen Northwestern cognomens, of all of which I am equally proud.
My object in joining this expedition was, first, to have a big hunt
and a grand rest. But, more than the outing, I valued the privilege of
exploring ground untrodden by the missionary, and, if possible, doing
something towards bringing the Gospel to the heathen Eskimo of the
Alaskan and Siberian shores.
We were all "out for a lark," glad beyond expression to be hundreds
of miles from a telegram or newspaper, to be able to wear our dirty
clothes and eat in our shirtsleeves without shame; to forget that such
things existed as automobiles or stiff collars or dinner parties. We
had four months of a royal good time--along the Asiatic Coast after
Siberian sheep, on the Alaska Peninsula for caribou and brown bears,
on Kenai Peninsula after moose, white sheep and black bear, among the
islands of the Southern Alaska Coast and Bering Sea with the bird and
seal rookeries, and pursuing polar bear amid the ice-floes of the
Arctic Ocean.
We visited many Eskimo villages; we shot for the museums hundreds of
varieties of birds on the Siberian and Alaskan Coasts; we captured new
species of beetles, moths, butterflies and other insects; the camera
fiends and moving-picture man reveled in novel scenes, animate and
inanimate. We buffeted storms, pounded ice and sailed sunny seas.
But the climax of our joyous outing was the three or four days we spent
among the walrus herds off the Northern Siberian Coast. Scull and
Collins, who had hunted everything in Africa from dikdik to rhinoceros,
declared that none of their experiences in that continent approached in
thrilling interest their days with the walrus herds.
For the walrus is _sui generis_: there is no other mammal at all like
him in appearance, habits, habitat or characteristics. He is the least
known or written about of all the larger animals. No thorough study
has ever been made of him. More is known of the habits of the extinct
woolly elephant--the mammoth, whose bones, tusks, and even hair and
skin we find on the Alaskan Coast--than the walrus. And what has been
written and the common ideas concerning this animal are so erroneous as
to be funny.
A century or so ago a naturalist-traveler, writing about the Eskimos
and the _morse_, as the walrus was then called, said that the tusks of
the animal are for the purpose of pulling himself up the icy mountains
where he lives; that his habit is to thus work his way up to the top
of the dizziest peak; that the Eskimos pursue him there and cut holes
through the thick skin of his flippers unknown to the huge pachyderm,
whose hide is impervious to sensation. Then, having passed strong ropes
through these holes and tied them to the jutting crags, they raise
a hullabaloo, and the walrus, alarmed, precipitating himself down
the mountain, jerks off his skin, which the Eskimos then use in the
construction of their boats and houses. The year before our hunt, a
California gentleman, interested in Captain K.'s moving pictures, asked
him whether the walrus brought forth their young alive or laid eggs and
hatched them.
In May, 1913, when discussing my proposed outing with some of my
ministerial brethren, at the General Assembly at Atlanta, a good Doctor
of Divinity tried to deter me from undertaking it because of its
dangerous character.
"Is it not true, Dr. Young," he asked with great solicitude, "that the
walrus sometimes devours human flesh?"
I patiently explained that the walrus has no incisors, no teeth at
all but flat grinders, level with the gums and far back in the jaws,
"and therefore he cannot rend or eat anything so very tough as a
missionary"; and that moreover his mouth is situated back of a narrow
opening of three or four inches in width between his tusks, so that
nothing bulky can enter it. "He might drown me but he couldn't eat me!"
The "D. D." listened with open skepticism and put this poser: "How then
can he devour his prey?"
"What prey?" I asked.
"Why, the seals and salmon and other large sea animals on which he
feeds."
Again I sternly suppressed my rising emotions: "But he doesn't eat
these things. He couldn't catch them and doesn't want them. He is only
a clam-eater. His tusks are not spears, but an admirably constructed
clam-hoe. He could not live without them; and his stiff whiskers form a
fine brush to clean the clams of mud before he dines off them."
The good brother glanced from one to another of the listening group
with a look that plainly said: "How sad it is that such shameless
prevaricators will even slip into the ministry;" and walked off
muttering something about consulting "authorities."
Illustrating my own roving habits, while a pioneer missionary in
Alaska, I have sometimes said, using a common simile, that I "had no
more home than a jack-rabbit." I am changing this now to a stronger
expression; "no more home than a walrus." He is the most constantly on
the move of all the vagabonds. Even when sleeping he is moving, for the
only home the poor fellow has is the ice-cakes which form in the Arctic
Ocean and Bering Sea, entirely filling the former and in the winter
crowding down the latter to about fifty-eight degrees, north latitude.
The walrus herds, for the greater part of the year, keep on the borders
of this great field of ice. In the summer when the Bering Sea ice melts
and also that of the southern part of the Arctic Ocean, the walrus
keeps on the flat ice-cakes which float over the great clam beds of
these shallow seas. As the ice forms in the fall and the ice-floes
extend southward he sets out on a long swim ahead of the fast freezing
ice, resting occasionally on the Siberian shore, the Diomedes, St.
Lawrence, St. Matthews and other islands. When the ice-field has
extended to its southern limit he resumes his ice-house-boat habit and
returns north in the spring.
