Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Wreck of "Jessie," Nome Beach Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, SeattleCopyright by E. A. Hegg, JuneauWreck of "Jessie," Nome BeachCourtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
When theD. R. Campbelldrew away from the Dawson wharf at nine o'clock of an August morning, another of my dreams was "come true." I was on my way down the weird and mysterious river that calls as powerfully in its way as the North Pacific Ocean. For years the mere sound of the word "Yukon" had affected me like the clash of a wild and musical bell. The sweep of great waters was in it—the ring of breaking ice and its thunderous fall; the roar of forest fires, of undermined plunging cliffs, of falling trees, of pitiless winds; the sobs of dark women, deserted upon its shores, with white children on their breasts; the mournful howls of dogs and of their wild brothers, wolves; the slide of avalanches and the long rattle of thunder—for years the word "Yukon" had set these sounds ringing in my ears, and had swung before my eyes the shifting pictures of canyon, rampart, and plain; of waters rushing through rock walls and again loitering over vast lowlands to the sea; of forestated mountains, rose thickets, bare hills, pale cliffs of clay, and ranges of sublime snow-mountains. Yet, with all that I had read, and all that I had heard, and all that I had imagined, I was unprepared for the spell of the Yukon; for the spaces, the solitude, the silence. At last I was to learn how well the name fits the river and the country, and how feeble and how ineffectual are both description and imagination to picture this country so that it may be understood.
Six miles below Dawson the site of old Fort Reliance is passed, and forty-six miles farther Forty-Mile River pours its broad flood into the Yukon. About eight miles up this river, at the lower end of a canyon, a strong current has swept many small boats upon dangerous rocks and the occupants have been drowned. The head of the Forty-Mile is but a short distance from the great Tanana.
The settlement of Forty-Mile is the pioneer mining-camp of the Yukon. The Alaska Commercial Company established a station here soon after the gold excitement of 1887; and, as the international boundary line crosses Forty-Mile River twenty-three miles from its mouth and many of the most important mining interests depending upon the town for supplies are on the American side, a bonded warehouse is maintained, from which American goods can be drawn without the payment of duties. As late as 1895 quite a lively town was at the mouth of the river, boasting even an opera house; but the town was depopulated upon the discovery of gold on the Klondike. Six years ago the settlement was flooded by water banked up in Forty-Mile River by ice, and the residents were taken from upstairs windows in boats. The former name of this river was Che-ton-deg, or "Green Leaf," River.
Now there are a couple of dozen log cabins, a dozen or more red-roofed houses, and store buildings. The steamer pushed up sidewise to the rocky beach, a gang-plank was floated ashore, and a customs inspector came aboard. On the beach were a couple of ladies, some members of the mounted police in scarlet coats, and fifty malamute dogs, snapping, snarling, and fighting like wolves over the food flung from the steamer.
The dog is to Alaska what the horse is to more civilized countries—the intelligent, patient, faithful beast of burden. He is of the Eskimo or "malamute" breed,having been bred with the wolf for endurance; or he is a "husky" from the Mackenzie River.
Eskimo dogs are driven with harness, hitched to sleds, and teams of five or seven with a good leader can haul several hundred pounds, if blessed with a kind driver. In summer they have nothing to do but sleep, and find their food as best they may. Along the Yukon they haunt steamer-landings and are always fed by the stewards—who can thus muster a dog fight for the pleasure of heartless passengers at a moment's notice.
With the coming of winter a kind of electric strength seems to enter into these dogs. They long for the harness and the journeys over snow and ice; and for a time they leap and frisk like puppies and will not be restrained. They are about the size of a St. Bernard dog, but of very different shape; the leader is always an intelligent and superior animal and his eyes frequently hold an almost human appeal. He is fairly dynamic in force, and when not in harness will fling himself upon food with a swiftness and a strength that suggest a missile hurled from a catapult. Nothing can check his course; and he has been known to strike his master to the earth in his headlong rush of greeting—although it has been cruelly said of him that he has no affection for any save the one that feeds him, and not for him after his hunger is satisfied.
The Eskimo dog seldom barks, but he has a mournful, wolflike howl. His coat is thick and somewhat like wool, and his feet are hard; he travels for great distances without becoming footsore, and at night he digs a deep hole in the snow, crawls into it, curls up in his own wool, and sleeps as sweetly as a pet Spitz on a cushion of down. His chief food is fish. If the Alaska dog is not affectionate, it is because for generations he has had no cause for affection. No dog with such eyes—so asking and so human-like in their expression—could fail to be affectionateand devoted to a master possessing the qualities which inspire affection and devotion.
In winter all the mails are carried by dogs, covering hundreds of miles.
Half a mile below Forty-Mile the town of Cudahy was founded in 1892 by the North American Trading and Transportation Company, as a rival settlement.
Fifty miles below Forty-Mile, at the confluence of Mission Creek with the Yukon, is Eagle, having a population of three or four hundred people. It has the most northerly customs office and military post, Fort Egbert, belonging to the United States, and is the terminus of the Valdez-Eagle mail route and telegraph line. It is also of importance as being but a few miles from the boundary.
