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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43284 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+ file which includes the original illustrations.
+ See 43284-h.htm or 43284-h.zip:
+ (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43284/43284-h/43284-h.htm)
+ or
+ (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43284/43284-h.zip)
+
+
+ Images of the original pages are available through
+ Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+ http://archive.org/details/wildernessjourna00kent
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ROCKWELL
+ ALASKA MCMXVIII]
+
+
+WILDERNESS
+
+A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska
+
+by
+
+ROCKWELL KENT
+
+With Drawings by the author and an Introduction by Dorothy Canfield
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+New York and London
+The Knickerbocker Press
+1920
+
+Copyright, 1920, by Rockwell Kent
+
+Plates Engraved under the Supervision of William G. Watt
+
+The Knickerbocker Press, New York
+
+
+
+
+ _To
+ old L. M. Olson and
+ young Rockwell Kent
+ of Fox Island
+ this journal is
+ respectfully dedicated_
+
+
+ The author acknowledges the courtesy of the owners of his
+ drawings in permitting their reproduction in this book:
+
+
+ MRS. ERNEST I. WHITE
+ ROBERT NICHOLS
+ STEPHEN C. CLARK
+ MRS. PAYNE THOMPSON
+ MRS. JOSEPH FLANNERY
+ MRS. J. S. MORGAN, JR.
+ DR. ARNOLD KLEBS
+ HENRY S. CHURCHILL
+ MRS. PERCY W. DARBYSHIRE
+ MRS. MEREDITH HARE
+ PAUL MANSHIP
+ MRS. VALENTINE WINTERS
+ HENRY NEWMAN
+ HUNT DIEDERICH
+ PURCELL JONES
+ M. KNOEDLER AND COMPANY
+ ALBERT STERNER
+ MARIE STERNER
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Had jesting Pilate asked "What is Art?" he would have waited quite as
+many centuries for an answer as he has for the answer to his question
+about Truth. For art to the artist, and art to the rest of us, are two
+very different things. Art to the artist is quite simply Life, his
+life, of which he has an amplitude and intensity unknown to us. What
+he does for us is to thrill us awake to the amplitude and intensity of
+all life, our own included. And this is a miracle for which we can
+never be thankful enough.
+
+This, at least, is what Rockwell Kent's Alaska drawings and Alaska
+journal do for me; they take me away from that tired absorption in
+things of little import which makes up most of our human life and make
+me see, not an unreal world of romantic illusion, that fool's pleasure
+given by the second-rate artist, but the real wonder-world in which I
+live and have always lived. They make me see suddenly that there is a
+vast deal more in the world than embittering and anxious
+preoccupations, that much of it is fine, much is comforting, much
+awe-inspiring, much profoundly tragic, and all of it makes up a whole
+so vast that no living organism need feel cramped.
+
+No other of the qualities of the journal and drawings goes home to me
+more than the unforced authenticity of the impression set down by this
+strong and ardent artist. Emerson's grandeur is infinitely more
+convincing to me because of his homeliness, and I feel a perverse
+Yankee suspicion of those who deal in sublimities only. The man who
+can extract the whole quaint savor out of that magical, prosaic,
+humorous moment of human life, the first stretching yawn of the early
+morning, that man can make me believe that I too see the north wind
+running mightily athwart the sky. And the artist who can put into the
+simplest drawing of a man and a little boy eating together at a rough
+table in a rough cabin, all the dear solidity of family and home life,
+with its quiet triumph against overpowering Nature, that artist can
+make me bow my head before the sincerity of his impressive "Night."
+
+The homeliness of the diary, its courageously unaffected naturalness,
+how it carries one out of fussy complications to a long breath of
+relief in the fewness and permanence of things that count! And the
+humor of it ... sometimes deliciously unintentional like the picture
+of the artist finishing a fine drawing, setting the beans to soak,
+bathing in the bread pan, and going to bed to read a chapter of Blake,
+sometimes intentional and shrewd like "a banana-peel on a mountain-top
+tames that wilderness," or "colds, like bad temper and loss of faith,
+are a malady of the city crowd"; sometimes outright and hearty like a
+child's joke, as in the amusingly faithful portrait of the
+pot-bellied, self-important personality of the air-tight stove!
+
+There are only three human characters in this quiet, intense record,
+all of them significant and vital. First of them is the artist
+himself, who in these notes, written originally for the eyes of his
+intimates only, speaks out with a free unselfconsciousness as rare in
+our modern world as the virgin solitude of the island where he lived.
+Here is the artist at work, creating, as Henry James said he could not
+be shown; the artist, that is, a man violently alive, full-blooded and
+fine, fierce and pure, arrogant and tender, with an elate, boastful,
+well-founded certainty of his strength, rejoicing in his work, in his
+son, in his friend, in the whole visible world, and most of all in
+himself and his own vigorous possibilities for good, evil, and
+creative work.
+
+The other two human characters in this adventuring quest after great
+and simple things are acquisitions to be thankful for, also; the
+touchingly tender-hearted, knight-like, beautiful, funny little boy;
+and lovable, dignified old Olson ... a fiction writer wonders in
+despair why old Olson so vividly, brilliantly lives in these unstudied
+pages, solid, breathing, warm, as miraculously different from all
+other human beings as any creature of flesh and blood who draws the
+mysterious breath of life beside you in the same room.
+
+Fox Island lives too; we walk about it, treading solidly, loving
+"every log and rotten stump, gnarled tree, every mound and path, the
+rocks and brooks, each a being in itself," just as little Rockwell
+does; and we climb with the "two younger ones up the sheer,
+snow-covered ridge till across the great jagged teeth of
+Fenris-the-Wolf, we see the glory of the open sea." We "look up at
+Olson, swaying gigantic on the deck above us, as we bump the side in
+our little boat" and we go down into the warm cabin full of the fumes
+of cooking and good-fellowship, and drink with the old skipper and the
+old Swede till we too see deep "under the white hard surface of where
+life is hidden."
+
+All this firm earth gives authority and penetration to the shining
+beauty which pervades the book and the drawings, carries us along to
+share it, not merely to look at it; to feel it, not merely to admire
+it.
+
+The notes here published were written, I believe, day by day for the
+author's wife and children, and are here published almost as they were
+set down, as commentary to the drawings. Well, let us be thankful that
+we were let into the family circle and along with them can spend six
+months in the midst of strength and beauty and tenderness and fun and
+majesty, close to simple things, great because they are real. The
+author may be sure that we leave them with the same backward-looking
+wistfulness he feels, and with the same gratitude for having known
+them.
+
+ Dorothy Canfield.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Most of this book was written on Fox Island in Alaska, a journal added
+to from day to day. It was not meant for publication but merely that
+we who were living there that year might have always an unfailing
+memory of a wonderfully happy time. There's a ring of truth to all
+freshly written records of experience that, whatever their
+shortcomings, makes them at least inviolable. Besides the journal, a
+few letters to friends have been drawn upon. All are given unchanged
+but for the flux of a new paragraph or chapter here and there to form
+a kind of narrative, the only possible literary accompaniment to the
+drawings of that period herein published. The whole is a picture of
+quiet adventure in the wilderness, above all an adventure of the
+spirit.
+
+What one would look for in a story of the wild Northwest is lacking in
+these pages. To have been further from a settled town might have
+brought not more but less excitement. The wonder of the wilderness was
+its tranquillity. It seemed that there both men and the wild beasts
+pursued their own paths freely and, as if conscious of the wide
+freedom of their world, molested one another not at all. It was the
+bitter philosophy of the old trapper who was our companion that of all
+animals Man was the most terrible; for if the beasts fought and
+killed for some good cause Man slew for none.
+
+Deliberately I have begun this happy story far out in Resurrection
+Bay;--and again dropped its peaceful thread on the forlorn threshold
+of the town. We found Fox Island on Sunday, August twenty-fifth, 1918,
+and left there finally on the seventeenth of the following March.
+
+ R. K.
+
+ Arlington, Vermont,
+ December, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ Page
+ Introduction vii
+ Preface xi
+ Chapter
+ I.--Discovery 1
+ II.--Arrival 10
+ III.--Chores 41
+ IV.--Winter 67
+ V.--Waiting 84
+ VI.--Excursion 102
+ VII.--Home 109
+ VIII.--Christmas 134
+ IX.--New Year 150
+ X.--Olson 182
+ XI.--Twilight 200
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ Facing Page
+
+ "Zarathustra Himself Led the Ugliest Man by the Hand, in Order
+ to Show Him His Night-World and the Great Round Moon and the
+ Silvery Waterfalls Nigh Unto His Cave" 2
+
+ Unknown Waters 6
+
+ Home Building 12
+
+ Fire Wood 16
+
+ The Sleeper 20
+
+ The Windlass 24
+
+ The Snow Queen 28
+
+ Fox Island, Resurrection Bay, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska 32
+
+ Rain Torrents 36
+
+ Day 42
+
+ Night 46
+
+ Wilderness 50
+
+ One of Rockwell's Drawings 54
+
+ Sunrise 56
+
+ Adventure 60
+
+ On the Height 68
+
+ The Day's Work 72
+
+ Meal Time 76
+
+ Day's End 80
+
+ The Cabin Window 90
+
+ "Go to Bed" 94
+
+ Driftwood 98
+
+ The Whittler 104
+
+ "Get Up!" 110
+
+ Man 114
+
+ Woman 118
+
+ Foreboding 124
+
+ Lone Man 128
+
+ Cain 136
+
+ Superman 140
+
+ The North Wind 146
+
+ Another of Rockwell's Drawings 152
+
+ Weltschmerz 154
+
+ Victory 158
+
+ Zarathustra and His Playmates 164
+
+ Frozen Fall 168
+
+ The Hermit 172
+
+ Ecstasy 176
+
+ Pelagic Reverie 184
+
+ Prison Bars 188
+
+ Running Water 192
+
+ Immanence 196
+
+ The Vision 202
+
+ The Imperishable 206
+
+ The Star-Lighter 210
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+
+We must have been rowing for an hour across that seeming mile-wide
+stretch of water.
+
+The air is so clear in the North that one new to it is lost in the
+crowding of great heights and spaces. Distant peaks had risen over the
+lower mountains of the shore astern. Steep spruce-clad slopes
+confronted us. All around was the wilderness, a no-man's-land of
+mountains or of cragged islands, and southward the wide, the
+limitless, Pacific Ocean.
+
+A calm, blue summer's day,--and on we rowed upon our search. Somewhere
+there must stand awaiting us, as we had pictured it, a little
+forgotten cabin, one that some prospector or fisherman had built; the
+cabin, the grove, the sheltered beach, the spring or stream of fresh,
+cold water,--we could have drawn it even to the view that it must
+overlook, the sea, and mountains, and the glorious West. We came to
+this new land, a boy and a man, entirely on a dreamer's search; having
+had vision of a Northern Paradise, we came to find it.
+
+With less faith it might have seemed to us a hopeless thing exploring
+the unknown for what you've only dreamed was there. Doubt never
+crossed our minds. To sail uncharted waters and follow virgin
+shores--what a life for men! As the new coast unfolds itself the
+imagination leaps into full vision of the human drama that there is
+immanent. The grandeur of the ocean cliff is terrible with threat of
+shipwreck. To that high ledge the wave may lift you; there, where that
+storm-dwarfed spruce has found a hold for half a century, you perhaps
+could cling. A hundred times a day you think of death or of escaping
+it by might and courage. Then at the first softening of the coast
+toward a cove or inlet you imagine all the mild beauties of a safe
+harbor, the quiet water and the beach to land upon, the house-site, a
+homestead of your own, cleared land, and pastures that look seaward.
+
+Now having crossed the bay thick wooded coast confronted us, and we
+worked eastward toward a wide-mouthed inlet of that shore. But all at
+once there appeared as if from nowhere a little, motor-driven dory
+coming toward us. We hailed and drew together to converse. It was an
+old man alone. We told him frankly what we were and what we sought.
+
+"Come with me," he cried heartily, "come and I show you the place to
+live." And he pointed oceanward where, straight in the path of the sun
+stood the huge, dark, mountain mass of an island. Then, seizing upon
+our line, he towed us with him to the south.
+
+The gentle breeze came up. With prow high in the air we spanked the
+wavelets, and the glistening spray flew over us. On we went straight
+at the dazzling sun and we laughed to think that we were being carried
+we knew not where. And all the while the strange old man spoke never a
+word nor turned his head, driving us on as if he feared we might
+demand to be unloosed. At last his island towered above us. It was
+truly sheer-sided and immense, and for all we could discover
+harborless; till in a moment rounding the great headland of its
+northern end the crescent arms of the harbor were about us,--and we
+were there!
+
+[Illustration: "ZARATHUSTRA HIMSELF LED THE UGLIEST MAN BY THE HAND,
+IN ORDER TO SHOW HIM HIS NIGHT-WORLD AND THE GREAT ROUND MOON AND THE
+SILVERY WATERFALLS NIGH UNTO HIS CAVE"]
+
+What a scene! Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance and from
+the back of these the land dipped downwards like a hammock swung
+between them, its lowest point behind the center of the crescent. A
+clean and smooth, dark-pebbled beach went all around the bay, the tide
+line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached bones of trees,
+fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above the beach a band
+of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of the forest. So
+huge was the scale of all of this that for some time we looked in vain
+for any habitation, at last incredulously seeing what we had taken to
+be bowlders assume the form of cabins.