So little is known of the life history of the walrus that I am unable
to speak with confidence, but the young are evidently brought forth
very early in the spring, April or May, and float with their mothers
(the females and young herding together), up into the Arctic Ocean as
far as the shoals off Wrangle Island, one hundred and fifty miles north
of the Siberian Coast. There the little ones are guarded by the cows,
which during the summer months are the only really dangerous walrus
ever met with. Were the walrus the ferocious and combatant animal he
is sometimes depicted, it would be a risky thing indeed to hunt him
in skin boats or any other small craft. Imagine three or four tons
of muscular fierceness, armed with strong, sharp, spearlike tusks,
charging at you. The front part of his head is a solid mass of tough
bone more than a foot thick. He could strike his tusks through your
boat and sink it in an instant, or hook them over the edge and upset
you, spearing you one by one in the water.
But the huge pachyderm is the most timid and good-natured of animals.
It is only when the female fears for the safety of her young that she
shows anything like ferocity. In 1911 Captain Kleinschmidt was taking
moving pictures of the walrus herds. He had two catamarans, made by
lashing two kyaks together with firm cross pieces. In the foremost
craft two Eskimo hunters with their spears were paddling ahead, to
slip up on the herds and harpoon them at the proper time, while the
moving-picture man was in the other craft to take pictures of the herds
and of the whole performance.
A herd of cows and their young had been frightened from an ice-cake
into the water. Suddenly one of these cows thrust her tusks forward,
the sign of a charge: "Look out!" cried K. to the Eskimo as the cow
dived. They made frantic efforts to paddle their kyaks to the nearest
berg, but the cow came up under the craft and slashed with her tusks
one of the kyaks, ripping the bottom and filling it with water. The
other kyak of the catamaran tilted dangerously, the Eskimo in the
sinking one throwing himself upon it, and the two frightened natives
made their escape to the ice-cake. Coming to the surface again the cow
sighted Captain K.'s catamaran, thrust her tusks forward again and
dived; he saw her body deep in the water coming toward him and thought
his time had come; but luckily when she struck the canoe had veered
and received only a glancing blow. She came to the surface within a
yard of the picture man, who had his rifle ready and thrust it against
her brain and pulled the trigger, which ended that affair. But it was
a perilous adventure, and one is liable to meet with such if he is so
rash as to venture among the herds of the cows with their young.
During this hunt of ours, although we saw great herds aggregating
hundreds of walrus, we did not see a cow or calf among them; only the
big bulls herded together and occasionally a solitary one.
After passing Cape Prince of Wales into the Arctic Ocean we had a week
of battling with winds and tide before we got into the ice-pack well up
towards Wrangell and Herald Islands. We had another week of pounding
ice, poking through the narrow "leads," constantly turning and running
the other way in our effort to get to the shores where the walrus herds
would feed.
We had fun with the polar bears, but, with one exception, saw no walrus
for nearly two weeks of this strenuous fight. This one exception was
a big old bull that we sighted reposing in solitary dignity on an
ice-cake in the midst of this vast white solitude.
Captain K. took Dr. Elting with him in the kyaks which we manufactured
into a catamaran, and while the _Abler_ lay "off and on" the two
hunters whom we watched through our field-glasses made their sinuous
way behind ice hummocks through the narrow "leads" and around the
jamming cakes of the ice-field. We saw them at last seemingly right
upon the walrus, on the same cake. The big fellow was fast asleep in
the uneasy fashion that all walrus and seal have of sleeping; that is,
every two or three minutes they will raise their heads and move them
back and forth, during which time the hunters must keep perfectly still
and if possible behind the ice-cakes. The walrus, however, has not the
keen sight of the seal, and is more easily approached.
Our hunters moored their skin boat on the ice-cake close to the walrus,
crept up behind a hummock right upon him, and Dr. Elting put his bullet
into the brain of the beast, which is situated in his neck, and not
in what appears to be his head. It was an easy and not very exciting
triumph. What possessed this old bull to lie there alone scores of
miles from his companions, I do not know. He may have been there two
or three weeks on that one ice-cake, as the Eskimos tell us this is
sometimes their habit.
It was not until August eighteenth that we got sight of our first
walrus herd, and then for three days we were right in the midst of
them. We had been driven by buffeting winds and threatening ice-packs
away from the vicinity of the islands far westward along the Siberian
coast and were perhaps thirty or forty miles from land. The cry was
raised from the "crow's nest": "Walrus!"
The appearance of the herd as we approached it was very unlike anything
imagined by those who had not hitherto seen these animals. All sorts of
comparisons crowd upon one's imagination when trying to describe them.
Some of them look like huge caterpillars and have an exactly similar
motion, except that their antennæ are bent downward instead of upward.
Sometimes when bunched up they look like immense squirrels. Sometimes
when scratching themselves with their flippers they have the languid
movements of a fashionable lady fanning herself; and again, when two
are sparring at each other, they have the fierce mien of gladiators.
But always there is that particularly comical edge about them that
impels to irresistible laughter, as when one approaches a cage of
monkeys. Their attitudes and motions are so unexpected and ridiculous.