Fort Egbert is a two-company post, and usually, as at the time of our visit, two companies are stationed there. The winter of 1904-1905 was the gayest in the social history of the fort. Several ladies, the wives and the sisters of officers, were there, and these, with the wife of the company's agent and other residents of the town, formed a brilliant and refined social club.
From November the 27th to January the 16th the sun does not appear above the hills to the south. The two "great" days at Eagle are the 16th of January,—"when the sun comes back,"—and the day "when the ice breaks in the river," usually the 12th of May. On the former occasion the people assemble, like a band of sun-worshippers, and celebrate its return.
The vegetable and flower gardens of Eagle were a revelation of what may be expected in the agricultural and floral line in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle. Potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower, lettuce, turnips, radishes, and other vegetables were in a state of spendthrift luxuriance that cannot be imagined by one who has not travelled in a country where vegetables grow day and night.
In winter Eagle is a lonely place. The only mail it receives is the monthly mail passing through from Dawson to Nome by dog sleds; and no magazines, papers, or parcels are carried.
It was from Eagle that the first news was sent out to the world concerning Captain Amundsen's wonderful discovery of the Northwest Passage; here he arrived in midwinter after a long, hard journey by dog team from the Arctic Ocean and sent out the news which so many brave navigators of early days would have given their lives to be able to announce.
Within five years a railroad will probably connect Eagle with the coast at Valdez; meantime, there is a good government trail, poled by a government telegraph line.
Eagle came into existence in 1898, and the fort was established in 1899.
"Woodings-up" are picturesque features of Yukon travel. When the steamer does not land at a wood yard, mail is tied around a stick and thrown ashore. Fancy standing, a forlorn and homesick creature, on the bank of this great river and watching a letter from home caught by the rushing current and borne away! Yet this frequently happens, for heart affairs are small matters in the Arctic Circle and receive but scant consideration.
On the Upper Yukon wood is five dollars a cord; on the Lower, seven dollars; and a cord an hour is thrust into the immense and roaring furnaces.
During "wooding-up" times passengers go ashore and enjoy the forest. There are red and black currants, crab-apples, two varieties of salmon-berries, five of huckleberries, and strawberries. The high-bush cranberries are very pretty, with their red berries and delicate foliage.
Nation is a settlement of a dozen log cabins roofed with dirt and flowers, the roofs projecting prettily over thefront porches. The wife of the storekeeper has lived here twenty-five years, and has been "outside" only once in twelve years. Passengers usually go ashore especially to meet her, and are always cordially welcomed, but are never permitted to condole with her on her isolated life. The spell of the Yukon has her in thrall, and content shines upon her brow as a star. Those who go ashore to pity, return with the dull ache of envy in their worldly hearts; for there be things on the Yukon that no worldly heart can understand.
We left Eagle in the forenoon and at midnight landed at Circle City, which received this name because it was first supposed to be located within the Arctic Circle. We found natives building houses at that hour, and this is my most vivid remembrance of Circle. Gold was discovered on Birch Creek, within eight miles of the settlement, as early as 1892; and until the Klondike excitement this was the most populous camp on the Yukon, more than a thousand miners being quartered in the vicinity. Like other camps, it was then depopulated; but many miners have now returned and a brilliant discovery in this vicinity may yet startle the world. The output of gold for 1906 was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. About three hundred miners are operating on tributaries up Birch Creek. The great commercial companies are established at all these settlements on the Yukon, where they have large stores and warehouses.
Early on the following morning we were on deck to cross the Arctic Circle. One has a feeling that a line with icicles dangling from it must be strung overhead, under which one passes into the enchanted realm of the real North.
"Feel that?" asked the man from Iowa of a big, unsmiling Englishman.
"Feel—er—what?" said the Englishman.
"That shock. It felt like stepping on the third rail of an electric railway."
But the Iowa humor was scorned, and the Englishman walked away.
We soon landed at Fort Yukon, the only landing in the Arctic Circle and the most northerly point on the Yukon. This post was established at the mouth of the Porcupine in 1847 by A. H. McMurray, of the Hudson Bay Company, and was moved in 1864 a mile lower on the Yukon, on account of the undermining of the bank by the wash of the river. During the early days of this post goods were brought from York Factory on Hudson Bay, four thousand miles distant, and were two years in transit. The whole Hudson Bay system, according to Dall, was one of exacting tyranny that almost equalled that of the Russian Company. The white men were urged to marry Indian, or native, women, to attach them to the country. The provisions sent in were few and these were consumed by the commanders of the trading posts or given to chiefs, to induce them to bring in furs. The white men received three pounds of tea and six of sugar annually, and no flour. This scanty supply was uncertain and often failed. Two suits of clothes were granted to the men, but nothing else until the furs were all purchased. If anything remained after the Indians were satisfied, the men were permitted to purchase; but Indians are rarely satisfied.