+
+The dories grounded and we leapt ashore, and followed up the beach
+onto the level ground seeing and wondering, with beating hearts, and
+crying all the time to ourselves: "It isn't possible, it isn't real!"
+
+There was a green grass lawn beneath our feet extending on one side
+under an orchard of neatly pruned alders to the mountain's base, and
+on the other into the forest or along the shore. In the midst of the
+clearing stood the old man's cabin. He led us into it. One little
+room, neat and comfortable; two windows south and west with the warm
+sun streaming through them; a stove, a table by the window with dishes
+piled neatly on it; some shelves of food and one of books and papers;
+a bunk with gaily striped blankets; boots, guns, tools, tobacco-boxes;
+a ladder to the store-room in the loft. And the old man himself: a
+Swede, short, round and sturdy, head bald as though with a priestly
+tonsure, high cheek bones and broad face, full lips, a sensitive small
+chin,--and his little eyes sparkled with good humor.
+
+"Look, this is all mine," he was saying; "you can live here with
+me--with me and Nanny,"--for by this time not only had the milk goat
+Nanny entered but a whole family of foolish-faced Angoras, father,
+mother, and child, nosing among us or overturning what they could in
+search of food. He took us to the fox corral a few yards from the
+house. There were the blues in its far corner eying us askance. We saw
+the old goat cabin built of logs and were told of a newer one, an
+unused one down the shore and deeper in the woods.
+
+"But come," he said with pride, "I show you my location notice. I have
+done it all in the proper way and I will get my title from Washington
+soon. I have staked fifty acres. It is all described in the notice I
+have posted; and I would like to see anybody get that away from me."
+
+By now we had reached the great spruce tree to whose trunk he had
+affixed a sort of roofed tablet or shrine to house the precious
+document. But, ah look! the tablet was bare! only that from a small
+nail in it hung a torn shred of paper.
+
+"Billy, Nanny!" roared the old man in irritation and mock rage; and he
+shook his fist at the foolish looking culprits who regarded us this
+time, wisely, from a distance. "And now come to the lake!"
+
+We went down an avenue through the tall spruce trees. The sun flecked
+our path and fired here and there a flame-colored mushroom that blazed
+in the forest gloom. Right and left we saw deep vistas, and straight
+ahead a broad and sunlit space, a valley between hills; there lay the
+lake. It was a real lake, broad and clean, of many acres in extent,
+and the whole mountain side lay mirrored in it with the purple zenith
+sky at our feet. Not a breath disturbed the surface, not a ripple
+broke along the pebbly beach; it was dead silent here but for maybe
+the far off sound of surf, and without motion but that high aloft two
+eagles soared with steady wing searching the mountain tops. Ah,
+supreme moment! These are the times in life--when nothing happens--but
+in quietness the soul expands.
+
+Time pressed and we turned back. "Show us that other cabin, we must
+go."
+
+The old man took us by a short cut to the cabin he had spoken of. It
+stood in a darkly shadowed clearing, a log cabin of ample size with
+a small doorway that you stooped to enter. Inside was dark but for a
+little opening to the west. There were the stalls for goats, coops for
+some Belgian hares he had once kept, a tin whirligig for squirrels
+hanging in the gable peak, and under foot a shaky floor covered with
+filth.
+
+[Illustration: UNKNOWN WATERS]
+
+But I knew what that cabin might become. I saw it once and said, "This
+is the place we'll live." And then returning to our boat we shook
+hands on this great, quick finding of the thing we'd sought and, since
+we could not stay then as he begged us to, promised a speedy return
+with all our household goods. "Olson's my name," he said, "I need you
+here. We'll make a go of it."
+
+The south wind had risen and the white caps flew. We crossed the bay
+pulling lustily for very joy. Reaching the other shore we saw, too
+late, crossing the bay in search of us the small white sail of the
+party that had brought us part way from the town. So we turned and
+followed them until at last we met to their relief and the great
+satisfaction of our tired arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ARRIVAL
+
+
+Our journal of Fox Island begins properly with the day of our final
+coming there, Wednesday, September the twenty-eighth, 1918.
+
+At nine o'clock in the morning of that day we slid our dory into the
+water from the beach at Seward, clamped our little patched-up three
+and one half horse-power Evinrude motor in the stern, and commenced
+our loading.
+
+Since the main part of such a story, as in all these following pages
+we shall have to tell, must consist in the detailing of the
+innumerable little commonplaces of our daily lives, we shall begin at
+once with a list, as far as we have record of it, of all we carried
+with us. It follows:
+
+ 1 Yukon stove
+ 4 lengths stovepipe
+ 1 broom
+ 1 bread pan
+ 1 wash basin
+ 1 bean pot
+ 1 mixing bowl
+ Turpentine
+ Linseed oil
+ Nails, etc.
+ 10 gals. gasoline
+ 10 lbs. rice
+ 5 lbs. barley
+ 10 lbs. cornmeal
+ 10 lbs. rolled oats
+ 10 lbs. hominy
+ 10 lbs. farina
+ 10 lbs. sugar
+ 50 lbs. flour
+ 2 packages bran
+ 6 cans cocoa
+ 1 lb. tea
+ 1 case milk
+ 8 lbs. chocolate
+ 1 gal. sirup
+ 1 gal. cooking oil
+ 1 piece bacon
+ 2 cans dried eggs
+ 2 cans baked beans
+ 6 lemons
+ 2 packages pancake flour
+ 10 lbs. whole wheat flour
+ 6 ivory soap
+ 3 laundry soap
+ 6 agate cups
+ 4 agate plates
+ 4 agate bowls
+ 2 agate dishes
+ 4 pots
+ 2 pillows
+ 2 comforters
+ 1 roll building paper
+ 1 frying pan
+ 3 bread tins
+ 10 lbs. lima beans
+ 10 lbs. white beans
+ 5 lbs. Mexican beans
+ 10 lbs. spaghetti
+ 12 cans tomatoes
+ 100 lbs. potatoes
+ 10 lbs. dried peas
+ 5 lbs. salt
+ 1 gal. peanut butter
+ 1 gal. marmalade
+ Pepper
+ Yeast
+ 5 lbs. prunes
+ 5 lbs. apricots
+ 5 lbs. carrots
+ 10 lbs. onions
+ 4 cans soup
+ 12 candles
+ 2 Dutch Cleanser
+ Matches
+ 1 tea kettle
+ Pails, etc.
+
+Also there were a heavy trunk containing books, paints, etc., one
+duffel bag, one suit case, and a few other things. And when these were
+stowed away in the dory there was little room for ourselves. However,
+at ten o'clock we cast off and started for Fox Island with the little
+motor running beautifully.
+
+It lasted for three miles when at once, with a bang and a whir, the
+motor raced, and the boat stood motionless on the calm gray water.
+Through the fog we could just discern the cabin of a fisherman on the
+nearest point of shore--perhaps a mile distant. We rowed there as
+best we could, seated somehow atop our household goods; we unloaded
+our useless motor, our gasoline, and our batteries, cleared a little
+space in the boat for ourselves to man the oars, and in a miserable
+drizzling rain, pushed off for a long, long pull to the island. By too
+literal a following of directions I lengthened the remainder of the
+course to twelve miles, and that we rowed, I don't know how, in four
+hours and a half. Fortunately the water was as calm as could be.
+Rockwell was a revelation to me. With scarcely a rest he pulled at the
+heavy oars that at first he had hardly understood to manage; and when
+we reached the island he was hilarious with good spirits.
+
+We unloaded with the help of Olson--whom by the way we must introduce
+at some length--and stowed our goods in his house and shed. We cooked
+our supper on his stove and slept that night and the next on his
+floor; and then, having our own quarters by that time in passable
+shape, quit his friendly roof for the most hospitable, kindly, and
+altogether comfortable roof in the world--our own.
+
+Olson is about sixty-five years of age. He's a pioneer of Alaska and
+knows the country from one end to the other. He has prospected for
+gold on the Yukon, he was at Nome with the first rush there, he has
+trapped along a thousand miles of coast; and now, ever unsuccessful
+and still enterprising, he is the proprietor of two pairs of blue
+foxes--in corrals--and four goats. He's a kind-hearted, genial old man
+with a vast store of knowledge and true wisdom.
+
+The map shows our Fox Island estate. Our cabin was built as a shelter
+for Angora goats somewhat over a year ago. It is a roughly built log
+structure of about fourteen by seventeen feet, inside dimensions, and
+was quite dark but for the small door and a two by two feet opening on
+the western side. We went to work upon it the morning following our
+arrival and in two days, as has been told, made it a fit place to live
+in but by no means the luxurious home that it was in our mind to make.
+Our cabin to-day is the product of weeks' more labor. To describe
+it is to account for our time almost to the beginning of the detailed
+days of this diary.
+
+[Illustration: HOME BUILDING]
+
+Tread first upon a broad, plank doorstep the hatch of some ill-fated
+vessel--the sea's gift to us of a front veranda; stoop your head to
+four feet six inches and, drawing the latchstring, enter. Before you
+at the south end of the sombre, log interior is a mullioned window
+willing to admit more light than can penetrate the forest beyond.
+Before it is a fixed work table littered with papers, pencils, paints,
+and brushes. On each long side of the cabin is a shelf the eaves'
+height, five feet from the floor. The right-hand one is packed with
+foods in sacks and tins and boxes, the left-hand shelf holds clothes
+and toys, paints and a flute, and at the far corner built to the floor
+in orthodox bookcase fashion, a library.
+
+We may glance at the books. There are:
+
+ "Indian Essays." Coomaraswamy
+ "Griechische Vasen"
+ "The Water Babies"
+ "Robinson Crusoe"
+ "The Prose Edda"
+ "Anson's Voyages"
+ "A Literary History of Ireland." Douglas Hyde
+ "The Iliad"
+ "The Crock of Gold"
+ "The Odyssey"
+ Andersen's "Fairy Tales"
+ "The Oxford Book of English Verse"
+ "The Home Medical Library"
+ Blake's "Poems"
+ Gilchrist's "Life of Blake"
+ "The Tree Dwellers," "The Cave Dwellers," "The Sea People," etc.
+ "Pacific Coast Tide Table"
+ "Thus Spake Zarathustra"
+ "The Book of the Ocean"
+ "Albrecht Dürer" (A Short Biography)
+ "Wilhelm Meister"
+ Nansen's "In Northern Mists"
+
+In the center of the right-hand wall is a small low window and beneath
+it the dining table. Right at the door where we stand, to our left, is
+the sheet-iron Yukon stove and behind it another food-laden shelf. A
+new floor of broad unplaned boards is under our feet, a wooden
+platform--it is a bed--stands in the left-hand corner by the stove.
+Clothes hang under the shelves; pots and pans upon the wall, snowshoes
+and saws; a rack for plates in one place, a cupboard for potatoes and
+turnips behind the door--the cellar it may be called; the trunk for a
+seat, boxes for chairs, one stool for style; axes here and boots
+innumerable there, and we have, I think, all that the eye can take in
+of this adventurers' home!
+
+Trees stood thick about our cabin when we first came there; and
+between it and the shore a dense and continuous thicket of large
+alders and sapling spruces. Day by day we cleared the ground; cutting
+avenues and vistas; then, though contented at first with these,
+enlarging them until they merged, and the sun began to shine about the
+cabin. It grew brighter then and drier,--nonsense! am I mistaking the
+daylight for the sun? I can remember but one or two fair days in all
+the three weeks of our first stay on the island.
+
+[Illustration: FIRE WOOD]
+
+For a true record of this matter Olson's diary shall be copied into
+these pages. It follows in full with his own phonetic spelling as
+leaven.
+
+ Sunday, Aug. 25th--Wary fin Day. over tu Hump Bay got 2 salmon
+ an artist cam ar to Day and going to seward efter his outfit and
+ ar going to sta Hear this Winter in the new Cabbin.
+
+ Wed. 28th.--Drisly rain and cold. Mr. Kint and is son arivd
+ from seward this afternoon. goats out all night.
+
+ Thurs. 29th.--goats cam ome--12.30 p. m. Mr. Kint Working on
+ the Cabbin fixing at up. Drisly rain all night and all day.
+
+ Fri. 30th.--Wary fin day and the goats vant for the montane
+ igan. Help putting Windoes i to the Cabbin.
+
+ Sat. 31st.--Foggy day. Big steamer going to seward.
+
+ September
+
+ Sun. 1st.--Mead a trip around the island. Cloudy Day.
+
+ M. 2.--Big rainstorm from the S. E. goats all in the stabel.
+
+ T. 3.--Drisly rain all Day.
+
+ W. 4.--going to seward.
+
+ T. 5.--Came Home 1 P.M.
+
+ F. 6.--Drisly rain and Calm Wather.
+
+ S. 7.--S. E. rainstorm.
+
+ Sun. 8.--Big S. E. rainstorm.
+
+ M. 9.-- " " " "
+
+ T. 10.-- " " " "
+
+ W. 11.--first Colld night this fall. Clear Calm Day.
+
+ T. 12.--Clowdy and Calm. Tug and Barg going West.
+
+ F. 13.--Steamer from the Sought 5.30 P.M. Drisly rain and Calm.
+
+ S. 14.--raining Wary Hard. the litly angora queen ar in Hit
+ this morning. Fraet steamer from West going to Seward.
+
+ Sun. 15.--raining Wary Hard all Day. the goats ar in the cabbin
+ all Day sought Est storm.
+
+ M. 16.--S.E. rainstorm.
+
+ T. 17.--raining all Day. North Est storm With Caps and Wullys
+ all over.
