Penelope Camp, Kowak River, Aug. 28.--Here we are, one hundred and
seventy miles from the mouth of the Kowak River and hard at work on
our winter cabin. The "Helen" is almost a failure, else we should
have been much farther up the river. The river is swift and has many
rapids which we could not stem. The boat is slow. Her wheel is too
small. She will be remodeled this winter. It took five days to come
this far, and, as there are two more loads to bring up, we thought it
best to halt. We have been here a week and the walls of the cabin are
nearly done, so that we are on the eve of owning a winter residence
on the Kowak. We are expecting the "Helen" back soon with her second
load.
The Kowak River, though scarcely indicated on good-sized maps, is as
large as the Missouri. At our camp it is nearly a mile across, and
very deep on this side, with sand bars in the middle. Other folks are
having a harder time than we. Only three out of the dozen or more
river steamers are a success. One is fast on a sand bar, and it looks
as if she would stay there.
Some of our crowd think we had a hard time, but when we compare our
lot with that of others we see it differently. Hundreds are toiling
up in the rain, towing their loaded skiffs mile after mile along
muddy banks. We have not had an accident worth mentioning unless it
be the loss of a water pail. We took the wrong channel once coming up
and steamed twenty-four hours up a branch river. It was the Squirrel
River, and although but a tributary to the Kowak, is as large as the
Sacramento and San Joaquin combined. It was so very crooked that at
one point where we stopped to wood up. I climbed a hill and could
see its route for several miles. Our course went around the compass
once and half way again. When we got back to the Kowak we made good
time until we reached the first rapids, where our trouble began.
The "Helen" would swing around and lose all she had made every few
minutes when the current struck her broadside. Finally a squad of us
took to the river bank with a long tow-rope, and foot by foot she was
towed past the critical points. There were six of these rapids. When
the wind blew there was fresh trouble; it would catch on the side of
the "house" and blow the boat around in spite of us. She almost got
away from us once, and we were in danger of being dragged off the
bank, in spite of the fact that we dug our heels into the ground and
braced with might and main. It was a tug of war. And such is gold
hunting in the Far North!
Many others had a still harder time. We passed thirty of these
parties in one day towing their provisions, while many lost their
boats. There must inevitably be great suffering here this winter.
Men have not realized what a long winter it will be and are poorly
provisioned.
[Illustration: A Morning Hunt.]
Our crowd is becoming a trifle disappointed as to the gold
proposition, and of course the general discontent is infectious.
Hundreds are going back down the river every day, spreading defeat
and failure in their path, and yet they have done no actual
prospecting. This is a large country and a year is none too long to
hunt; but with many parties the result is that after panning out a
little sand the job is thrown up.
Birds are all right here, if there isn't any gold. I have been into
the woods only twice so far, but secured another rare specimen of
Hennicott's Willow Warbler. There is a bear in the woods back of
camp. I have "laid" for him three times, but he is very shy.
Sept. 1.--The "Helen" came with her last load yesterday, and our
whole crowd is together again excepting the three men with the
"Penelope."
After a big pow-wow it has been decided to divide for the winter. Ten
men are to take the "Helen." with supplies, and push up the river
as far as possible. They think they can do some mining during the
winter. We who are destined to live together here for eight mouths
are Dr. Coffin, C. C. Reynolds. Harry Reynolds, Clyde Baldwin,
Cox. Brown. Rivers, Wyse and myself. Time will prove if this is a
congenial combination. We shall resemble California canned goods in
our narrow limits, and the winter will show our "keeping qualities."
Andy and Albert, our Swede sailors, leave us to-day. They were hired
and do not belong to the company, and will return to Kotzebue, where
they hope to ship for St. Michaels.
[Illustration: Our Winter Cabin.]
Camp Penelope, Kowak River, Sept. 13.--Our cabin is done. It measures
25 × 30 feet. We moved in on the 7th. The river rose very high and
threatened to inundate our tents. The place where they were is now
under water. Our cabin roof was not a success. It was too flat. On
the night we moved in it rained heavily, and about 2 a. m. we were
roused by the water pouring in on our beds and our precious supplies.