Fort Yukon has never been of importance as a mining centre, but has long been a great fur trading post for the Indians up the Porcupine. This trade has waned, however, and little remains but an Indian village and the old buildings of the post. We walked a mile into the woods to an old graveyard in a still, dim grove, probably the only one in the Arctic Circle.
The Yukon is a mighty and a beautiful river, and its memory becomes more haunting and more compelling with the passage of time. From the slender blue stream of its source, it grows, in its twenty-three hundred miles of wandering to the sea, to a width of sixty miles at its mouth. In its great course it widens, narrows, and widens; cuts through the foot-hills of vast mountain systems, spreads over flats, makes many splendid sweeping curves, and slides into hundreds of narrow channels around spruce-covered islands.
It is divided into four great districts, each of which has its own characteristic features. The valley extending from White Horse to some distance below Dawson is called the "upper Yukon," or "upper Ramparts," the river having a width of half a mile and a current of four or five miles an hour, and the valley in this district being from one to three miles in width.
Following this are the great "Flats"—of which one hears from his first hour on the Yukon; then, the "Ramparts"; and last, the "lower Yukon" or "lower river."
The Flats are vast lowlands stretching for two hundred miles along the river, with a width in places of a hundred miles. Their very monotony is picturesque and fascinates by its immensity. Countless islands are constantly forming, appearing and disappearing in the whimsical changes of the currents. Indian, white, and half-breed pilots patrol these reaches, guiding one steamer down andanother up, and by constant travel keeping themselves fairly familiar with the changing currents. Yet even these pilots frequently fail in their calculations.
At Eagle a couple of gentlemen joined our party down the river on theCampbell, expecting to meet the same day and return on the famousSarah—as famous as a steamer as is the island of the same name on the inland passage; but they went on and on and theSarahcame not. One day, two days, three days, went by and they were still with us. One was in the customs service and his time was precious. Whenever we approached a bend in the river, they stood in the bow of the boat, eagerly staring ahead; but not until the fourth day did the cry of "Sarah" ring through our steamer. Hastening on deck, we beheld her, white and shining, on a sand-bar, where she had been lying for several days, notwithstanding the fact that she had an experienced pilot aboard.
Throughout the Flats lies a vast network of islands, estimated as high as ten thousand in number, threaded by countless channels, many of which have strong currents, while others are but still, sluggish sloughs. Mountains line the far horizon lines, but so far away that they frequently appear as clouds of bluish pearl piled along the sky; at other times snow-peaks are distinctly visible. Cottonwoods, birches, and spruce trees cover the islands so heavily that, from the lower deck of a steamer, one would believe that he was drifting down the single channel of a narrow river, instead of down one channel of a river twenty miles wide.
It is within the Arctic Circle that the Yukon makes its sweeping bend from its northwest course to the southwest, and here it is entered by the Porcupine; twenty miles farther, by the Chandelar; and just above the Ramparts, by the Dall. These are the three important rivers of this stretch of the Yukon.
Many complain of the monotony of the Flats; but for me, there was not one dull or uninteresting hour on the Yukon. In my quiet home on summer evenings I can still see the men taking soundings from the square bow of our steamer and hear their hoarse cries:—
"Six feet starboard! Five feet port! Seven feet starboard! Five feet port! Five feet starboard! Four feet port!" At the latter cry the silent watchers of the pilot-house came to attention, and we proceeded under slow bell until a greater depth was reached.
On the shores, as we swept past, we caught glimpses of dark figures and Indian villages, or, farther down the river, primitive Eskimo settlements; and the stillness, the pure and sparkling air, the untouched wilderness, the blue smoke of a wood-chopper's lonely fire, the wide spaces swimming over us and on all sides of us, charmed our senses as only the elemental forces of nature can charm. One longs to stay awake always on this river; to pace the wide decks and be one with the solitude and the stillness that are not of the earth, as we know it, but of God, as we have dreamed of him.
The blue hills of the Ramparts are seen long before entering them. The valley contracts into a kind of canyon, from which the rampart-like walls of solid stone rise abruptly from the water. The hills are not so high as those of the Upper Ramparts, which bear marked resemblance to the lower; and although many consider the latter more picturesque, I must confess that I found no beauty below Dawson so majestic as that above. Many of the hills here have a rose-colored tinge, like the hills of Lake Bennett.
In places the river does not reach a width of half a mile and is deep and swift. The shadows between the high rock-bluffs and pinnacled cliffs take on the mysterious purple tones of twilight; many of the hills are coveredwith spruce, whose dark green blends agreeably with the gray and rose color. The bends here are sharp and many; at the Rapids the current is exceedingly rapid, and Dall reported a fall of twelve feet to the half mile, with the water running in sheets of foam over a granite island in the middle of the stream. This was on June 1, 1866. In August, 1883, Schwatka, after many hours of anxiety and dread of the reputed rapids, inquired of Indians and learned that he had already passed them. They were not formidable at the time of our voyage,—August,—and it is only during high stages of water that they present a bar to navigation.