+
+ W. 18.--Wary fear day. Mr. Kint and the Boy vant to seward this
+ morning.
+
+ T. 19.--raining heard all day steamer from West going to seward
+ 4 P.M.
+
+ F. 20.--raining heard all Day.
+
+ S. 21.--Wary rof rainstorm from Soght Est. Wullys all over.
+
+ Sun. 22.--Steamer from West going to Seward 2 P.M. the tied
+ vary Hie Comes clear up in the gras and the surf ar Stiring up
+ all the Driftwood along the shore. raining lik Hell.
+
+ M. 23.--raining all Day.
+
+ T. 24.--Snow on top of the mountins on the maenland a tre
+ mastid skuner from West going to Seward. toed by som gassboth
+ raining to Day egan. Mr. Kint and son got ome to the island
+ this Evening.
+
+
+ September fourteenth.
+
+I stopped writing, for the fire had almost gone out and the cold wind
+blew in from two dozen great crevasses in the walls. The best of log
+cabins need recalking, I am told, once a year, and mine, roughly built
+as it is, needs it now in the worst way. Some openings are four or
+five inches wide by two feet long. We've gathered a great quantity of
+moss for calking, but it has rained so persistently that it cannot dry
+out to be fit for use.
+
+Well, it rains and rains and rains. Since beginning this journal we've
+had not one fair day, and since we've been here on the island,
+seventeen days, there has been only _one_ rainless day. There has been
+but one cloudless sunrise. I awoke that day just at dawn and looking
+across out of the tiny square window that faces the water could see
+the blue--the deep blue--mountains and the rosy western sky behind
+them. At last the sun rose somewhere and tipped the peaks and the
+hanging glaciers, growing and growing till the shadows of other peaks
+were driven down into the sea and the many ranges stood full in the
+morning light. The twilight hours are so wonderfully long here as the
+sun creeps down the horizon. Just think! there'll be months this
+winter when we'll not see the sun from our cove--only see it touching
+the peaks above us or the distant mountains. It will be a strange life
+without the dear, warm sun!
+
+I wonder if you can imagine what fun pioneering is. To be in a country
+where the fairest spot is yours for the wanting it, to cut and build
+your own home out of the land you stand upon, to plan and create
+clearings, parks, vistas, and make out of a wilderness an ordered
+place! Of course so much was done--nearly all--when I came. But in
+clearing up the woods and in improving my own stead I have had a taste
+of the great experience. Ah, it's a fine and wholesome life!...
+
+Another day. The storm rages out of doors. To-day I stuffed the
+largest of the cracks in our wall with woolen socks, sweaters, and all
+manner of clothes. It's so warm and cozy here now! Olson has been in
+to see me for a long chat. I believe he can give one the material for
+a thrilling book of adventure. Take his story, or enough of the
+thousand wild incidents of it, give it its true setting--publishing a
+map of that part of the coast where his travels mostly lay--let it be
+frankly _his_ story retold, above all true and savoring of this
+land--and I believe no record of pioneering or adventure could
+surpass it. He's a keen philosopher and by his critical observations
+gives his discourse a fine dignity. On Olson's return to Idaho in the
+'80's after his first trip to Alaska a friend of his, a saloon-keeper,
+came out into the street, seized him, and drew him into his place.
+"Sit down, Olson," he said, "and tell us about Alaska from beginning
+to end." And the traveler told his long wonder-story to the crowd.
+
+[Illustration: THE SLEEPER]
+
+At last he finished.
+
+"Olson," said his friend, "that would make the greatest book in the
+world--if it was only lies."
+
+Gee, how the storm rages!
+
+I'm relieved to-night; Rockwell, who seems to have a felon on his
+finger, is improving under the heroic treatment he submits to. I've
+had visions of operating on it myself--a deep incision to the bone
+being the method. It is no fun having such ailments to handle--unless
+you're of the type Olson seems to be who, if his eye troubled him
+seriously, would stick in his finger and pull the eye out,--and then
+doubtless fill the socket with tobacco juice.
+
+We have reached Wednesday, September the eighteenth.
+
+That day the sun did shine. We rowed to Seward, Rockwell and I;
+stopped for the motor that on our last trip we had left by the way,
+but found the surf too high. At Seward the beach was strewn with
+damaged and demolished boats from a recent storm. Moreover, in the
+town the glacial stream was swollen to a torrent; the barriers had,
+some of them, been swept away; a bridge was gone, the railroad tracks
+were flooded, the hospital was surrounded and almost floated from its
+foundations. And we saw the next day, when it again poured rain, the
+black-robed sisters of charity, booted to the thighs, fleeing through
+the water to a safer place. It stormed incessantly for four days more.
+Although I had taken what seemed ample precaution for the safety of my
+dory, she was caught at the height of the storm by the exceptional
+tide of that season and carried against a stranded boat high up on the
+shore, and pinioned there by a heavy pile torn from the wharf. But our
+boat escaped undamaged.
+
+Seward was dull for Rockwell and me. We've not come this long way from
+our home for the life of a small town. America offers nothing to the
+tourist but the wonders of its natural scenery. All towns are of one
+mold or inspired, as it were, with one ideal. And I cannot see in
+considering the buildings of a single period in the East and in the
+West any indication of diversity of character, of ideals, of special
+tradition; any susceptibility to the influence of local conditions,
+nothing in any typical American house or town where I have been that
+does not say "made in one mill." There's a God forsaken hideousness
+and commonplaceness about Alaskan architecture that almost amounts to
+character--but it is not quite bad enough to redeem itself. Somewhere
+in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies there's a little town of one
+street backed up against the towering mountains. Dominating the town
+is the two-or three-story "Queen Hotel," the last word in flamboyant,
+gimcrack hideousness. Hotel and Mountain! it is sublime, that bald and
+crashing contrast.
+
+On September third, I wrote to a friend: "They strike me as needlessly
+timid about the sea here, continually talking of frightful currents
+and winds in a way that seems incredible to me and would, I think, to
+a New England fisherman. However, I must be cautious. Olson says that
+in the winter for weeks at a time it has been impossible to make the
+trip to Seward. Well, I'll believe it when I try it and get stuck."
+
+Three weeks later,--Tuesday, September twenty-fourth, we were in
+Seward. The morning was calm varying between sun and rain, but it
+seemed a good day to return to Fox Island. Rockwell and I had some
+difficulty launching our boat down the long beach at low water; but at
+last we managed it, loaded our goods aboard,--viz., two large boxes
+of groceries, fifty-nine pounds turnips, a stove, five lengths of
+stovepipe, a box of wood panels, two hundred feet one inch by two inch
+strips, suit case, snowshoes, and a few odd parcels.
+
+[Illustration: THE WINDLASS]
+
+At ten forty-five we pushed off. At just about that moment the sun
+retired for the day and a fine and persistent rain began to fall.
+After about three miles we were overtaken by a fisherman in a motor
+sloop bound to his camp three miles further down the shore. He took us
+in tow and, finally arriving at his camp, begged us to stay "for a cup
+of tea"--he was an Englishman. I yielded to the delay there against my
+own better judgment. After a hearty meal we left his cove at two
+fifteen.
+
+Still it drizzled rain and the breeze blew faintly from the northeast.
+We had a seven-mile row before us. Near Caines Head we encountered
+squalls from the south and were for sometime in doubt as to the wind's
+true direction. We headed straight for Fox Island only to find the
+wind easterly, compelling us to head up into it. I fortunately
+anticipated a heavier blow and determined to get as far to windward
+and as near the shelter of the lea shore as possible, and without any
+loss of time. Our propulsion toward the island I left to the tide
+which was about due to ebb. We made good headway for a little time
+until the wind bore upon us in heavy squalls.
+
+The aspect of the day had become ominous. Heavy clouds raced through
+the sky precipitating rain. The mountainous land appeared blue black,
+the sea a light but brilliant yellow green. Over the water the wind
+blew in furious squalls raising a surge of white caps and a dangerous
+chop. I was now rowing with all my strength, foreseeing clearly the
+possibility of disaster for us, scanning with concern the terrible
+leeward shore with its line of breakers and steep cliffs. Rockwell,
+rowing always manfully, had great difficulty in the rising sea and
+wind. Fortunately he realized only at rare moments the dangers of our
+situation.
+
+We were now rowing continually at right angles to our true course. I
+had but one hope, to get to windward before the rising sea and gale
+overpowered us and carried us onto the dreaded coast that offered
+absolutely no hope. Once to windward I had the choice of making a
+landing in some cove or continuing for Fox Island by running with the
+wind astern. At last the surface of the water was fairly seething
+under the advancing squalls; the spray was whipped into vapor and the
+caldron boiled. I bent my back to the oars and put every ounce of
+strength into holding my own with the gale. It was a terrible moment
+for I saw clearly the alternative of continuing and winning our fight.
+
+"Father," pipes up Rockwell from behind me at this tragic instant
+"when I wake up in the morning sometimes I pretend my toes are asleep,
+and I make my big toe sit up first because he's the father toe." At
+another time Rockwell, who had shown a little panic--a very
+little--said: "You know I want to be a sailor so I'll learn not to be
+afraid."
+
+At last we turned and made for the island. We had reached the point
+where with good chances of success we _could_ turn,--and where we
+_had_ to. We reached the shelter of the island incredibly fast, it
+seemed, with the sea boiling in our wake, racing furiously as if to
+engulf us,--and then bearing us so smoothly and swiftly upon its crest
+that if it had not been so terrible it would have been the most
+soothing and delightful motion in the world. In rounding the headland
+of our cove a last furious effort of the eluded storm careened us
+sailless as we were far on one side and carried us broadside toward
+the rocks. It was a minute before we could straighten our boat into
+the wind and pull away from the shore, then twenty feet away. Olson
+awaited us on the beach with tackle in readiness to haul our boat out
+of the surf. We landed in safety. Looking at my watch I found it to be
+a quarter to six. (The last four miles had taken us three hours!)
+
+Olson's dory had been hauled up onto the grass and tied down
+securely. Mine was soon beside it. The tides and heavy seas of this
+time of year make every precaution necessary.
+
+[Illustration: THE SNOW QUEEN]
+
+The wind that night continued rising 'til it blew a gale. And that
+night in their bed Rockwell and his father put their arms tight about
+each other without telling why they did it.
+
+
+ Wednesday, September twenty-fifth.
+
+It stormed from the northeast throughout the day. After putting the
+cabin in order and hanging out our bedding to dry by the stove--for we
+had found it very damp--I set about cutting a large spruce tree whose
+high top shut out the light from our main windows. A few more still
+stand in the way. The removal of all of them should give us a fair
+amount of light even in the winter when the sun is hid. It occurs to
+me that it may be rather fortunate that my studio window looks to the
+south. I'll certainly not be troubled with sunlight while I may yet
+borrow some of the near-sun brilliancy from above our mountain's top.
+Rockwell and I worked some time with the cross-cut saw. I'm constantly
+surprised by his strength and stamina. Rockwell read nine pages in his
+book of the cave dwellers. So nine of "Robinson Crusoe" were due him
+after supper. He undresses and jumps into bed and cuddles close to me
+as I sit there beside him reading. And "Robinson Crusoe" is a story to
+grip his young fancy and make this very island a place for adventure.
+
+
+ Thursday, September twenty-sixth.
+
+These are typical days, I begin to feel sure, of prevailing Alaska
+weather. It rains, not hard but almost constantly. Nothing is dry but
+the stove and the wall behind it; the vegetation is saturated, the
+deep moss floor of the woods is full as a sponge can be. We took the
+moss that weeks ago we'd gathered and spread along the shore to dry
+and commenced with this sopping stuff the calking of our cabin. It
+went rapidly and the two gable ends are nearly done. What a difference
+it makes; to-night when my fire roared for the biscuit baking the heat
+was almost unbearable. The usual chores of wood and water; a little
+work at manufacturing stationery; supper of farina, corn bread, peanut
+butter, and tea; six pages for Rockwell; and the day, but for this
+diary, is done.
+
+
+ Friday, September twenty-seventh.
+
+At last it's fair after a clear moonlit night. I worked all day about
+the cabin calking it and almost finishing that job, splitting wood,
+and working with the cross-cut saw. Added stops to the frame of our
+door, made a miter box, and cut my long strips brought from Seward
+last trip into pieces for my stretcher frames. And Rockwell all this
+time helped cheerfully when he was called upon, played boat on the
+beach, hunted imaginary wild animals with his bow and arrow of
+stone-age design, and was as always so contented, so happy that the
+day was not half long enough.
+
+Ah, the evenings are beautiful here and the early mornings, when the
+days are fair! No sudden springing of the sun into the sky and out
+again at night; but so gradual, so circuitous a coming and a going
+that nearly the whole day is twilight and the quiet rose color of
+morning and evening seems almost to meet at noon. We glance through
+our tiny western window at sunrise and see beyond the bay the many
+ranges of mountains, from the somber ones at the water's edge to the
+distant glacier and snow-capped peaks, lit by the far-off sun with the
+loveliest light imaginable.
+
+To-night for supper a dish of Olson's goat's milk "Klabber" (phonetic
+spelling), simply sour milk with all its cream upon it, thick to a
+jelly. It was, in the favorite expression of Rockwell, "delicious."
+
+[Illustration: FOX ISLAND, RESURRECTION BAY, KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA]
+
+
+ Saturday, September twenty-eighth.