We got to work without delay. The roof could not be repaired without
rebuilding it, so we spread it all over with flies and tent cloth,
which froze stiff for the winter, and now we are dry. When the cabin
was started it was intended for our whole party, but there is no
room to spare even now with only nine occupants. The foundation
was leveled on the side of the knoll, so that the top of the hill
is nearly as high as the roof and the earth is banked the rest of
the way over the wall. That leaves no point for the north wind to
strike the house. We made a lean-to on the west and the door from
the cabin opens into it. We have two windows, which we brought with
us, fitted on the south. The interior of the cabin is a single room
seven feet high. It has a gable a foot or two higher, which gives
"ample breathing space." as I told the boys, but which I have my eye
on as a storeroom for my collection. The roof above this structure
is fearfully and wonderfully made. If it had a trifle more pitch to
it, to make it shed water, it would be better. A heavy ridge-pole and
stringers run lengthwise, and over these are closely laid poles, the
butts at the eaves along the sides, and the slender tops bent over
and clinched on the opposite side of the roof. Above the poles is
packed a thick layer of moss. Above the moss is a layer of heavy sod
with the dirt side up. Above all is a layer of spruce boughs like
shingles. These boughs grow thick and flat, with needles pointing the
same way, so they make good roofing.
The logs of the walls are chinked tightly with the moss. The floor
is the natural sand. We did not cut the timber from near the house
on account of the protection it gives us from the north winds. Trees
large and long enough for building purposes are not very numerous,
and we had to carry them a good ways. A few are as large as twenty
inches at the butt, but mostly they are from ten to fifteen inches.
It is all that eight of us can do to struggle along with one of these
logs, they are so heavy, and we put them on rollers sometimes. Four
of the men can easily carry one of the twenty-four foot logs, but a
green spruce log of any size is always heavier than it looks.
[Illustration: Start for the Hunt River, Towing our Boat.]
I have initiated "Brownie" into the secret mysteries of the cook
stove, and am one of the regular laborers now, working hard ten hours
a day. But yet it is fun; for we are working for ourselves, with but
the clean woods all about us, and there is a fascination in chopping
up the spruces, their delightful fragrance permeating everywhere.
Sept. 19.--Six of us have just returned from a trip up the Hunt
River--Harry Reynolds, Wyse, Cox, Rivers, Clyde and myself. I was
culinary officer as usual. We had the eighteen-foot sealing boat, and
It was loaded pretty heavily. The whole of us had to work for it,
one in the stern of the boat to steer, one wading at the tow-line
as near the boat as possible, to lift it over snags, and the other
four tugging at the tow-line. We wore hip boots and outside of them
oil-skin trousers tied around the ankles. Even with this outfit we
were constantly getting into the water all over. Rivers got a soaking
the first day. He shot a duck and jumped out of the boat in pursuit.
The bottom is so plain through the water that it is deceptive, and
he went in up to his waist, but he grabbed the side of the boat to
keep from going under. He got his duck--and a ducking thrown in. We
had to pull him in and to the shore, where we got him out of his
wet clothes. In the afternoon Wyse also got a ducking by falling
into a pool as he was scrambling up a steep bank. We found good
camping-places. We had two tents, which we put up facing each other,
with a flap left up on the side of one of them for a door. The two
were heated by the sheet-iron camp-stove. At noon we did not put up
the tents, but got dinner in the open--flapjacks, coffee and bacon.
I shot two geese the first day out, which gave us a couple of meals.
They were young and so fat I could not save their skins. But I made a
drawing of one of them so that I could be positive of their identity.
Looking them up when I got home where my books are, I found them to
be the Hutchins goose. The doctor and I shot two white-fronted geese
on the banks of the Kowak. We see a good many, but they also see us
and we have to do a good deal of sneaking through the bushes to get
any.
We had some narrow escapes, especially Cox, who fell into a
whirlpool. He was dragged off his feet by the rushing water, but we
pulled him into the boat after a frightful struggle.
