Buster Creek, Cape Nome, Sept. 16, 1899.--A week ago Casey went to
Anvil City, across country twelve miles, and brought a batch of mail,
containing our first letters from home since our arrival here in
answer to our own. I received six, which I have committed to memory,
sitting alone in the cook tent. If people at home, the wide world
over, would write faithfully to absent ones, there would be joy in
many a wanderer's heart.
Here we are, working like beavers, thirteen of us, including me, the
cook. It's the last struggle of a dying company. But it isn't dead
yet. In fact there are many good signs of reviving, possibly to a
more prosperous condition. We have done little so far on Buster Creek
but hunt for pay dirt. Just now we are making wages. Took out $400
last week, including some very pretty nuggets. The claims are too
spotted; that is, the gold runs in narrow streaks, and necessitates
moving quantities of barren dirt to get at it. Our largest nugget
so far is $4.13, with a good many $1 ones. Over on Anvil Creek they
took out a twenty-seven ounce one last week. That is a better size.
While we have done little but "prospect" on the claims here, we have
gained a good idea of their value, and expect to work them next
year. A cold snap struck us three days ago and threatens to put a
stop to our mining for this season. The creek is bordered with ice,
and icicles adorn the edges of the sluice-boxes. We shall remain as
long as we can possibly work. It is snowing quite heavily to-day. I
saw the last Siberian yellow wagtail on the 8th, also a gray-cheeked
thrush. I saw a gyrfalcon and snowy owl flying along the canon
yesterday. Scattering flocks of golden plover have been quite common
the past few days on the hillsides feeding on blueberries. I shot one
near the tent this morning, although the ground was white with snow.
I can hear their clear notes every few minutes while I write. They
are flying past along the creek or up the hills. I wish I could save
some skins. But wishes do not count with a gold-hunter when gold
is in sight. Yesterday immense flocks of little brown cranes passed
south overhead.
I am pretty sure this is the same species we see and hear so much of
during the migrations in southern California, and not so often the
sand-hill crane.
This "cooking job," which has been thrust upon me by circumstances
entirely outside my control, is something terrible. I will never,
never get into another scrape like it. And yet "I am in the hands of
my friends." No President of these United States ever accepted his
office "by the will of the people" more surely than I now occupy my
office as cook for the L. B. A. M. & T. Co. But for all that, I am
elected by a sweeping vote. I repeat my previous oft-made declaration
that I will never be caught running for this office again. In fact I
never did run for it. It ran for me. An unquestionable illustration
of the office seeking the man and not the man the office. I get up
at five in the morning; nearly dark now at that early hour. How cold
it is! And I never was eager to get up, under any circumstances.
For a week nearly every night ice forms in the tent. I have an oil
stove, without which I should never be able to prepare breakfast.
Green willow brush is hard to burn in the little camp stove. I have
breakfast ready at 6:30, dinner at 12, and supper at 6. It keeps me
"hustling" to be prompt. The office is no "snap." I am given a man
to chop wood when necessary, otherwise I must do everything alone.
And the dish-washing three times a day! Let who will envy me. Up to
the beginning of the cold snap I made light bread, six loaves per
day. But since it has been freezing in the tent at night the sponge
will not rise. And there's no way to keep it warm. Fuel too dear and
scarce. The camp stove oven is about ten inches square, with bake
pans to fit, two loaves to a pan, one pan at a time. Light bread went
a good deal further than baking-powder biscuit. It takes nine slabs
of the latter a day to satisfy us now. We are reduced to the bare
necessities, no butter nor canned milk. For breakfast I give them
corn-meal mush, bacon, bread, beans and coffee. For dinner bacon,
beans, bread, pea soup, apple sauce and coffee. For supper either
bacon gravy, made of flour and water, or stew, if we have ptarmigan
or meat, beans, rice, apple sauce, bread, hard-tack and tea. Our
reindeer was fine, but lasted only a few days. One unaccustomed
to this fare of ours may think we are in luck for miners, and so
we are, but one gets tired of the same menu for so long. And then
the staleness of it, after being shipped and towed and packed and
unpacked, and swapped, and crushed, and dampened, for nearly two
years! Little freshness in it.
The boys are having no easy job at shoveling. Their feet are swollen
and sore from standing in rubber boots in ice water, and their hands
are cracked and chapped. These every-day monotonies are the real
hardships of a miner's life. He can tramp across the country for
a few weeks and know that the end of his journey is at hand, and
besides be getting some satisfaction from the thought of "glory"
when he shall relate his perils to gaping friends at home. But this
"peg-away" daily toil, in heat and cold and sleet and rain, after
what may come to light in the next shovelful, and possibly never show
up at all--this is hardship. But through it all the boys who have
stuck to their work are in good spirits, and this in face of the fact
that the "clean-ups" do not always show up wages even.