+
+Beginning fresh but overcast the day soon brought us rain,--and it is
+now raining gently as I write. And yet we accomplished a great deal,
+clearing of undergrowth a part of the woods between us and the shore,
+felling three more trees, and cutting up a monster tree with the
+cross-cut saw. At dinner time Olson ran in with the greatest
+excitement. On the path in the woods near the outlet of the lake he
+had seen at one time five otters. They came from the water and
+advanced to within twenty feet of where he and Nanny--the milk
+goat--stood. And there they played long enough for him to have taken a
+dozen pictures. In the afternoon we saw a number of otters at another
+place, on the rocks at one end of the beach. They were in and out of
+the water, going at times for little excursion swims far out into the
+harbor, then chasing each other back and playing hide-and-go-seek
+among the rocks. This afternoon I prepared all my wood panels to begin
+my work, painting them on both sides.
+
+
+ Sunday, September twenty-ninth.
+
+The Lord must have been pleased with us to-day for the grand clearing
+up we gave this place of His. Olson has begun to work toward me in
+clearing the still wild part of the intervening space between our
+cabins. It begins to look parklike with trees stripped of limbs ten or
+twelve feet from the ground and the mossy floor beneath swept clean.
+With the cross-cut saw I finished up the giant tree we felled a few
+days ago; and then, the ground being clear, I cut the large tree that
+kept so much light from our windows. The difference it has made is
+wonderful; our room is flooded with light.
+
+There is a fascination in cutting trees. Once I have gripped my axe,
+or even the tedious saw, I find it hard to relinquish it, returning to
+it again and again for one more cut. I believe that the clearing of
+homesteads gave the pioneer a compelling interest in life that was in
+wonderful contrast to the ordinary humdrum labor to which at first he
+must have been bred. It is easy to understand the rapid conquest of
+the wilderness; begin it--and you cannot stop.
+
+Rockwell has set his heart upon trapping, in the kindest and most
+considerate way known, some wild thing--and having it for a pet. I
+rather discouraged his taming the sea urchin and persuaded him out of
+consideration for the intelligent creature's feelings to restore him
+to the salt water--and let me have back the bread pan. But now one of
+Olson's box traps is set for a magpie. They're plentiful here. I built
+myself a fine easel to-day, the best one I've ever had; and put a
+shelf under my drawing table. The room is clean and neat to-night; it
+is in every way a congenial place. I don't see why people need better
+homes than this. It was cloudy most of to-day and rained a very little
+from time to time. Soon I can no longer keep from painting.
+
+
+ Monday, September thirtieth.
+
+The morning brilliant, clear, and cold with the wind in the north. I
+promised Rockwell an excursion when we had cut six sections from a
+tree with the cross-cut saw. It went like the wind. Then with cheese,
+chocolate, and Swedish hard bread in my pocket for a lunch we started
+for the lowest ridge of the island that overlooks the east. We had
+always believed this to be a short and easy ascent until one day just
+before supper we tried it in a forced march and found, after the
+greatest exertions in climbing, that the ridge lay still the good part
+of an hour's climb above us.
+
+So to-day, though we chose our path more wisely, it proved hard
+climbing along rough stream beds, across innumerable fallen trees,
+through alder, bramble, and blueberry thickets, and always with the
+soft, oozy moss underfoot. But we reached the top-steep to the very
+edge. Suddenly the trees ended, the land ended,--falling sheer away
+four hundred feet below us; and we stood in wonder looking down and
+out over a smooth green floor of sea and a fairyland of mountains,
+peaks and gorges, and headlands that cast long purple shadows on the
+green water. Clouds wreathed the mountains, snow was on their tops,
+and in the clear atmosphere both the land and the sea were marvelous
+for the beauty of their infinite detail. Tiny white crested wavelets
+patterned the water's surface with the utmost precision and
+regularity; and the land invited one to its smooth and mossy slopes,
+its dark enchanted forests, its still coves and sheltered valleys, its
+nobly proportioned peaks. It was a rare hour for us two.
+
+[Illustration: RAIN TORRENTS]
+
+We then followed the ridge toward the south walking in the smoothly
+trodden paths of the porcupines. It led us up the lofty hill on the
+east side of the island between its two coves. But the steepness of
+the ascent and the matted thickets of storm-dwarfed alders that were
+in our way were too much, I thought, for Rockwell, and after going
+some distance farther alone I returned to him and we started
+homewards.
+
+Once on the mountain side we sat down in the moss and mountain
+cranberry to rest. And all at once we saw a great old porcupine come
+clambering up the hill a short way from us. I spoke to him in his own
+whiny-moany language and he was much pleased; he sat up, listened, and
+then came almost straight toward us. I continued talking to him until
+after several corrections of his course--determined upon by sitting up
+and listening--he arrived within four or five feet of Rockwell, and
+sat up again.
+
+We could hardly keep from laughing, he looked so foolish. But he
+sensed things to be wrong, dropped down, elevated his quills, then
+turned and started off. Somehow I couldn't let him go without annoying
+him; so, grabbing a stick I pursued him poking at him to collect a few
+quills. But at this Rockwell set up such a shrieking and wailing that
+I had to stop,--and finally apologized profusely and explained that I
+meant no harm to the sweet creature. Rockwell madly loves wild
+animals, has not the slightest fear of them, and would really, I
+believe, try out his theory of calming the anger of a bear by kissing
+him.
+
+Then we came home and had a good dinner. I cut more wood and at last,
+after one month here on the island, I PAINTED. It was a stupid sketch,
+but no matter, I've begun! A weasel came out and looked at me as I
+worked, then whisked off. The magpies look into our trap, squint at
+the food, and then at once leave that neighborhood. It is cloudy and
+rainlike to-night. Is it too much to hope for more than one fair day?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHORES
+
+
+ Tuesday, October first.
+
+To-day it rained! We attended first to our fascinating chores, plying
+the cross-cut saw as the drizzle fell. Then we went to work as
+artists, Rockwell with his water colors and I with my oils. Rockwell
+has a number of good drawings of the country here and of the things
+that have thrilled him.
+
+Pop! The cork of my jug of new made yeast has just struck the ceiling.
+That brew has been a part of this day's work. Hops, potatoes, flour,
+sugar, raisins, and yeast; stewed and strained and bottled. To-day
+also was completed and served the first.
+
+Fox Island Corn Souffle
+
+ "Take two cups of samp (whole hominy) and stew for an indefinite
+ time in salted water (it should cook at least three or four
+ hours). It should boil almost dry. Make of the remainder of the
+ water and some milk two cups of cream sauce dissolving in it
+ some cheese. Mix with the corn and pour into a baking dish.
+ Spread cheese over the top and put into oven to brown."
+
+We offer this delicious discovery to the world on the condition only
+that "Fox Island Corn Souffle" shall be printed on the menu wherever
+it is used.
+
+I made to-day a grandfather's chair for myself. It is as comfortable
+as it is beautiful.
+
+Every day I read in the "History of Irish Literature." The Deirdre
+Saga I read to-day. It must be one of the most beautiful and the most
+perfect stories in all the world. So little do we feel ourselves
+related, here in this place, to any one time or to any civilization
+that at a thought we and our world become whom and what we please.
+Rockwell has been a cave dweller hunting the primeval forest with a
+stone hatchet and a bow of alder strung with a root. To me it is the
+heroic age in Ireland.
+
+
+ Wednesday, October second.
+
+Incessant, hard rain. The two artists at their work a good part of the
+day, Rockwell making several new drawings in his book of wonderful
+animals. We bathed and I washed the accumulated clothes of several
+weeks. And to-night Olson came for a long call. He's a good story
+teller and his experiences are without end. And so closes this
+day--with the rain still pouring monotonously on the roof.
+
+
+ Thursday, October third.
+
+To-day was fair at sunrise, cloudy at nine o'clock, and showery all
+the rest. We worked again with the beloved cross-cut saw, setting
+ourselves an almost unattainable task--and then surpassing it. And
+I cleared the thicket for a better view of the mountain to the south;
+and in the afternoon felled another large tree. Stretched canvass for
+a while; and painted and drew, and felt the goddess Inspiration
+returning to me.
+
+[Illustration: DAY]
+
+Olson, Rockwell, and I, with levers and blocks, turned and emptied the
+three boats that the recent rains had almost filled. Already we fear
+the frost. The mountains have been capped with snow, all green has
+gone from their sides; the dark season is near at hand.
+
+Rockwell is ever sweet, industrious, and happy. He is beautiful after
+his bath.
+
+
+ Friday, October fourth.
+
+A gloriously lovely day, a cloudless sky and the wind in the north.
+That puts life into men! Up at sunrise, we two. Before breakfast the
+axe was going, and afterwards we brought down two mighty trees. (The
+trees of this part of Alaska are not to be compared with the giants of
+the Western States. Two feet is a large diameter.) Then I painted for
+a while futilely, the green and wind blown sea, the pink mountains,
+snowy peaks, and golden morning sky.
+
+Rockwell and I couldn't restrain our spirits and had to clamber up the
+steep mountain side; up, up we went straight above our clearings; and
+soon, in looking back, the bay, the lake, and our neck of land lay
+like a map below us. Cliffs and the steep slopes baffled us at times
+but we found a way at last to reach the peak of the spur above us.
+There it was like a pavilion, a round knoll carpeted with moss, a ring
+of slender, clean-trunked trees; and beyond that nothing nearer than
+the sea nine hundred feet below. Coming down we ran across a porcupine
+toiling up the slope. We played with him a bit and finally let him
+climb a tree. Olson would have had us bring him home for dinner.
+They're said to taste good.
+
+We cut with the saw a while in the afternoon. Rockwell drew and I made
+two more sketches--one a good one. The evening at sundown was more
+brilliant even than the day. For such days as this we have come to
+Alaska!
+
+
+ Saturday, October fifth.
+
+A hard day full of little bits of work. Sawed up a tree _alone_,--to
+punish Rockwell! for not studying. Caulking the east side of the
+cabin--the last side. Painted, baked, and built myself an arrangement
+out-of-doors to sketch in comfort. I sit on the board with my
+palette--a box end--secured before me and my picture above it.
+Rockwell took his punishment so to heart that in the afternoon he read
+ten pages in his book. All of to-day has been overcast, but with a
+clean, refreshing atmosphere. In the account of Anson's voyage around
+the Horn it is remarked that fair weather in those latitudes rarely
+lasts. It may be true of the same latitudes north.
+
+
+ Monday, October seventh.
+
+Yesterday I wrote nothing in the diary--there was nothing to write,
+but that it rained. "Rain like Hell" Olson's journal doubtless
+reads,--and ditto for to-day.
+
+The storm is even harder now. The wind strikes our cabin first from
+the west, then north, east, and south. The surface of the cove is
+seething under the cross squalls; that is called the "wullys." A boat
+not strongly managed would be whipped round and round. Olson has been
+much in to see us, lonely old man! I drop my drawing while he is here
+and take to stretching canvass, all the while yarning with him.
+Rockwell likes the calls as a diversion. Rockwell's good humor and
+contentment is without limit. He draws with the deepest interest hours
+a day, reads for a time, and plays--talking to himself.
+
+[Illustration: NIGHT]
+
+We have good hearty fights together in which Rockwell attacks me with
+all his strength and I hit back with force in self-defense. We have a
+good time washing dishes, racing,--the washer, myself, to beat the
+dryer. Rockwell falls down onto the floor in the midst of the race in
+a fit of laughter. Rockwell's happiness is not complete until I spank
+him. I grab the struggling creature and throw him down, trying to hold
+both his hands and feet to have free play in beating him. This I do
+with some strength sometimes using a stick of kindling wood. The more
+it hurts the better Rockwell likes it--up to a limit that we never
+reach.
+
+So much for the day's play. Of our work mine is mostly over the
+drawing table. Both yesterday and to-day I made good drawings; and my
+ideas come crowding along fast. Cooking, somehow, is the least
+troublesome of all the daily chores. We live, as may be imagined, with
+a simplicity that would send a Hoover delegate flying from the door in
+dismay. This is our daily fare:
+
+ BREAKFAST
+
+ (invariably the same)
+ Oatmeal
+ Cocoa
+ Bread and Peanut Butter
+
+
+ DINNER
+
+ Beans (one of several kinds and several ways)
+ or
+ Fox Island Corn Souffle
+ or
+ Spaghetti
+ or
+ Peas
+ or
+ Vegetable stew (barley, carrots, onions, potatoes)
+ and
+ Potatoes or rice
+ and (often)
+ Prunes or apricots or apples (dried)
+
+
+ SUPPER
+
+ (invariably the same)
+ Farina
+ Corn bread with peanut butter or marmalade
+ Tea for father, milk for son
+ And sometimes dessert--stewed fruit, chocolate, or, when Olson
+ gives it, goat milk junket.
+
+Let us here record that to this date we have had not the least little
+sickness,--only glowing health and good spirits.
+
+
+ Tuesday, October eighth.
+
+RAIN! But what difference does it make to us. Everyone is in a good
+humor. The house is warm and dry; we've lots to eat and lots to do.