We reached Rampart at six o'clock in the morning. After Tanana, this is the loveliest place on the Yukon. Its sparkling, emerald beauty shone under a silvery blue sky. There was a long street of artistic log houses and stores on a commanding bluff, up which paths wound from the water. Roofs covered with earth and flowers, carried out in brilliant bloom over the porches, added the characteristic Yukon touch. Every door-yard and window blazed with color. Narrow paths ran through tall fireweed and grasses over and around the hill—each path terminating, like a winding lane, in a pretty log-cabin home. There was an atmosphere of cleanliness, tidiness, and thrift not found in other settlements along the Yukon.
Captain Mayo, who, with McQuesten, founded Rampart in 1873, still lives here. The two commercial companies have large stores and warehouses; and residences were comfortably, and even luxuriously, furnished.
Rampart is two hundred and thirty miles below Fort Yukon, and is about halfway between Dawson and the sea. It has a population of four or five hundred people—when they are in from the mines!—and almost as many fighting, hungry dogs. Its street winds, and thebuildings follow its windings; sometimes it stops altogether, and the buildings stop with it—then both go on again; and in front of all the public buildings are clean rustic benches, where one may sit and "look to the rose about him." The river here is half a mile wide, and on its opposite shore the green fields of the government experimental station slope up from the water.
Gold was discovered on Minook Creek, half a mile from town, in 1895, and the camp is regarded as one of the most even producers in Alaska. In 1906, despite an unusually dry season, the output of the district was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
In the afternoon of the same day we reached Tanana, which is, as I have said, the most beautiful place on the Yukon. It has a splendid site on a level plateau; and all the springlike greenness, the cleanliness and order, the luxuriant vegetation, of Dawson, are outdone here. One walks in a maze of delight along streets of tropic, instead of arctic, bloom. The log houses are set far back from the streets, and the deep dooryards are seas of tremulous color, through which neat paths lead to flower-roofed homes. Cleanliness, color, and perfume are everywhere delights, but on the lonely Yukon their unexpectedness is enchanting.
In 1900 Fort Gibbon was established here, and this post has the most attractive surroundings of any in Alaska. Tanana is situated at the mouth of the Tanana River, seventy-five miles below Rampart, and passengers for Fairbanks connect here with luxurious steamers for a voyage of three hundred miles up the Tanana. It is a beautiful voyage and it ends at the most progressive and metropolitan town of the North.
In the autumn of 1902 Felix Pedro, an experienced miner and prospector, crossed the divide between Birch and McManus creeks and entered the Tanana Valley.
Previous to that year many people had travelled through the valley, on their way to the Klondike, by the Valdez route; and a few miners from the Birch Creek and Forty-Mile diggings had wandered into the Tanana country, without being able to do any important prospecting because of the distance from supplies; but Pedro was the first man to discover that gold existed in economic quantities in this region, and his coming was an event of historical importance.
One of the best tests of the importance and value of geological survey work lies in the significant report of Mr. Alfred H. Brooks for the year of 1898—four years before the discoveries of Mr. Pedro:—
"We have seen that the little prospecting which has been done up to the present time has been too hurried and too superficial to be regarded as a fair test of the region. Our best information leads us to believe that the same horizons which carry gold in the Forty-Mile and Birch Creek districts are represented in the Tanana and White River basins.... I should advise prospectors to carefully investigate the small tributary streams of the lower White and of the Tanana from Mirror Creek to the mouth."
Pedro's discovery was on the creek which bears hisname, and before another year gold was discovered on several other creeks. In 1901 a trading post was established by Captain E. T. Barnette, on the present site of Fairbanks, and the development of the country progressed rapidly. The Fairbanks Mining District was organized and named for the present Vice-President of the United States. In the autumn of 1903 eight hundred people were in the district, and about thirty thousand dollars had been produced, the more important creeks at that time being Pedro, Goldstream, Twin Creek, Cleary, Wolf, Chatham, and Fairbanks. In the fall of 1904 nearly four thousand miners had come in, and the year's output was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fairbanks and Chena had grown to thriving camps, and a brilliant prosperity reigned in the entire district. Roads were built to the creeks, sloughs were bridged, and Fairbanks' "boom" was in full swing. It was the old story of a camp growing from tents to shacks in a night, from shacks to three-story buildings in a month. The glory of the Klondike trembled and paled in the brilliance of that of Fairbanks. Every steamer for Valdez was crowded with men and women bound for the new camp by way of the Valdez trail; while thousands went by steamer, either to St. Michael and up the Yukon, or to Skaguay and down the Yukon, to the mouth of the Tanana.
Fairbanks is now a camp only in name. It has all the comforts and luxuries of a city, and is more prosperous and progressive than any other town in Alaska or the Yukon. It started with such a rush that it does not seem to be able to stop. It is the headquarters of the Third Judicial District of Alaska, which was formerly at Rampart; it has electric light and water systems, a fire department, excellent and modern hotels, schools, churches, hospitals, daily newspapers, a telegraph line to the outsideworld which is operated by the government, and a telephone system which serves not only the city, but all the creeks as well.
