GOING TO NOME.
One beautiful day in the spring of 1900 I sailed again for Alaska--this
time for Nome from San Francisco. An English family consisting of the
mother, one son and a daughter were to accompany me, and we had spent
weeks in making our preparations. We were taking supplies of clothing,
food, tents and bedding sufficient to last until some of our numerous
plans of work after our arrival brought in returns. My hope was to meet
my father there, for he had written that he thought he should go to the
new gold fields, where he could do beach mining.
I was not above doing any honest work, and felt confident that I could
make my way if I could gain an entrance into that country. The English
people were all workers, and I had known them for ten years or more.
Our steamer was the good ship "St. Paul," belonging to the Alaska
Commercial Company, and was advertised to sail on May twenty-fifth. When
I laughingly called the attention of one of the owners of the ship to
the fact that that date fell upon Friday, and many persons objected to
sailing upon that day, he postponed the starting of the "St. Paul" to
May twenty-sixth, and we left the dock on Saturday afternoon amid the
cheers and hand-waving of thousands of people who had come to see the
big boat off for Nome.
The steamer was well fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and
paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom
was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of space above or
below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and the
ship was well manned.
I was now much gratified to learn that there were many on board whom I
had met before; that the steward, stewardess and several of the waiters
had been on duty on the steamer "Bertha" during my trip out from Alaska
the fall before, while I was upon speaking terms with a dozen or more of
the passengers with whom I had traveled from the same place. Of
passengers we had, all told, four hundred and eighty-seven. Of these
thirty-five were women. There was only one child on board, and that was
the little black-eyed girl with her Eskimo mother and white father from
Golovin Bay whom I had seen at St. Michael some months before, and who
was now going back to her northern home. She wore a sailor suit of navy
blue serge, trimmed with white braid, and was as coy and cunning as
ever, not speaking often to strangers, but laughing and running away to
her mother when addressed.
From the day we sailed from San Francisco until we reached Nome I missed
no meals in the dining salon, a pace which my English friends and others
could not follow, for they were uncomfortably ill in the region of their
digestive apparatus for several days. I slept for hours each day and
thoroughly enjoyed the trip.
During the nine days' sail from San Francisco to Unalaska, a distance of
two thousand three hundred and sixty-eight miles, I studied well the
passengers. We had preachers on board, as well as doctors, lawyers,
merchants and miners, and there were women going to Nome to start eating
houses, hotels and mercantile shops. There were several Swedish
missionaries; one, a zealous young woman from San Francisco, going to
the Swedish Mission at Golovin Bay.
This young person was pretty and pleasant, and I was glad to make her
acquaintance as well as that of three other women speaking the same
tongue and occupying the next stateroom to mine. The last named were
going to start a restaurant in Nome. As they were sociable, jolly, and
good sailors for the most part, I enjoyed their society. They had all
lived in San Francisco for years, and though not related to each other,
were firm friends of long standing and were uniting their little
fortunes in the hope of making greater ones.
The young missionary was a friend to the other three, and I found no
better or more congenial companions on board the ship than these four
honest, hard-working women, so full of hope, courage and good sense as
well as Christianity. Little did I then think that these people, placed
by a seeming chance in an adjoining stateroom, were to be my
fellow-workers and true friends, not only for the coming months in that
Arctic land to which we were going, but, as the sequel will show,
perhaps for years to come.
Not many days had passed when we found that we had on board what few
steamers can boast of, and that was an orchestra of professional
musicians among the waiters. These were men going, with all the others,
to seek their fortunes in the new gold fields, working their passage as
waiters on the ship to Nome, where they intended to leave it. Three
evenings in the week these musicians, with the help of several singers
on board, gave concerts in the dining salon, which, though impromptu,
were very enjoyable.