+
+Olson's dory was again half full of water so we turned her and the
+skiff over. I stretched canvass and primed it and finished Anson's
+"Voyage Around the World" a thrilling book. Late this afternoon it
+began to clear; the sun shone and we were presently at work with the
+saw--only to be driven in again by the shower. I expect fair weather
+to-morrow. But----
+
+[Illustration: WILDERNESS]
+
+
+ Wednesday, October ninth
+
+Fair weather is still as far away as ever, unless a sharp but cloudy
+afternoon and sundown with brilliant light in the western sky spell
+change. Olson says the foxes will not eat to-night and that this is
+invariably a sign of change to good days--that in bad weather they eat
+and in fair they abstain. It poured in the morning and we worked
+indoors. After dinner we all moved a lumber pile that stood on the
+shore abreast of our cabin to a place nearer Olson's--this only to
+better our view of the water. We sawed wood for a while and piled all
+that we have so far cut ready for winter use. There are in all fifty
+sections of short stove wood. That is a month and a half's supply. I
+painted towards evening, and made two good sketches.
+
+The nights have grown colder. For the past two days the mountains
+across from us, the nearest ones, have been covered with snow
+downwards to half their height. The farther ranges have for weeks been
+white. They're beautiful and invite one to go climbing and sliding
+over their smooth white snowfields. Close to, one would find
+impassable crags and crevasses, a howling wind and bitter cold.
+Rockwell to-day finished his second book, "The Cave Dwellers."
+
+Midnight Bulletin: the stars are out, brilliant in a cloudless sky!
+
+
+ Thursday, October tenth.
+
+It's raining! All day has been overcast, but sharp and clear. It was
+for us all a day of hard work. We cleared up the woods between Olson's
+cabin and ours carrying one large pile of brush from our door yard to
+the beach and burning another huge one. That was a wild sight as night
+came. It had become a great fire of logs burning steadily and lighting
+up all the woods around. It is still burning in the pouring rain. We
+sawed a little--always more than keeping pace with our consumption of
+wood. Rockwell worked almost the whole day and went to bed tired. I
+read to him an hour. He loves to hear poetry.
+
+We set an elaborate contrivance to catch a magpie; and were humiliated
+by the bird who walked round and round the snare eying it wisely, then
+suddenly rushed in only far enough to secure a piece of decoy
+bait--and fled. Painted to-day making a good little sketch, but, on my
+first trial of the home-made canvas, finding it to need more priming.
+Work! work!
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF ROCKWELL'S DRAWINGS]
+
+
+ Friday, October eleventh.
+
+This day we should have been in Seward. It was calm although it rained
+from time to time. Olson offered to tow us across to Caine's Head;
+but, the rain coming up as we were about to start in the morning, we
+waited till afternoon, started, proceeded half a mile, encountered
+engine trouble, and finally ignominiously rowed home, I pulling Olson
+and his motor and Rockwell bringing in our own dory. If it had not
+been so late we would have kept on.
+
+We have a magpie. I saw one hop into Olson's shed, quickly ran and
+closed the door, and there he was. Now he's in a box-trap cage set on
+a specially constructed shelf on our front gable. He's a garrulous
+creature and bites angrily; but he's a youngster and we hope to teach
+him to say all sorts of pretty things; Olson says they take naturally
+to swearing. So Rockwell has at last a pet.
+
+If only it will hold calm! To-night it is fair and starlight--but we
+can never be sure of the weather's constancy. We hold everything in
+readiness to start in the morning.
+
+
+ Saturday, October twelfth.
+
+A mild and lovely day on our island but in the bay a breeze from the
+north that would have made our rowing to Seward difficult. Still we
+wait with our things assembled for the trip. We shall go at the very
+first good chance. This morning Olson cleared the limbs from the trees
+about us to ten or twelve feet from the ground. Only the tall, clean
+trunks are now between us and our mountains across the bay. I painted
+most of the afternoon. My canvas is still quite impossible--rough and
+absorbent. We built a large cage for the magpie he was so restless in
+his small one. And now he's quite contented.
+
+Rockwell said to-day that he would like to live here always. That when
+he was grown he'd come here with his many children and me, if I was
+not dead, and stay. It is hard to write, it is hard to work, with the
+trip to Seward at hand. Olson says it is Sunday. I think he's right.
+Somehow I've missed a day.
+
+
+ Sunday, October thirteenth.
+
+(I still keep to my chronology until we find out from Seward where we
+stand.) A wonderfully beautiful day with a raging northwest wind. I
+must sometime honor the northwest wind in a great picture as the
+embodiment of clean, strong, exuberant life, the joy of every young
+thing, bearing energy on its wings and the will to triumph. How I
+remember at Monhegan on such a day, when it seemed that every living
+thing must emerge from its house or its hole or its nest to breathe
+the clean air and exult in it; when men could stand on the hilltops
+and look far over the green sea and the distant land and delight in
+the infinite detail of the view, discerning distant ships at sea and
+remote blue islands, and, over the land, sparkling cities and such
+enchanting forests and pastures that the spirit leaped the intervening
+miles and with a new delight claimed the whole earth to the farthest
+mountains--and beyond; on such a day there crept from his hole an
+artist, and, shading his squinting eyes with his hand, saluted the day
+with a groan. "How can one paint?" he said, "such sharpness! Here is
+no mystery, no beauty." And he crept back, this fog lover, to wait for
+earth's sick spell to return.
+
+This morning the magpie sang--or recited poetry; he made strange glad
+noises in his throat--and that in a cage! We worked, the rest of us,
+like mad. At five-thirty Olson, resting at last, said: "Well, you've
+done a great day's work." And after that I painted a sketch, cut and
+trimmed three small spruce trees; and then, it being dark, prepared
+supper.
+
+But when do we go to Seward? My bag is packed. Olson begins each day
+by testing his motor. The wind must moderate in time. We see it pass
+our cove driving the water as in a mill-race. To-day it swept the cove
+itself.
+
+Rockwell went for a walk in the woods; he has a delightful time on his
+rambles, discovering goats' wool on the bushes, following the paths of
+the porcupines to their holes, and to-day finding the porcupine
+himself. He always returns with some marvelous discovery or new
+enthusiasm over his explorations. He has been practicing writing
+to-day. He says that if he could only write he would put down the
+wonderful stories of his dreams. These stories would run into volumes.
+
+[Illustration: SUNRISE]
+
+
+ Tuesday, October fifteenth.
+
+Yesterday we left the island. The day was calm though cloudy, and at
+times it rained. Olson towed us to Caine's Head. From there we made
+good time Rockwell rowing like a seasoned oarsman, as indeed he has
+now a right to be called. We stopped at the camp where we had in
+August left our broken-down engine, and brought that away with us, as
+well as some turnips and half a dozen heads of beautiful lettuce grown
+on that spot.
+
+By night it was raining hard and blowing from the southeast. We spent
+the evening at the postmaster's house, playing, I, on the flute to
+Miss Postmaster's accompaniment. It went splendidly and until midnight
+we played Beethoven, Bach, Hayden, Gluck, Tchaikowsky, till it seemed
+like old times at home. Then Rockwell with his eyes shut in sleep,
+consumed a piece of apricot pie and a glass of milk, and we came home
+bringing along two glasses of wild currant preserve. I read my letters
+over and then went to bed. But the storm raged by that time and I
+couldn't sleep for worry about my boat. At last I rose and dressed and
+went down to the shore. The dory was safely stranded but too low down.
+So with great toil I worked her higher up the beach beyond high water.
+
+To-day it has rained incessantly. I have bought a few odd supplies and
+registered for the draft.
+
+Above all to-day the engine has resumed its running and we'll return
+to Fox Island under power. I know nothing about an engine but I have
+eight miles to learn in before the only hazardous part of the voyage
+begins. To-night Rockwell and I spent the evening at the house of a
+young man whom we've found congenial and who above all is a friend of
+a young German mechanic for whom I've a liking. So the four of us sang
+the evening through, seated before a great open fire. The house is of
+logs and stands out of the town on the border of the wilderness. There
+are spots like this little house and its hospitable hearth that show
+even the commercial desert of Seward to have its oases. And now we're
+in our room. Rockwell is asleep in bed. It is past midnight. I am
+thinking of dear friends at home, and I bid them affectionately
+good-night.
+
+
+ Thursday, October seventeenth.
+
+Yesterday in Seward was about as every other day. We spent it between
+letter-writing in our hotel room and visiting from store to store. It
+poured rain and blew from the southeast. We spent our evening with the
+German. We have planned with him to signal back and forth from Seward,
+particularly to send me the news of peace. If I can distinguish, with
+glasses a high-powered electric light that he will show from a house
+on the highest point in the town, then, by means of the Morse code
+with which I am furnished and which he knows, I'll receive messages on
+appointed days.
+
+To-night Rockwell and I went a quarter of a mile down our beach to a
+point that commands a view up the bay to Seward and lighted a bonfire
+there. Boehm, the German, was regarding us, we presume, through a
+telescope. On Sunday night, if it is clear, we are to look for his
+light. The difficulty will be to distinguish it from others.
+
+We left Seward this morning at 9.45, our dory laden with about one
+thousand pounds of freight--including ourselves. The little three and
+one half horse-power motor worked splendidly and carried us to the
+island in a little over two and a quarter hours. The day was calm, to
+begin with, with a rising north wind as we crossed from Caine's Head.
+On the island we found a visitor. There had been two other men but
+they were gone to Seward the night before. All had been on Monday
+forced by the rough sea to turn back from attempting to go around the
+westward cape. The old fellow who is still here told me to-night that
+in the twenty years that he had been in Alaska he had never seen such
+weather. That's good news. At Seward the mountains are covered with
+snow to within a few hundred feet of the town's level. I'm tired. This
+ends to-day. Incidentally my dates proved to be correct when I reached
+Seward.
+
+[Illustration: ADVENTURE]
+
+Oh, I've almost forgotten our loss. The poor magpie lay dead on the
+floor of his cage. So we found him, killed, I believe, by the storm,
+for Olson neglected to cover him. Rockwell, who straight on landing
+had run there, wept bitterly but finally found much consolation in
+giving him a very decent burial and marking the spot with a wooden
+cross.
+
+
+ Friday, October eighteenth.
+
+The night is beautiful beyond thought. All the bay is flooded with
+moonlight and in that pale glow the snowy mountains appear whiter than
+snow itself. The full moon is almost straight above us, and shining
+through the tree tops into our clearing makes the old stumps quite
+lovely with its quiet light. And the forest around is as black as the
+abyss. Although it is nearly ten o'clock Rockwell is still awake. It
+is his birthday--by our choice. His one present, a cheap child's
+edition of Wood's "Natural History," illustrated, has filled his head
+with dreams of his beloved wild animals. I began to-night to teach him
+to sing. We tried Brahms's "Wiegenlied," with little success, and then
+"Schlaf, Kindlein, Schlaf," which went better. These songs and many
+other German songs, all with English words, are in the song book I
+bought him. I hope I shall have the patience and the time to succeed
+with Rockwell in this.
+
+Three men are now with Olson in his cabin, for the two who were gone
+to Seward returned to-day. They are younger men, one of them
+Emsweiler a well-known guide of this country. I spent an interesting
+hour with them this evening. Olson told me to-day that his age is
+seventy-one. The smell of fresh bread is in our cabin, for I baked
+to-day. Baking, wood-cutting, darning of socks, putting the cabin in
+order, and the building of a shelf, these, with the other usual
+chores, were the whole day's work; a profitless day lies on my
+conscience. I shall draw a little and then go to bed.
+
+
+ Saturday, October nineteenth.
+
+To-day was raw and cloudy, mild and sunny; in the morning windy, in
+the afternoon dead calm so that the hills were reflected in the bay.
+The men have left, I am glad to say, not that they were in themselves
+at all objectionable, but it somehow did violence to the quiet of this
+place to have others about. Emsweiler slaughtered one of the goats for
+Olson, so there's now one less of us here. I felled a large tree
+to-day and later sharpened the cross-cut saw preparatory to cutting it
+up. To-night the sun set in the utmost splendor and left in its wake
+blazing, fire-red clouds in a sky of luminous green. Not many more
+days shall we see the sun; it sets now close to the southern headland
+of our cove.
+
+Rockwell works every day on his wild animal book. To obtain absolutely
+new and original names for his strange creatures he has devised an
+interesting method. With eyes closed he prints a name or rather a
+group of miscellaneous letters. Naturally the result he perceives on
+opening his eyes is astonishing.
+
+
+ Sunday, October twentieth.
+
+It has been a beautiful, clear, cold, violent northwest day. I've
+painted on and off all day with wood cutting between. One can't stop
+going in such weather, and out-of-doors you can't stand still for it
+is too icy cold and windy.
+
+Rockwell and I have just now, eight o'clock, returned from down the
+beach where we went to look for lights from Seward. But we could
+distinguish nothing meant for us. The moon has risen and illuminates
+the mountain tops--but we and all our cove are still in the deep
+shadow of the night. It is most dramatic; the spruces about us deepen
+the shadow to black while above them the stone faces of the mountain
+glisten and the sky has the brightness of a kind of day. Olson brought
+us goat chops for dinner. We could not have told them from lamb.
+
+This afternoon late a small power boat appeared in the bay attempting
+to make its way toward Seward. After some progress the wind forced her
+steadily and swiftly back. When we last saw her she seemed to be
+trying to make the shelter of our island or one of the outer islands,
+the while driving steadily seaward. It's a wild night to be out in the
+bay though doubtless calm at sea. It is such an adventure that we must
+be on our guard against. As we look across the bay toward Bear
+Glacier, which is hidden by a point of land, we can see the effect of
+the north wind sweeping down the glacier, a mist driving seaward. It
+is nothing less than the fine spray of that wind-swept water.
+
+
+ Monday, October twenty-first.