The Tanana Mines Railway, or Tanana Valley Railway, as it is now called, was built in 1905 to connect Fairbanks with Chena and the richest mining claims of the district; and two great railroads are in course of construction from Prince William Sound.
In 1906 the output of gold was more than nine millions of dollars, and had it not been for the labor troubles in 1907, this output would have been doubled. In the earlier days of the camp the crudest methods of mining were employed; but with the improved transportation facilities, modern machinery was brought in and the difficulties of the development were greatly lessened.
Upon a first trip to Fairbanks, the visitor is amazed at the size and the metropolitan style and tone of this six-year-old camp in the wilderness.
It is situated on the banks of the Chena River, about nine miles from its confluence with the Tanana. It has a level town site, which looks as though it might extend to the Arctic Circle. The main portion of the town is on the right bank of the river, the railway terminal yards, saw-mills, manufacturing plants, and industries of a similar nature being located on the opposite shore, on what is known as Garden Island, the two being connected by substantial bridges. The city is incorporated and, like other incorporated towns of Alaska, is governed by a council of seven members, who elect a presiding officer who is, by courtesy, known as mayor. The executive officers of the municipal government consist of a clerk, treasurer, police magistrate, chief of police, chief of the fire department, street commissioner, and physician.
The municipal finances are derived from a share infederal licenses, from the income derived from the local court, from poll taxes, and from local taxation of real and personal property. From all these sources the municipal treasury was enriched during the year of 1906 by about ninety-five thousand dollars.
Each of the three banks operates an assay office under the supervision of an expert. The population of the district is from fifteen to twenty thousand, of which five thousand belong permanently to the town. The climate is dry and sparkling; the summers are delightful, the winters still and not colder than those of Minnesota, Montana, and the Dakotas, but without the blizzards of those states. In 1906 the coldest month was January, the daily mean temperature being thirty-six degrees below zero, but dry and still. Travel over the trail by dog team is continued throughout the winter, skating and other outdoor sports being as common as in Canada.
Five saw-mills are in operation, with an aggregate daily capacity of a hundred and ten thousand feet, the entire product being used locally. There is an abundance of poplar, spruce, hemlock, and birch; an unlimited water supply; a municipal steam-heating plant; two good hospitals; two daily newspapers; graded schools,—the four-year course of the high school admitting the student to the Washington State University and to high educational institutions of other states; a Chamber of Commerce and a Business Men's Association; twelve hotels, five of which are first class; while every industry is represented several times over.
This is Fairbanks, the six-year-old mining-camp of the Tanana Valley.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Sunrise on Behring SeaCopyright by E. A. Hegg, JuneauSunrise on Behring Sea
At Tanana our party was enlarged by a party of four gentlemen, headed by Governor Wilford B. Hoggatt, of Juneau, who was on a tour of inspection of the country he serves.
Our steamer, too, underwent a change while we were ashore. We now learned why its bow was square and wide. It was that it might push barges up and down the Yukon; and it now proceeded, under our astonished eyes, to push four, each of which was nearly as large as itself. All the days of my life, as Mr. Pepys would say, I have never beheld such an object floating upon the water. The barges were fastened in front of us and on both sides of us; two were flat and uncovered, one was covered, but open on the sides, while the fourth was a kind of boat and was crowned with a real pilot-house, in which was a real wheel.
We viewed them in open and hostile dismay, not yet recognizing them as blessings in disguise; we then laughed till we wept, over our amazing appearance as we went sweeping, bebarged, down to the sea. Four barges to one steamboat! One barge would have seemed like an insult, but four were perfectly ridiculous. The governor was told that they constituted his escort of honor, but he would not smile. He was in haste to get to Nome; and barges meant delay.
We swept down the Yukon like a huge bird with wide wings outspread; and those of us who did not carewhether we went upon a sand-bar or not soon became infatuated with barges. Straight in front of our steamer we had, on one barge, a low, clean promenade a hundred feet long by fifty wide; on the others were shady, secluded nooks, where one might lie on rugs and cushions, reading or dreaming, ever and anon catching glimpses of native settlements—tents and cabins; thousands of coral-red salmon drying on frames; groups of howling dogs; dozens of silent dark people sitting or standing motionless, staring at their whiter and more fortunate brothers sweeping past them on the rushing river.
Poor, lonely, dark people! As lonely and as mysterious, as little known and as little understood, as the mighty river on whose shores their few and hard days are spent. Little we know of them, and less we care for them. The hopeless tragedy of their race is in their long, yearning gaze; but we read it not. We look at them in idle curiosity as we flash past them; and each year, as we return, we find them fewer, lonelier,—more like dark sphinxes on the river's banks. As the years pass and their numbers diminish, the mournfulness deepens in their gaze; it becomes more questioning, more haunting. The day will come when they will all be gone, when no longer dark figures will people those lonely shores; and then we will look at one another in useless remorse and cry:—
"Why did they not complain? Why did they not ask us to help them? Why did they sit and starve for everything, staring at us and making no sign?"