A sweet and trained singer was the English girl of our company, and she
sang many times, accompanied by the stringed instruments of the
musicians, much to the delight of the assembled passengers. When she
sang, one evening, in her clear sympathetic voice the selection, "Oh,
Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight," there was not a dry eye in the room,
and the mind of many a man went back to his old home and praying mother
in some far distant state, making him resolve to write oftener to her
that she might be comforted with a knowledge of his whereabouts and
welfare. These evenings were sometimes varied by recitations from an
elocutionist on board; and a practised clog dancer excited the risibles
of the company to the extent that they usually shouted with laughter at
his exhibition of flying heels.
Day after day passed. Those who were continually seasick had diversion
enough. It was useless for us to tell them a pathetic tale of some one,
who, at some time, had been more ill than they, because they would not
believe a word of it, and it was equally useless to recommend an
antidote for mal de mer such as theirs. "No one was ever so ill before,"
they said. They knew they should die and be buried at sea, and hoped
they would if that would put an end to their sufferings. We tried at
last to give them comfort by recommending out of former experiences
ship's biscuit, dry toast and pop-corn as remedies, but only received
black looks as our reward. We then concluded that a diet of tea, coffee
and soup was exactly such a one as the fishes would recommend could they
speak, these favorite and much used liquids keeping up a continual
"swishing" in one's interior regions, and causing one to truthfully
speak of the same as "infernal" instead of internal. But they were all
tree physical as well as free moral agents and decided these things for
themselves.
At last we entered the Japan current and the weather was warmer and
more enjoyable. On Monday, June fourth, we saw from the deck a few
drifting logs and a quantity of seaweed, and these, with the presence of
gulls and goonies flying overhead, convinced us that we were nearing
land.
We were not mistaken. After eating an excellent six o'clock dinner we
went above to find ourselves between high, rocky cliffs, which loomed up
into mountains not far distant, and we knew we were again at the
Aleutian Islands and in the rough waters of Unimak Pass. As we drew
nearer and entered the harbor so well land-locked, the sun dipped low
into yellow-red western waters, thereby casting long shadows aslant our
pathway so delicately shaded in greens.
The little hamlet of Dutch Harbor nestled cosily at the foot of the
mountains which bordered the bay, and here numbers of ships lay anchored
at rest. Passing along easily beyond another high mountain, we were soon
at the dock of Unalaska, beside other great ships in port. Both groups
of craft were evidently waiting for the ice to clear from Behring Sea
before proceeding on their way northward, and we counted sixteen ships
of different kinds and sizes, the majority of them large steamers. All
were loaded with passengers and freight for Nome. Scout boats had
already been sent out to investigate and find, if possible, a passage
through the ice fields, and the return of these scouts with good news
was anxiously watched and waited for, as the most desired thing at that
time was a speedy and safe landing on the supposedly golden beach sands
of Nome.
At Unalaska we spent four days taking on fresh water and coal, during
which time passengers visited back and forth from the waiting steamers,
many persons having friends on other boats and each having a curiosity
to see if they were faring as well or ill as he, comparing notes as to
the expense of traveling with the different companies, etc. Passengers
on the "St. Paul" agreed that they had "no kick comin'," which was one
of the commonest slang phrases, intended to mean that they had no fault
to find with the Alaska Commercial Company and their steamer "St. Paul."
All were well cared for and satisfied, as well they might be, with the
service of the ship's men.
Leaving Unalaska the sun shone clear and cold upon the mountains where
in places the sides looked black from the late fires started in the deep
tundra by miscreants. The tops of the mountains were covered with snow.
Down deep gorges dashed mountain waters of melting snow and ice,
hurrying to leap off gullied and rocky cliffs into the sea. Their
progress was never impeded. No tree nor shrub obstructed the way with
gnarled old trunks, twisted roots, or low hanging branches, for none
grow in Unalaska, and the bold dignity and grandeur of the mountains is
never diminished by these lesser objects.
As our ship sailed out into Behring Sea we were closely followed by the
steamer "George W. Elder," whose master, an old friend of our captain,
had decided to follow in our wake, he being less familiar than the
latter with Alaskan waters, and having confidence in the ability of his
friend to successfully pilot both ships to Cape Nome.
[Illustration: STEAMSHIP ST. PAUL.]