+
+It is so late that I shall write only a little. To-day was again
+wonderful, a true golden and blue northwest day. I have painted and
+sawed wood, and built myself a splendid six-legged saw horse. Olson
+thinks I have already cut my winter's supply of wood--but it seems to
+me far from it. Rockwell has been most of the day at his own animal
+book, making some strange and beautiful birds. This morning the ground
+was frozen with a hard crust. It did not thaw throughout the day, and
+again to-night it is very cold. Winter is at last upon us, the long,
+long winter. And the sun retreats day by day farther toward the
+mountain. I look to the sun's going with a kind of dread. We have seen
+nothing of the boat that last night was driven to shelter. We believe
+the men to be in the other cove of our island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WINTER
+
+
+Endlessly, day after day, the journal goes on recording a dreary
+monotony of rain and cloud. Who has ever dwelt so entirely alone that
+the most living things in all the universe about are wind and rain and
+snow? Where the elements dominate and control your life, where at
+getting up and bedtime and many an hour of night and day between you
+question helplessly, as a poor slave his master, the will of the
+mighty forces of the sky? Dawn breaks, you jump from bed, stand
+barefoot on the threshold of the door, look through the straight
+trunked spruces at the brightening world, and read at sight God's will
+for one more whole, long day of life. "Ah God! it rains again." And
+sitting on the bed you wearily draw on your heavy boots, and
+rainy-spirited begin the special labors of a rainy day. Or maybe, at
+the sight of clouds again, you laugh at the dull-minded weather man or
+curse at him good naturedly. Still you must do those rainy-weather
+chores and all the other daily chores in hot wet-weather garments.
+That is destiny.
+
+Most of the time, to do ourselves real justice, we met the worst of
+weather with a battle cry, worked hard,--and then made up for outdoor
+dreariness and wet by heaping on the comforts of indoors,--dry, cozy
+warmth, good things to eat, and lots to do.
+
+We have reached late fall--for northern latitudes. The sky is brooding
+ominously, heavy, dull, and raw. Winter seems to be closing in upon
+us. We're driven to work as if in fear. Hurry, hurry! Saw the great
+drums of spruce, roll them over the ground and stack them high. Calk
+tight with hemp the cabin's windward eaves so that no breath of wind
+can enter there and freeze the food inside upon the shelf. Set up the
+far-famed air-tight stove where it will keep you warm,--warm feet in
+bed and a warm back while painting. Patch up the poor, storm-battered
+paper roof,--two or three holes we find and we are sure it leaks from
+twenty. About the cabin pile the hemlock boughs, dense-leafed and
+warm, making a green slope almost to the eaves. Now it looks cozy!
+Outside and in the last is done to make us ready for the winter's
+worst, and just in time! It is the evening of October twenty-second
+and the feathery snow has just begun to fall. Olson comes stamping in.
+"Well, well," he cries, "how's this! How does our winter suit you?" It
+suits us perfectly. The house is warm, Rockwell's in bed, and I am
+reading "Treasure Island" to him.
+
+"What are you going to make of him?" asked Olson that night speaking
+of Rockwell. I was at that moment pouring beans into the pot for
+baking. I slowed the stream and dropped them one by one:
+
+ "'Rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief,
+ Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.'
+
+How in the world can anyone lay plans for a youngster's life?"
+
+[Illustration: ON THE HEIGHT]
+
+Rockwell lay in his bed dreaming, maybe, of an existence lovelier far
+than anything the poor, discouraged imagination of a man could reach.
+A child could make a paradise of earth. Life is so simple! Unerringly
+he follows his desires making the greatest choices first, then onward
+into a narrowing pathway until the true goal is reached. How can one
+preach of beauty or teach another wisdom. These things are of an
+infinite nature, and in every one of us in just proportion. There is
+no priesthood of the truth.
+
+We live in many worlds, Rockwell and I,--the world of the books we
+read,--an always changing one, "Robinson Crusoe," "Treasure Island,"
+the visionary world of William Blake, the Saga Age, "Water Babies,"
+and the glorious Celtic past,--Rockwell's own world of fancy, kingdom
+of beasts, the world he dreams about and draws,--and my created land
+of striding heroes and poor fate-bound men--real as I have painted
+them or to me nothing is,--and then all round about our common, daily,
+island-world, itself more wonderful than we have half a notion of. Is
+it to be believed that we are here alone, this boy and I, far north
+out on an island wilderness, seagirt on a terrific coast! It's as we
+pictured it and wanted it a year and more ago,--yes, dreams come true.
+
+And now the snow falls softly. Winter, to meet our challenge, has
+begun.
+
+Short notes in the journal mark "Treasure Island's" swift passage.
+Then enter "Water Babies!" "Just after Rockwell's heart and mine," I
+have recorded it. But Kingsley must lose his friends,--a warning to
+the snob in literature. How it did weary us and madden us, his
+English-gentry pride,--unless we outright laughed. "At last it's
+finished. That's an event. When Kingsley isn't showing off he's
+moralizing, and between his religious cant and his English snobbery he
+is, in spite of his occasional sweet sentiment, quite unendurable. So
+to-night we read from 'Andersen's Fairy Tales'--forever lovely and
+true."
+
+Children have their own fine literary taste that we know quite too
+little about. They love all real, authentic happenings, and they love
+pure fairy tale. But to them fiction in the guise of truth is wrong,
+and fairy romance, unconvincing in its details, is ridiculous. Action
+they like, the deed--not thoughts about it. Doubtless the simple saga
+form is best of all,--life as it happens, neither right nor wrong,
+words that they can understand, things they can comprehend,
+interesting facts or thrilling fancy. Such simple things delight the
+child that half of "Robinson Crusoe" and three quarters of the smug
+family from Switzerland are forgiven for the sweet kernel of pure
+adventure that is there.
+
+As for adventure,--that is relative. Where little happens and the
+gamut of expression is narrow life is still full of joy and sorrow.
+You're stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world.
+
+The killer-whales that early in September played in the shoal water of
+our cove not thirty feet from land, rolled their huge, shining bodies
+into view, plunged, raced where we still could follow their gleaming,
+white patch under water,--there's a thrill!
+
+The battles that occurred that month between huge fish out in the bay,
+their terrible, mysterious, black arms that beat the water with a
+sound like cannon, the plunge into the depths of the poor, frantic,
+wounded whale, and his return again for air; again the thunder sound
+and flying foam and spray as the dread black arm is beating on the
+sea; then calm. You shudder at that huge death. That was a drama for
+Fox Islanders.
+
+And later the poor magpie's death. Real tears were shed from a poor
+boy's half-broken heart.
+
+Two strangers come these days and stop with Olson. They're on the
+search of that small craft that we saw driving seaward in a tempest.
+
+[Illustration: THE DAY'S WORK]
+
+_There_ is mystery! Was she adrift unmanned, broke from her moorings,
+or was there life aboard as we had thought? In that case she'd been
+stolen, and who were the men and where? Wrecked safely on some island,
+drowned, or driven out to sea? No man shall ever know.
+
+A porcupine is captured wandering near our house. We build for him a
+cozy home--he doesn't like it much but still he _should_. We care for
+him day after day, he twines himself, about our hearts. Then at last
+one day when we'd pastured him in freedom out in the new fallen snow,
+trusting his tracks to lead us to him, the goats cut in and spoiled
+the trail and he was lost to us.
+
+Olson has gone to Seward: days of waiting, days of waiting! How many
+times do we travel down the cove to the point from whence Caine's Head
+is seen, going in hope, returning gloomily.
+
+The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that
+maddening beast, eats up one corner of our broom. I throw a heavy
+armful of kindling wood into his face--and he just sneezes. But
+Rockwell plays with the goats as if they're human, or rather, as if he
+were goat. They half believe it, he has told me,--and, Rockwell, so do
+I.
+
+
+ Sunday, November third.
+
+To-day was gloriously bright and clear with a strong northwest wind.
+The mountains are covered with snow, beautiful beyond description. I
+painted in-and out-of-doors continuously all the day except when
+Rockwell and I plied the saw. It is no little thing to have one's work
+on a day like this out under such a blue sky, by the foaming green sea
+and the fairy mountains.
+
+Three days go by. It rains and hails and snows, and then is quiet.
+Over the dead, still air comes the roar of pounding seas. Immense and
+white they pile on the black cliffs of Caine's Head, the wash of a
+storm at sea. Still over the heaving, glassy water we look in vain
+for Olson. Dark days, and the short hours are long with waiting. How
+many times we traveled down the cove to look toward Seward, how many
+score of times we peered through the little panes of our west window
+never to find the thing we sought for.
+
+I've loaded my arms with firewood from the pile. I turn my head and
+there in our cove before my very eyes at last is Olson! This is
+November sixth,--nine days away!
+
+"The war is over," cried Olson as he landed. By all that's holy in
+life may the world have found through its mad war at least some
+fragrance of the peace and freedom that we discovered growing like a
+flower, wild on the borders of the wilderness....
+
+Long into night I read the mail, count sweaters, caps, and woolen
+stockings, all that the mail has brought. It is late, Rockwell is
+asleep, the room is cold, it snows out-of-doors.... And now instead of
+bed I'll stir the fire and begin my work.
+
+
+ Thursday, November seventh.
+
+A true winter's day with the snow deep on the ground and the profound
+and characteristic winter silence of the out-of-doors to be sensed
+even in this ever silent place. At earliest daylight began a heavy
+thunderstorm with lightning all about and a downpour of hail. It
+occurred intermittently throughout the morning.... I did the washing,
+using Olson's washboard and getting the clothes nearly white.
+
+Olson is full of amusing gossip. To the curious in Seward who asked
+him why I chose to be in this God-forsaken spot he replied: "You damn
+fools, you don't understand an artist at all. Do you suppose
+Shakespeare wrote his plays with a silly crowd of men and women
+hanging around him? No, sir, an artist has to be left alone."
+
+"Well, what does he paint?"
+
+"That's his business. Sometimes I see he has a mountain there on a
+picture, and next time I see it's been changed to a lake or something
+else."
+
+[Illustration: MEAL TIME]
+
+One can imagine Olson with his questioners. The thing he most wants,
+his ambition, one might say, is to make people sit up and take notice
+of Fox Island, his homestead. It is in fact one reason why he brought
+us here to live. Thanks to its amateur detective, Seward had rejoiced
+for a short time in rumors of a German spy on Fox Island. I told Olson
+that the authorities might still come and remove me. He flared up,
+"I'd like to see them try it! We could take to the mountains with
+guns, and more than one of them would never try the thing again." And
+then he went on to tell me how in Idaho he had tracked for days and
+weeks a notorious gang of outlaws and horse-thieves and at last run
+them to earth,--one of his most thrilling and, I believe, absolutely
+true stories of his adventures.
+
+At this moment a steamer is blowing in the bay, navigating by the echo
+from the mountain faces. She is near to us now but hidden by the
+snowstorm.
+
+Rockwell has begun to write the story of a long, waking dream of his.
+It's a sweet idea and reads most amusingly in his own queer spelling.
+Now, though it is already late, I must draw a while longer and then,
+after bathing in the bread pan, sit up in bed and read a chapter of
+the life of Blake.
+
+
+ Friday, November eighth.
+
+It is so late that I half expect to see the dawn begin. I have been
+working on a drawing of Rockwell and his father--and it looks ever so
+fine.
+
+Whew! just at this moment the wind has swept down upon our cabin and
+blown the roof in as far as it would with great creaking yield,--and
+then passed on sucking it out in its wake to such a spread that a
+board that lay across overhead like a collar-beam has fallen with a
+crash and clatter,--and Rockwell sleeps on! The wind does blow
+to-night, and it doesn't stop outside the walls of the cabin either.
+My lamp flutters annoyingly. But ah! the room is comfortable and warm.
+
+This morning, it being at first wondrously fair, Rockwell and I set
+out for a boat ride. But what with the fussing of installing our motor
+and the launching of our cumbersome boat the wind was given time to
+rise and spoil the day for us. But we went out into the bay and played
+in the waves to see what the north wind could do. The chop was
+devilish, short and deep; the boat bridged from one crest to another
+with, it seemed, a clear tunnel underneath,--and then running up onto
+a wave mountain she would jump off its dizzy peak landing with a
+splash in the valley beyond and dousing us well with water. In a
+calmer spot I stopped the engine and sketched our island; after which
+we rowed home. The rest of the day we worked on the motor--first to
+find out why she wouldn't run, then, having found and fixed that, to
+put other parts in still better order, and then, by far the longest
+time and still to continue to-morrow, to mend what in the course of
+our fixing we had broken.
+
+Rockwell's in bed, asleep, dreaming of the little, wild nightingale
+that sang of freedom to that poor, unhappy Chinese Emperor; while far
+from here in streets and towns the tin nightingale of law-made liberty
+charms the world. And it's now my reading time, my time for bread and
+jam and a soft-cushioned back.
+
+The days run by, true winter days, snow, cold, and wind,--what wind!
+It is terrifying when from our mountain tops those fierce blasts sweep
+upon us roaring as they come; flying twigs and ice beat on the roof,
+the boards creak and groan under the wind's weight, the lamp flutters,
+moss is driven in and falls upon my work-table, the canvas over our
+bed flaps,--and then in a moment the wind is gone and the world is
+still again save for the distant wash of the waves and the far off
+forest roar.
+
+[Illustration: DAY'S END]
+
+Olson is full of treats. His latest was in pleasant violation of the
+law. From a bottle of pale liquid half filled with raisins he poured
+me a drink, mixing it with an equal amount of ginger ale and a dash of
+sugar. It tasted pretty good, quite thrilling in fact.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"Pure alcohol," he said, smacking his lips.