Alas! when that day comes, we will learn—too late!—that there is no appeal so poignant and so haunting as that which lies in the silence and in the asking eyes of these dark and vanishing people.
Below Rampart the hills withdraw gradually until they become but blue blurs on the horizon line during the last miles of the river's course. It is now the lower riverand becomes beautifully channelled and islanded. Across these low, wooded, and watered plains the sunset burns like a maze of thistle-down touched with ruby fire—burns down, at last, into the rose of dawn; and the rose into emerald, beryl, and pearl.
Not far above Nulato the Koyukuk pours its tawny flood into the Yukon. For many years the Koyukuk has given evidences of great richness in gold, but high prices of freight and labor have retarded its progress. During the past winter, however, discoveries have been made which promise one of the greatest stampedes ever known. Louis Olson, after several seasons in the district, experienced a gambler's "hunch" that there "was pay on Nolan Creek." He and his associates started to sink, and the first bucket they got off bedrock netted seven dollars; the bedrock, a slate, pitched to one side of the hole, and when they had followed it down and struck a level bedrock, they got two hundred and sixty dollars.
"Our biggest pan," said Mr. Olson, telling the story when he came out, one of the richest men in Alaska, "was eighteen hundred dollars. You can see the gold lying in sight."
Captain E. W. Johnson, of Nome, who had grub-staked two men in the Koyukuk, "fell into it," as miners say. They struck great richness on bedrock, and Captain Johnson promptly celebrated the strike by opening fifteen hundred dollars' worth of champagne to the camp.
Within ten days three pans of a thousand dollars each were washed out. Coldfoot, Bettles, Bergman, and Koyukuk are the leading settlements of this region, the first two lying within the Arctic Circle. Interest has revived in the Chandelar country which adjoins on the east.
Really, Seward's "land of icebergs, polar bears, and walrus," his "worthless, God-forsaken region," is doing fairly well, as countries go.
Nulato, nearly three hundred miles below Tanana, is one of the most historic places on the Yukon, and has the most sanguinary history. It was founded in 1838 by a Russian half-breed named Malakoff, who built a trading post. During the following winter, owing to scarcity of provisions, he was compelled to return to St. Michael, and the buildings were burned by natives who were jealous of the advance of white people up the river. The following year the post was reëstablished and was again destroyed. In 1841 Derabin erected a fort at this point, and for ten years the settlement flourished. In 1851, however, Lieutenant Bernard, of the British shipEnterprise, arrived in search of information as to the fate of Sir John Franklin. Unfortunately, he remarked that he intended to "send for" the principal chief of the Koyukuks. This was considered an insult by the haughty chief, and it led to an assault upon the fort, which was destroyed. Derabin, Bernard and his companions, and all other white people at the fort were brutally murdered, as well as many resident Indians. The atrocity was never avenged.
Nulato is now one of the largest and most prosperous Indian settlements on the river. A large herd of reindeer is quartered there. There was, as every one interested in Alaska knows, a grave scandal connected with the reindeer industry a few years ago. Many of the animals imported by the government from Siberia at great expense, for the benefit of needy natives and miners, were appropriated by missionaries without authority; but after an investigation by a special agent of the government there was an entire reorganization of the system. In all, Congress appropriated more than two hundred and twenty thousand dollars, with which twelve hundred reindeer have, at various times, been imported. There are now about twelve thousand head in Alaska, of which the government owns not more than twenty-five hundred. There are also stations at Bethel, Beetles, Iliamna, Kotzebue, St. Lawrence Island, Golovnin, Teller, Cape Prince of Wales, Point Barrow, and at several other points. They are used for sledding purposes and for their meat and hides, really beautiful parkas and mukluks—the latter a kind of skin boot—being made of the hides.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Surf at Nome Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, SeattleCopyright by E. A. Hegg, JuneauSurf at NomeCourtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
A native woman named Mary Andrewuk has a large herd, is quite wealthy, and is known as the "Reindeer Queen."
We reached Anvik at seven in the evening. Anvik is like Uyak on Kadiak Island, and I longed for the frank Swedish sailor who had so luminously described Uyak. If there be anything worth seeing at Anvik—and they say there is a graveyard!—they must first kill the mosquitoes; else, so far as I am concerned, it will forever remain unseen. Under a rocky bluff two dozen Eskimo, men and women, sat fighting mosquitoes and trying to sell wares so poorly made that no one desired them. Eskimo dolls and toy parkas were the only things that tempted us; and hastily paying for them, we fled on board to our big, comfortable stateroom, whose window was securely netted from the pests which made the very air black.
We left Anvik at midnight. We were to arrive at Holy Cross Mission at four o'clock the same morning. Expecting theCampbellto arrive later in the day, the priest and sisters had arranged a reception for the governor, in which the children of the mission were to take part. Thinking of the disappointment of the children, the governor decided to go ashore, even at that unearthly hour, and we were invited to accompany him. We were awakened at three o'clock.