I have plenty of time to think nowadays all by myself, for I do not
necessarily keep all my thoughts upon the grub. I do a good deal of
my work from sheer habit now, or mechanically. The boys are working
on Claim No. 1, and these tents are on No. 4, so I am quite alone
except at meal time. A regulation claim is one-fourth of a mile long
lengthwise of a creek, and one-eighth wide.
The "Penelope" is at Port Clarence, where Fancher and Jett went
prospecting. The boat will be at Anvil City about October 1st,
according to programme, and we will sail for home as soon after that
date as we can get away. Yes, home! I am heartily tired of this kind
of living. I shall be willing to take a six months' rest before
taking another trip, I am sure. I long to get back to my father's
house and up in those cool, high chambers of mine, where I may once
more feel "like a Christian and a gentleman."
The season is earlier than usual, and the weather much more
disagreeable than at the same date last year on the Kowak. Every
moment or two while I write I have to stop and stir the beans or
apple sauce, or look at a batch of bread. The beans are boiling with
rather a melodious gurgle, while the sizzling rice and the patter of
sleet on the canvas overhead furnish a rather pleasing accompaniment.
But it makes a person feel kind of lonesome-like. There! the old
stove is smoking again! Whenever the wind shifts around the hill the
draft is damaged, and the stinging, irritating green willow smoke
fills the tent. My eyes smart and are very painful from this cause.
I long for the voyage home across the water for the sake of my eyes.
And now the snow is coming and it will but increase the mischief. I
should hate to lose my good eyesight.
A few cases of typhoid fever are reported, but none on this creek. We
are all in good health. No one would doubt this last at meal time.
The boys eat an immense amount of our monotonous grub and say their
"grace" as thankfully as if it were a banquet. Little Brownie, the
boy who was going to work eighteen hours a day if only he could "find
the nuggets." comes dragging himself home at night completely tired
out, sore feet and blistered hands. The work is pretty hard on the
older men. Shaul, Wilson and Uncle Jimmy. But we have no hardships
from other causes than voluntary hard work. Our foreman. Harry
Reynolds, knows his business well, and we all like him.
Anvil City. Sept. 20.--We were frozen out on Buster Creek, and here
we are in town again. Winter is upon us, the landscape is white and
the glare is very painful. The ground is frozen hard, which makes
walking much easier than through a foot of mud and ooze. We are
living in our cabin on our city lot just back of the A. C. Company's
big warehouse. We made the entire trip from No. 4 on Buster Creek in
one day, and were just in time, for next morning a snowstorm began,
lasting until yesterday. We made the trip down Nome River in five
hours in our boats, and then around to Anvil City outside the surf,
which luckily was not heavy. And how, cold it was! I was one of
three to bring a boat around, and by the time we got here I was so
stiff I could scarcely bend my limbs. Rubber boots and damp clothing
inside. It would have been much worse had we waited a day longer.
However, we are all well in spite of hardship, and are patiently (?)
waiting for the "Penelope." We heard a rumor that a white schooner
was wrecked a short time ago on the rocks near Port Clarence. It was
thought to be the "Penelope." Alas, my dear collection! But if it
were the "Penelope" we would have been informed by this time. Then we
have heard that the "Penelope" has been chartered to go back up to
Kotzebue again for freight, and to go over to Siberia to trade for
dog-feed. But a person must make a rule to believe nothing he hears
in this country or he would be worrying all the time.
This, for a boom town, beats anything we ever saw in the States.
Thousands of people are now pouring in from Dawson to stay through
the winter, and they say that this is a bigger place than ever Dawson
was. Steamer loads of people and freight are coming in every day.
The town is full of money. The town is incorporated, with mayor,
councilmen and police force. Franchises have been let for electric
lighting, sewerage, water works, and all modern improvements.
Hundreds of houses are building, many large ones. Lumber is $150 per
thousand.
I have a job for to-morrow in the mayor's office aligning a
calligraph. Wages are $1 per hour. I could have all I could do for
the winter, type-writing and doing mechanical drawing in the Nome
City Attorney's office. But I wouldn't stay here for $300 per month.
No, nor for anything. I hate the place. There's the toughest crowd of
people, sporting Dawsonites, everyone ready to "do" everybody else.
It is the liveliest, speediest, swiftest mining camp ever seen in
Alaska. And what will it be next year? All sorts of sharks are making
fortunes.
Sept. 27, 1899.--Heigh-o! The "Penelope" has just dropped anchor
off Anvil City and we are in high glee. Higher glee than we ever
experienced on the Kowak, for we are going home! Our hunt for gold is
over. We shall take some passengers aboard for San Pedro. I shall go
on ship at once and see how it fares with my precious birds. They are
my gold. We shall start at high noon October 2d, and expect to make
the trip in a month or six weeks. Depends upon the wind. Now for our
good ship's yell:
"Penelope! Penelope! zip I boom! bah!
Going home from Kotzebue! rah! rah! rah!"
THE END.
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Transcriber Note
Minor typos were corrected. In order to prevent splitting paragraphs,
illustrations were repositioned.