+
+Olson then launched forth on confidential advice, "from one trapper to
+another," on how to trap men,--in my case rich patrons. He has my need
+of them quite upon his mind.
+
+Olson's eggs, by the way, taste good enough. (They gave him in Seward
+twenty-four dozen bad eggs to bring out for the foxes.) We have eaten
+a dozen. To-day I cracked seventeen to find six for dinner. Onion
+omelette is the fashion to cook them in. Rockwell pronounces them
+delicious and--well--so do I.
+
+Hard, hard at work, little play, not too much sleep. The wind blows
+ceaselessly. Rockwell is forever good,--industrious, kind, and happy.
+He reads now quite freely from any book. Drawing has become a natural
+and regular occupation for him, almost a recreation--for he can draw
+in both a serious and a humorous vein. At this moment he's waiting in
+bed for some music and another Andersen fairy tale.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Another day has gone and a new morning is hours on its way. Out in the
+moonlit night strained, tired eyes open wide and are made clear again,
+cramped knees must dance in the crisp air, the curved spine bends
+backward as the upstretched arms describe that superb embracing
+gesture of the good-night yawn. November the thirteenth! how time
+sweeps by. And I look over the black water that we soon must cross
+again to Seward. The wind bursts around the cabin corner. I shiver
+and--go to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WAITING
+
+
+ Thursday, November fourteenth.
+
+We're ready to go to Seward the moment the weather moderates--which
+may be not for two weeks or two months. I've packed blankets and
+several days' food in a great knapsack so that if we're driven to land
+somewhere we'll not perish of hunger. And this trip while it may be
+carried out speedily may on the other hand strand us days without
+number in Seward and cost three or four times that many dollars.
+
+The wind is still in the North, the days are wonderfully beautiful,
+and the nights no less. This very night Rockwell and I skated for the
+third time, Ah, but it was glorious on the lake, the moon high above
+us in a cloudless sky, the snow and ice on the mountain sides
+glistening and the spruces black. We skated together hand in hand like
+sweethearts; going far to one end of the lake in the teeth of the wind
+and returning before it like full-rigged ships. And Rockwell whose
+second skate to-day this was improves every minute.
+
+I've cut Rockwell's hair, four months' growth. He has had the
+appearance of a boy of the Middle Ages with his hair cut to a line
+above his eyes. Now he's truly a handsome fellow--and such a man under
+the hardships of this cold place and rough life that I'm very proud of
+him.
+
+
+ Saturday, November sixteenth.
+
+Still it blows, yesterday and to-day, cold, clear, and blue,--and the
+moon these nights stands straight above us and stays till dawn,
+setting far in the north. It is really cold. Olson is quite miserable
+and wonders how we can keep at our wood cutting and skating. But I
+think I shall never live in such cold again as in that first winter on
+Monhegan in my unfinished house when on cold days the water pails four
+feet from the stove froze over between the times I used them, and my
+beans at soak froze one night on the lighted stove. We love this
+weather here. While the cabin is drafty I pile on fuel remorselessly,
+and that's a real delight after having all my life had truly to count
+the pieces of coal and wood. The ice on the pond is six inches thick,
+part of it clear black that one can see the bottom through. This
+morning Rockwell changed to heavy underwear. He complains always of
+the heat, day and night.
+
+The days go on about as usual varied only by an occasional weekly or
+monthly chore and success or failure in my painting. This morning with
+Olson's help I brought my boat up onto the land above the beach. The
+boat is an extremely heavily built eighteen-foot dory with a heavy
+keel; and yet the wind carried it four feet last night and, if it had
+not been secured, might have blown it down into the water where the
+waves would soon have wrecked it. This night I shall not read in bed;
+it's quite too far away from the stove.
+
+
+ Sunday, November seventeenth.
+
+We jumped from bed in a hurry this morning believing that the apparent
+stillness boded a calm day and a fit one for the Seward trip. But the
+sea beyond our cove was running swiftly and within two hours there was
+a gale of wind and some snow. Cold it was and dark. We'd hardly put
+the lamp out after breakfast, before we lighted it again for late
+dinner. Still in that short daylight I painted and Rockwell skated and
+painted, and we both cut a lot of wood. I've spent the evening
+writing, trying an article for "The Modern School." We turned my boat
+over and secured it to the ground with ropes just in time to escape
+the fall of snow to-night that lies deep on the ground. The moon is up
+and through the clouds there comes a general illumination like
+daylight.
+
+
+ Monday, November eighteenth.
+
+To-day a storm from the southeast. It blows like fury. Breakfast by
+lamplight, work until dark, then dinner--in the neighborhood of three
+o'clock or maybe four--more work, and a nap, for I felt exhausted.
+Rockwell goes to bed and is read to, I work a while longer, then a
+light supper for which Rockwell gets up again, then--the dishes washed
+and R. again in bed--a call on Olson for three quarters of an hour,
+leaving there at ten, to work again till some wild hour. What a
+strangely arranged day! I'm determined to have a clock. But now it
+will be seen that no more time must be spent this night upon this
+diary. Amen.
+
+
+ Tuesday, November nineteenth.
+
+A dreary, dreary, a weary day. But I've worked or somehow been
+ceaselessly busy and now I'm about ready for my nightcap of reading
+and bed. Four canvases stretched and primed stand to my credit and
+that alone is one day's work in effort and conquered repugnance.
+What a tedious work. My Christmas letters are written, nearly all of
+them. And as Christmas draws near it seems more and more impossible
+without home and the children. It will be a huge make-believe for one
+of our family here!
+
+[Illustration: ROCKWELL'S DREAM]
+
+There's a big storm at sea from the look of the water and the sound of
+the wind. And the rain falls drearily and on the roof it rattles. From
+the tall trees the great drops fall like stones; they beat to pieces,
+little by little, the paper roof, and now when the rain is hardest we
+hear the drip, drip of the water on the floor. But we are
+comfortable--so what of it all.
+
+I read "Big Claus and Little Claus" to Rockwell to-night. That's a
+great story and we roared over it. Rockwell doesn't like the stories
+about kings and queens, he says, "They're always marrying and that
+kind of stuff." Just the same Rockwell himself has his life and
+marriage pretty closely planned,--the journey from the East alone, the
+wife to be found at Seattle to save her carfare--and yet not put off
+as far as Alaska, for there they don't look nice enough,--and then
+life in Alaska to the end of his days. And I'm to be along if I'm not
+dead,--as I probably shall be, he says.
+
+I have just finished the life of Blake and am now reading Blake's
+prose catalogue, etc., and a book of Indian essays of Coomeraswamy.
+The intense and illuminating fervor of Blake! I have just read this:
+"The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To
+suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that are
+now in the world is not knowing what Art is; it is being blind to the
+gifts of the Spirit." Here in the supreme simplicity of life amid
+these mountains the spirit laughs at man's concern with the form of
+Art, with new expression because the old is outworn! It is man's own
+poverty of vision yielding him nothing, so that to save himself he
+must trick out in new garb the old, old commonplaces, or exalt to be
+material for art the hitherto discarded trivialities of the mind.
+
+
+ Wednesday, November twentieth.
+
+To-morrow we hope to get off--although it still storms. There's a
+terrific sea running but even such a sea would trouble us less than
+the chop of the north wind. The wind above all else is to be feared
+here.
+
+I painted little--it was so dark. Somehow on these short days it is
+difficult to accomplish much. Certain things _have_ to be done by
+daylight: the chopping of wood, carrying of water from a hundred yards
+away, lamp filling, and some cooking. I made myself a lot of envelopes
+to-day and second-coated the canvases of yesterday's stretching. And
+now it is bedtime for to-morrow we rise early. Oh! the porcupine
+returned to-day and was discovered feeding calmly near the cabin. He
+showed no alarm at Rockwell's approach, and, when finally after some
+hours of undisturbed nibbling and napping Rockwell carried him home by
+his tail and set him down a little distance from his old cage, he ran
+straight there and interned himself.
+
+
+ Friday, November twenty-second.
+
+Both yesterday and to-day are to be recorded. The porcupine is dead!
+And yesterday he endeared himself so to us, playing about in the house
+with the utmost content. The cause of his death we cannot know--unless
+it was our kindness. Rockwell with Olson's leather mittens on did
+carry him about a good deal. Of course they are creatures nocturnal
+and we had planned to let him have his regular hours for exercise and
+feeding, Rockwell delighting in the plan that he should stay with him
+in the woods at night, which I was certainly going to let him try. But
+it's over,--and Pet No. 2 has gone to his happy hunting grounds.
+
+It storms, yesterday violently with such wind and rain as seemed
+incredible. The thin paper roof made the noise deafening so that I
+could not sleep; and the surf beat and the forest roared; it was a
+wild night. To-day is better though it pours every half hour. When,
+_when_ shall we get to Seward! And here before me are displayed all
+the pretty Christmas presents I have made and that Rockwell has made.
+Here we sit, these dark short days, working together at the same table
+just like two professional craftsmen. On these days I cannot
+paint,--and Olson calls upon us more than he should. Still, we let him
+sit here in silence and he is wise enough to be quite content. Now it
+is late. The stove is out and I must go to bed. Two meals only
+to-day,--another is due me. Oh! I made myself a beautiful die for note
+paper yesterday and printed it on my envelopes to-day.
+
+[Illustration: THE CABIN WINDOW]
+
+
+ Saturday, November twenty-third.
+
+It dawned calm with rain hanging in the air. We hurried with our
+breakfast in the hope that we should get off; but within an hour at
+the turn of the tide the northwest wind whipped down from the
+mountains and the rain fell in torrents. And now at a late hour of the
+night it still rains although the wind has fallen. We felled a tree
+to-day and partly cut it up. Although it was dismally dark all the
+time I managed to paint a little. And I wrote much and drew in black
+and white. Rockwell has been industrious as usual, drawing at my side.
+He told me an amusing anecdote of little Kathleen that is worthy to go
+down here. When in play she wants to change her doll's name she sends
+for the pretend doctor, again herself, and he operates on the doll.
+Cutting a hole in her stomach he stuffs into it a little piece of
+paper on which he has written the new name. And so the name is
+changed.
+
+Tried some cottonseed oil of Olson's to-day that was too bad. A year
+or two ago he was given a case of spoiled mayonnaise dressing for fox
+food. Olson saved the oil which had separated from the rest of it. I
+made dough for doughnuts while I heated the oil to fry ourselves that
+great treat. Then arose a pinching, rancid odor that almost made me
+ill but which Rockwell called delicious. However I baked the
+doughnuts. Still, the oil unheated seemed not bad.
+
+
+ Sunday, November twenty-fourth.
+
+Olson declares this day to be Sunday and in honor of the day he gave
+me a cup of milk for junket. And in honor of the day, whatever it is,
+I worked so hard that now I'm tired out. The day began with snow and
+continued with it. It blustered and blew much as a day in March and
+the bay looked wild. And now to-night it is clear and starlight. Will
+the north wind begin to blow again to-morrow? The chances are that it
+will and Seward and the sending of my mail will be as far away as
+ever. I painted with some success for the snow makes the cabin
+lighter. Really my picture looks well. Eight canvases are far along so
+that I'm proud of them. We cut wood to-day of course; it would be
+great fun if only we'd more minutes of daylight to spare. Steamer must
+be due in Seward now. We've seen none for two weeks or longer.
+
+
+ Monday, November twenty-fifth.
+
+It rages from the northeast! The bay is a wild expanse of breakers.
+They bear into our cove and thunder on the beach. A mad day and a wild
+night. And Seward is as far off as ever! It is now my hope that a
+steamer will go to Seward before me. Olson finds by his diary that
+none has been seen to go there for two weeks. I began two new pictures
+to-day trying for the first time to paint after dark. My lamp is so
+inadequate in this dark interior--it burns only a three-quarter inch
+wick--that I can work only in black and white. But I've laid in the
+whole picture in that way. Rockwell spends several hours a day
+out-of-doors exploring the woods, searching out porcupine trails and
+caves. It is weeks since I have stopped my work even for a walk. In
+this "out-of-doors life" I see little of out-of-doors. It's a blessing
+to me to have to saw wood every day.
+
+[Illustration: "GO TO BED"]
+
+I finished Coomeraswamy's "Indian Essays" to-day, an illuminating and
+inspiring book. Coomeraswamy defines mysticism as a belief in the
+unity of life. The creed of an artist concerns us only when we mean by
+it the tendency of his spirit. (How hard it is to speak of these
+intangible things and not use words loosely and without exact
+meaning.) I think that whatever of the mystic is in a man is
+essentially inseparable from him; it is his by the grace of God. After
+all, the qualities by which all of us become known are those of which
+we are ourselves least conscious. The best of me is what is quite
+impulsive; and, looking at myself for a moment with a critic's eye,
+the forms that occur in my art, the gestures, the spirit of the whole
+of it is in fact nothing but an exact pictorial record of my
+unconscious living idealism.
+
+
+ Tuesday, November twenty-sixth.
+
+After a terribly stormy and cold night the day was fair with the wind
+comfortably settled in the north as if he meant to stay there. Only at
+night has it been calm. To-night again is so and if I had not Rockwell
+on my hands to make me timid I'd go at night to Seward. Olson was a
+real Santa Claus to-day. First he gave us Schmier Kase, then a good
+salt salmon--two years old which he said we'd "better try"--and
+to-night a lot of butter churned by him from goat's milk. It looks
+like good butter and, with the added coloring matter, more palatable
+than the natural white butter of the goat. We felled two trees
+to-day--fairly small ones. We consume a vast amount of wood with our
+all-night fire. Well--to-morrow, let us say again, we'll be off to
+Seward.