The dawn was bleak and cheerless; it was raining slightly, and the mosquitoes were as thick and as hungry as they had been at the Grand Canyon. Of allthe passengers that had planned to go ashore, there appeared upon the sloppy deck only four—the governor, a gentleman who was travelling with him, my friend, and myself. We looked at one another silently through rain and mosquitoes, and before we could muster up smiles and exchange greetings, an officer of the boat called out:—
"Governor, if it wasn't for those damn disappointed children, I'd advise you not to go ashore."
We all smiled then, for the man had put the thought of each of us into most forcible English.
We were landed upon the wet sand and we waded through the tall wet grasses of the beach to the mission. At every step fresh swarms of mosquitoes rose from the grass and assailed us. A gentleman had sent us his mosquito hats. These were simply broad-brimmed felt hats, with the netting gathered about the crowns and a kind of harness fastening around the waist.
The governor had no protection; and never, I am sure, did any governor go forth to a reception and a "programme" in his honor in such a frame of mind and with such an expression of torture as went that morning the governor of "the great country." It was a silent and dismal procession that moved up the flower-bordered walk to the mission—a procession of waving arms and flapping handkerchiefs. At a distance it must have resembled a procession of windmills in operation, rather than of human beings on their way to a reception in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle.
So ceaseless and so ferocious were the attacks of the mosquitoes that before the sleeping children were aroused and ready for their programme, my friend and I, notwithstanding the protection of the hats, yielded in sheer exhaustion, and, without apology or farewell, left the unfortunate governor to pay the penalty of greatness; left him to his reception and his programme; to the earnest priests,the smiling, sweet-faced sisters, and the little solemn-eyed Eskimo children.
This mission is cared for by the order of Jesuits. Two priests and several brothers and sisters reside there. Fifty or more children are cared for yearly,—educated and guided in ways of thrift, cleanliness, industry, and morality. They are instructed in all kinds of useful work. About forty acres of land are in cultivation; the flowers and vegetables which we saw would attract admiration and wonder in any climate. The buildings were of logs, but were substantially built and attractive, each in its setting of brilliant bloom. How these sisters, these gentle and refined women, whose faces and manner unconsciously reveal superior breeding and position, can endure the daily and nightly tortures of the mosquitoes is inconceivable.
"They are not worth notice now," one said, with her sweet and patient smile. "Oh, no! You should come earlier if you would see mosquitoes."
"Our religion, you know," another said gently, "helps us to bear all things that are not pleasant. In time one does not mind."
In time one does not mind! It is another of the lessons of the Yukon; and reading, one stands ashamed. There those saintly beings spend their lives in God's service. Nothing save a divine faith could sustain a delicate woman to endure such ceaseless torment for three months in every year; and yet, like the lone woman at Nation, their faces tell us that we, rather than they, are for pity. The stars upon their brows are the white and blessed stars of peace.
The steamer lands at neither Russian Mission nor Andreaofsky; but at both may be seen, on grassy slopes, beautiful Greek churches, with green, pale blue, and yellow roofs, domes and bell-towers, chimes and glittering crosses.
Down where the mouth of the Yukon attains a width of sixty miles we ran upon a sand-bar early in the afternoon, and there we remained until nearly midnight. It was a weird experience. Dozens of natives in bidarkas surrounded our steamer, boarded our barges, and offered their inferior work for sale. The brown lads in reindeer parkas were bright-eyed and amiable. Cookies and gum sweetened the way to their little wild hearts, and they would hold our hands, cling to our skirts, and beg for "more."
A splendid, stormy sunset burned over those miles of water-threaded lowlands at evening. Rose and lavender mists rolled in from the sea, parted, and drifted away into the distances stretching on all sides; they huddled upon islands, covering them for a few moments, and then, withdrawing, leaving them drenched in sparkling emerald beauty in the vivid light; they coiled along the horizon, like peaks of rosy pearl; and they went sailing, like elfin shallops, down poppy-tinted water-ways. Everywhere overhead geese drew dark lines through the brilliant atmosphere, their mournful cries filling the upper air with the weird and lonely music of the great spaces. Up and down the water-ways slid the bidarkas noiselessly; and along the shores the brown women moved among the willows and sedges, or stood motionless, staring out at their white sisters on the stranded boat. There were times when every one of the millions of sedges on island and shore seemed to flash out alone and apart, like a dazzling emerald lance quivering to strike.
They are dull of soul and dull of imagination who complain of monotony on the Yukon Flats. There is beauty for all that have eyes wherewith to see. It is the beauty of the desert; the beauty and the lure of wonderful distances, of marvellous lights and low skies, of dawns that are like blown roses, and as perfumed, and sunsetswhose mists are as burning dust. When there is no color anywhere, there is still the haunting, compelling beauty that lies in distance alone. Vast spaces are majestic and awesome; the eye goes into them as the thought goes into the realm of eternity—only to return, wearied out with the beauty and the immensity that forever end in the fathomless mist that lies on the far horizon's rim. It is a mist that nothing can pierce; vision and thought return from it upon themselves, only to go out again upon that mute and trembling quest which ceases not until life itself ceases.