On the fourth day out Clyde and I thought we would explore a little
canon. Harry Reynolds had washed out several pans of sand from
different bars on the way up, but had not found a trace of gold.
Clyde and I hoped to have better luck, and started out in high
spirits with spade and pick and gold-pan to do our first prospecting.
We found a brook in the cañon where we panned some without success.
Finally we found a place where the stream ran over bed-rock. The
rock had cracks and fissures running crosswise with the stream, so
we reasoned that if there was gold above, particles would have been
caught in these cracks. We dammed the brook and turned the stream to
one side, exposing the fissures in the rock. We then gathered several
pans of sand from the niches, examining it with wistful eyes, but
no trace of gold did we find. So we gave it up on that stream. We
found nothing save Fool's Gold. We kept on up the cañon and, as it
was yet early, decided to climb the mountain peak. As we went up the
spruces grew smaller and finally disappeared. The sides were barren
save for a thin covering of moss and lichens and patches of stunted
huckleberry bushes. These bushes, not more than three or four inches
high, bore hordes of luscious ripe huckleberries, and nearly every
hundred feet in our climb we would drop on our knees on the soft moss
and till ourselves, so often could we find room for more. Another
little black spicy berry growing in crannies was good. Just as we
were toiling up the last slope a flock of twenty white ptarmigan flew
up in front of us, and circled down to another ridge. They, too, had
been feeding on the huckleberries.
As we rested ourselves, sheltered in a niche of the summit crag safe
from the chilling wind, a little red-backed mouse ran from a crevice
and scampered through the moss straight to a huckleberry patch, his
own winter garden. Clouds began to gather on the highest peaks, and
we started down, leaving them behind.
The moss was slippery and we found that we could slide down the steep
pitches easier than we could walk or jump. I remembered seeing the
little Sioux slide down the hills of Dakota in government skillets,
and immediately sat down on my shovel, steering with the handle just
as I had seen the Indian boys do, and made terrific progress. I was
soon able to pick myself up, feigning to examine a ledge of quartz
while I rubbed my posterior, and looked back for Clyde.
He tried sitting in the gold-pan and started all right, but soon
found that he couldn't steer. He went at a frightful rate, tearing
down the steep slide backwards, until he, too, found himself
examining the geological strata while giving some attention to his
anatomy. And then we had to hunt for the gold-pan which, from the
musical sounds which grew fainter and fainter and finally died away
altogether, must have got switched off into the bottomless abyss.
Will it be found some day generations hence and borne off in triumph
as proof of a prehistoric race? It was a race. Such is gold-hunting
in far-away Alaska.
At camp that evening we were joined by a native, "Charley." who told
us by signs and by what few words he could speak, that he had come
part way up the Hunt River behind us, but had left his birch-bark
canoe several miles below, roaming off to hunt in the neighboring
hills.
He told us that he had shot a bear the day before and had cached it
down the river, his boat being too small to take it. He wanted us
to go and get it. Sure enough, a few miles down, we found the bear
as Charley had said. It was all cut up, the skin being stretched
on poles and fastened in a tree. The carcass was also divided and
hidden in a pole-box raised high on a slender scaffold. Charley had
expected to come on his sled later on and take it home. After loading
on this prize we continued down the river, the Indian accompanying us
in his canoe. The rapids were furious and many, and we shot them as
if we had been behind a locomotive. It took a cool head to steer a
boat under these conditions, and Cox did it. At one place the stream
had washed under a bank above and trees had fallen over, making a
complete set of rafters. The current rushed the boat under a series
of these, like city roofs, and it kept us busy to duck our heads.
[Illustration: We Receive Visitors.]
We arrived home yesterday, making in seven hours a distance that
had taken us three days to go up. Charley gave us bear meat to last
a month. It tastes fishy, as the bears live mostly on salmon in
summer, but it is a welcome addition to our larder. During the trip
I obtained two hawk owls and an Alaskan three-toed wood-pecker, both
species being new to my collection.
[Illustration]