The northernmost mouth of the Yukon has been called the Aphoon or Uphoon, ever since the advent of the Russians, and is the channel usually selected by steamers, the Kwikhpak lying next to it on the south. By sea-coast measurement the most northerly mouth is nearly a hundred miles from the most southerly, and five others between them assist in carrying the Yukon's gray, dull yellow, or rose-colored floods out into Behring Sea, whose shallow waters they make fresh for a long distance. It is not without hazard that the flat-bottomed river boats make the run to St. Michael; and the pilots of steamers crossing out anxiously scan the sea and relax not in vigilance until the port is entered.
We were released from the sand-bar near midnight, and at eight o'clock on the following morning we steamed around a green and lovely point and entered Norton Sound, in whose curving blue arm lies storied St. Michael.
St. Michael is situated on the island of the same name, about sixty miles north of the mouth of the Yukon. It was founded in 1833 by Michael Tebenkoff, and was originally named Michaelovski Redoubt. The Russian buildings were of spruce logs brought by sea from the Yukon and Kuskoquim rivers, as no timber grows in the vicinity of St. Michael or Nome. Some of the original Russian buildings yet remain,—notably, the storehouse and the redoubt. The latter is an hexagonal building of heavy hewn logs, with sloping roof, flagstaff, door, and port-holes. It stands upon the shore, within a dozen steps of the famous "Cottage,"—the residence of the managers of the Northern Commercial Company, under whose hospitable roof every traveller of note has been entertained for many years,—and in front of it the shore slopes green to the water. Inside lie half a dozen rusty Russian cannons, mutely testifying to the sanguinary past of the North.
The redoubt was attacked in 1836 by the hostile Unaligmuts of the vicinity, but it was successfully defended by Kurupanoff. The Russians had a temporary landing-place built out to deep water to accommodate boats drawing five feet; this was removed when ice formed in thebay. The tundra is rolling, with numerous pools that flame like brass at sunset; only low willows and alders grow on the island and adjacent shores. The island is seven miles wide and twenty-five long, and is separated from the mainland by a tortuous channel, as narrow as fifty feet in places. The land gradually rises to low hills of volcanic origin near the centre of the island. These hills are called the Shaman Mountains. The meadow upon which the main part of the town and the buildings of the post are situated is as level as a vast parade-ground; but the land rises gently to a slender point that plunges out into Behring Sea, whose blue waves beat themselves to foam and music upon its tundra-covered cliffs.
On the day that I stood upon this headland the sunlight lay like gold upon the island; the winds were low, murmurous, and soothing; flowers spent their color riotously about me; the tundra was as soft as deep-napped velvet; and the blue waves, set with flashes of gold, went pushing languorously away to the shores of another continent. Scarcely a stone's throw from me was a small mountain-island, only large enough for a few graves, but with no graves upon it. In all the world there cannot be another spot so noble in which to lie down and rest when "life's fevers and life's passions—all are past." There, alone,—but never again to be lonely!—facing that sublime sweep of sapphire summer sea, set here and there with islands, and those miles upon miles of glittering winter ice; with white sails drifting by in summer, and in winter the wild and roaring march of icebergs; with summer nights of lavender dusk, and winter nights set with the great stars and the magnificent brilliance of Northern Lights; with the perfume of flowers, the songs of birds, the music of lone winds and waves, out on the edge of the world—could any clipped and cared-for plot be so noble a place in which to lie down for the last time? Could any be so close to God?
The entire island is a military reservation, and it is only by concessions from the government that commercial and transportation companies may establish themselves there. Fort St. Michael is a two-company post, under the command of Captain Stokes, at whose residence a reception was tendered to Governor Hoggatt. The filmy white gowns of beautiful women, the uniforms of the officers, the music, flowers, and delicate ices in a handsomely furnished home made it difficult for one to realize that the function was on the shores of Behring Sea instead of in the capital of our country.
There is an excellent hotel at St. Michael, and the large stores of the companies are well supplied with furs and Indian and Eskimo wares. Beautiful ivory carvings, bidarkas, parkas, kamelinkas, baskets, and many other curios may be obtained here at more reasonable prices than at Nome. There are public bath-houses where one may float and splash in red-brown water that is never any other color, no matter how long it may run, but which is always pure and clean.
No description of St. Michael is complete that does not include "Lottie." No liquors are sold upon the military reservation, and Lottie conducts a floating groggery upon a scow. It has been her custom each fall to have her barge towed up the canal just beyond the line of the military reservation, ten miles from the flagstaff at the barracks, thus placing herself beyond the control of the authorities, greatly to their chagrin. In summer she anchors her barge in one of the numerous bights along the shore, and they are again powerless to interfere with her brilliantly managed traffic, since it has been decided that their sway extends over the land only.