+
+
+ Wednesday, November twenty-seventh.
+
+To-day, if we had known how the weather would turn, we should have
+started. It was lovely, cold but fair with the wind in the
+south-west. It had in the morning all appearances of a heavy blow and
+we failed to get in shape to take advantage of its calming as the
+afternoon advanced. At any rate I have a little picture of it with the
+soft haze of the day and the loose clouds. I painted besides on the
+large canvas of Superman begun a few days ago. Olson lent me his
+"grub-box" to use, a wooden box of small grocery size with a cover
+fastened with a strap and buckle. Such a box is part of the outfit of
+every man on the Yukon. My emergency grub is now in it, my letters,
+Christmas presents, and all that's bound for Seward. Rockwell took
+Squirlie out for an airing to-day, wrapping him with tender care in a
+sweater. They went for a long way into the woods like good companions.
+Then Rockwell drew a portrait of his muffled pet which is destined for
+Clara's Christmas.
+
+
+ Thursday, November twenty-eighth.
+
+This continual waiting is getting upon my nerves. Most of to-day I
+spent tinkering with the engine. It goes now--in a water barrel. The
+trouble with the best of these little motors is that the moment they
+get wet they stop, and they are attached at such an exposed place, on
+the stern, that they will get wet if there's much of a sea. Then
+you're in a bad fix for it's impossible to make any headway rowing
+with the engine--or rather the propeller--dragging. Most of the
+engines are hung right on the stern and can be readily detached and
+drawn into the boat. But mine fits into a sort of pocket built in the
+stern and is difficult even on land to lift out. It weighs decidedly
+over a hundred pounds. So I don't relish getting caught with such an
+equipment. I must have mentioned, by the way, that the engine was
+"thrown in" with the boat as of no value.
+
+So there's the day gone. To-night we go to bed early and if it is calm
+just before daylight in the morning we shall start at once.
+
+[Illustration: DRIFTWOOD]
+
+
+ Friday, November twenty-ninth.
+
+Last night a terrific storm from the east. A few blasts struck the
+house with such force that it seemed our thin roof could not stand it.
+Of course it is really quite strong enough but the noise of those
+sudden squalls bearing along snow and ice from the tree tops is simply
+appalling. In the morning it became milder but continued to rain and
+snow and for most of the day to blow heavily from the eastward. In the
+afternoon to my despair a steamer entered for Seward; she'll doubtless
+leave at daylight. There goes one of my chances to get my Christmas
+mail off.
+
+I painted splendidly to-day and am in the seventh heaven over
+it,--which takes away some of my gloom at never reaching Seward. A
+long call from Olson to-night. He sits here patiently and silently
+while I draw. It snows steadily. What will to-morrow bring?
+
+Francis Galton, the inquirer into human faculty, would have been
+charmed at Rockwell's casual mention of the colors of proper names.
+They do apparently assume definite colors that seem to him appropriate
+and characteristic beyond question. Clara, too, sees names as colors.
+Father is blue, Mother is a darker blue. The breadth of vowel sound
+apparently, judging from this and other examples he gave me, lowers
+the tone of color. Kathleen is a light yellow, very light. Now for a
+bite to eat, for I've had but two meals--and then to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EXCURSION
+
+
+ Thursday, December fifth.
+
+November thirtieth we arose before daylight. It was a mild, still
+morning and the melting snow dripped from the trees. Without breakfast
+we set about at once to carry our things over to the boat. Olson was
+aroused and turned out to help. There's always much to be carried on a
+trip to Seward; gasoline, oil, tools, my pack bag--containing clothes,
+heavy blankets, and spare boots,--and the grub box Olson had given me
+packed with mail, books, grub, and the flute. The engine was in good
+order and started promptly. So away we went out over the bay just as
+the day brightened.
+
+It was calm and beautiful. The sun from below the horizon shot shafts
+of light up into the clouds, gray became pink, and pink grew into gold
+until at last after an hour or more the sun's rays lighted up the
+mountain peaks, and we knew that he had risen. It continued calm and
+mild all the way, but nevertheless I caught myself singing
+"Erlkönig," such is my anxiety at carrying Rockwell with me. Rockwell
+enjoyed the trip wrapped up in a sheepskin coat of Olson's. We stopped
+at a fishing camp for a moment's chat from the water. The man living
+there had just caught a good-sized wolverine. We declined breakfast
+and hurried on.
+
+In Seward we stored our things in Olson's cabin, a little place about
+eight feet square, and started for the hotel. One of our friends met
+us with a shout, "Well, you've had good sense to stay away so long."
+
+Influenza, I then learned, had raged in Seward, there having been over
+350 cases; and smallpox had made a start. But the deaths had been few
+and it was now well in hand. However, I shunned the hotel. A little
+cottage was generously put at our disposal and we were soon
+comfortably settled there with our mail from home spread before us. I
+left everything of mine at the hotel untouched and we continued to
+wear our old clothes throughout the stay. At midnight I went with Otto
+Boehm to pull the dory up above the tide and overturn her, and then
+continued letter writing until three-thirty A.M.
+
+December first and every day of our stay at Seward was calm and fair.
+We kept house in our cottage, I continually busy writing and doing up
+Christmas presents, for a steamer had entered on the thirtieth and was
+due to leave Sunday night, the first. The people of Seward are
+friendly without being the slightest bit inquisitive, and they are
+extremely broad-minded for all that their country is remote from the
+greater world. I don't believe that provincialism is an inevitable
+evil of far-off communities. The Alaskan is alert, enterprising,
+adventurous. Men stand on their own feet--and why not? The confusing
+intricacy of modern society is here lacking. The men's own hands take
+the pure gold from the rocks; no one is another's master. It's a great
+land--the best by far I have ever known.
+
+What a telltale of reaction from our lonely island life is this
+roseate vision of the little city of the far northwest! We came in
+time to see Seward quite differently and, with confidence in Alaska,
+to believe it to be in no way a typical and true Alaskan town. The
+"New York of the Pacific," as it is gloriously acclaimed in the
+literature of its Chamber of Commerce, numbers its citizens perhaps at
+half a thousand--the tenacious remnant of the many more who years ago
+trusted our government to fulfill its promises to really build and
+operate a railroad into the interior. One's indignation fires at the
+recital of the men of Seward's wrongs,--until you recollect that
+Seward was built for speculation, not for industry, and that by the
+chance turn of the wheel many have merely reaped loss instead of
+profit. There are no resources at that spot to be developed and there
+is consequently no industry.
+
+Seward is planned for growth and equipped for commerce. Wide avenues
+and numbered blocks adorn the town-site maps where to the naked eye
+the land's a wilderness of stumps and briars. The center of the
+built-up portion of the town, one street of two blocks' length, is
+modern with electric lights and concrete pavements. The stores are
+wonderfully good; there are two banks and several small hotels, a
+baker from Ward's bakery in New York and a French barber from the
+Hotel Buckingham. There's a good grammar school, a hospital, and
+churches of all sorts. There is no public library; apparently one
+isn't badly missed. Seward's a tradesmen's town and tradesmen's views
+prevail,--narrow reactionary thought on modern issues and a trembling
+concern at the menace of organized labor. A strike of the three
+newsboys of the Seward paper plunged the poor fool its printer into
+frantic fear of an I. W. W. plot. But even Seward smiled at the little
+man's terror. The worst of Seward is itself; the best is the strong
+men that by chance are there or that pass through from the great
+Alaska.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITTLER]
+
+December second was a day for shopping. I bought all manner of
+Christmas things, things for the tree, things to eat, little presents
+for Olson--but nothing for Rockwell. He and I must do without presents
+this Christmas. Then more letters were written. A wood block that I
+had cut proved, on my seeing a proof of it, to be absolutely
+worthless.
+
+December third I had still so much mail and business to attend to that
+I stayed over another day. Set a door frame for Brownell and spent
+that evening at his house. The postmaster came too, fine fellow, and
+we'd a great evening taking turns singing songs--and the P. M. did
+mighty well with "School-master Mishter O'Toole." The day I'd spent
+writing and gossiping about town.
+
+I heard then a story about Olson that's worth while. He was once
+telling a crowd of men about the reindeer to the northward. Among his
+listeners was a Jew who was annoyed with his "hectoring." At last this
+joker asked: "Olson, if you bred a reindeer to a Swede what would you
+get?" "You'd get a Jew," replied Olson. The Jew, who still lives in
+Seward, has not bothered Olson since. The old man has a rare
+reputation for his honesty and truth and all round sterling qualities.
+
+It's truly a satisfaction to be in a country where men are alert
+enough to take no offense at alertness, where enterprise is so common
+a virtue that it arouses no suspicion, and where it is the rule to
+mind your own business.
+
+December fourth we set about to leave for Fox Island. It took two
+hours to wind up our final business in town and embark. Brownell
+helped with the boat. Of course the engine balked for fifteen minutes
+and then (not "of course") went beautifully. After traveling a quarter
+of a mile I learned that Rockwell had left our clock standing in the
+snow by Olson's cabin. So for that we went back. Brownell saw us and
+brought it.
+
+The trip was swift and smooth. At Caine's Head it began to snow,
+obscuring Fox Island, but I knew the course. In mid-channel the engine
+stopped. After ten minutes' tinkering it resumed going and went
+beautifully till we rounded the head of our cove. Then it sputtered
+and I had continually to crank it. However, it carried us to thirty or
+forty feet of the shore when it breathed its last, thanks to the snow
+that had by now thoroughly wet the engine and ourselves. We unloaded
+and with great labor hauled up the dory and turned her over. That
+night I was exhausted and went straight to bed, leaving Rockwell at
+his drawing. So now we're on Fox Island again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HOME
+
+
+ Thursday, December fifth (Continued).
+
+Mild rainy, snowy, sleepy--this first day back at home.
+
+I've done little work and dared look at but one picture--that of
+Superman--and it appears truly magnificent. The sky of it is luminous
+as with northern lights, and the figure lives. After all it is Life
+which man sees and which he tries to hold and in his Art to recreate.
+To that end he bends every resource straining at what limits him. If
+he could only be free, free to rise beyond the limits of expression
+into _being!_ at his prophetic vision of man's destiny assuming
+himself the lineaments of it, in stature grown gigantic, rearing
+upwards beyond the narrow clouds of earth into the unmeasured space of
+night, his countenance glowing, his arms outstretched in an embrace of
+wider worlds! This is the spirit and the gesture of Superman.--So I'm
+not unhappy. Now work begins again. For weeks there'll be no mail in
+Seward and for more weeks none here.
+
+
+ Friday, December sixth.
+
+I'm reading a little book on Dürer. What a splendid civilization that
+was in the Middle Ages, with all its faults. To men with my interests
+can anything be more conclusive proof of the superiority of that age
+to this than the position of the artist and the scholar in the
+community? Let me quote from Dürer's diary. (Antwerp, a banquet at the
+burgomaster's hall.)
+
+ "All their service was of silver, and they had other splendid
+ ornaments and very costly meats. All their wives were there
+ also. And as I was being led to the table the company stood on
+ both sides as if they were leading some great lord. And there
+ were among them men of very high position, who all treated me
+ with respectful bows, and promised to do everything in their
+ power agreeable to me that they knew of. And as I was sitting
+ there in such grandeur, Adrian Horebouts, the syndic of Antwerp,
+ came with two servants and presented me with four cans of wine
+ in the name of the Town Councillors of Antwerp, and they had bid
+ him say that they wish thereby to show their respect for me and
+ assure me of their good will. Wherefore I returned my humble
+ thanks--etc. After that came Master Peeter, the town carpenter,
+ and presented me with two cans of wine, with the offer of his
+ willing services. So when we had spent a long and merry time
+ together till late at night, they accompanied us home with
+ lanterns in great honor."
+
+Oh land of porcelain bath-tubs! A man has only to leave all that by
+which we to-day estimate culture to realize that all of his own
+civilization goes with him right to the back woods, and lives there
+with him refined and undiminished by the hardships there.
+
+Civilization is not measured by the poverty or the wealth of the few
+or of the millions, nor by monarchy, republicanism, or even Freedom,
+nor by whether we work with hands or levers,--but by the final fruit
+of all of these, that imperishable record of the human spirit, Art.
+The obituary of to-day in America has surely now been written in the
+poor workshop of some struggling, unknown man. That is all that the
+future will know of us.
+
+All records for winds are broken by what rages to-night. From the
+northwest it piles into our cove. The windows are coated with salt,
+and tons of flying water sail in clouds out of the bay hiding the
+mountains from the base to half their height. Our rafters bend beneath
+the blast; ice--from we know not where--falls upon us with a
+thundering noise. The canvases suspended aloft sway and flap, and from
+end to end of the cabin the breeze roves at will. It's so ridiculously
+bad and noisy and cold that Rockwell and I just laugh. But the wood is
+plentiful for we cut some more to-day.
+
+[Illustration: "GET UP!"]
+
+Last night at bedtime the wind had risen. At some midnight hour the
+stove went out for I awoke at two and found the cold all about us and
+the wind hard at it. So with a generous use of kerosene the fire was
+made to burn again and I returned to a good night's rest. Somehow one
+doesn't mind short exposures to the cold. Many a day I have stood
+naked out in the wind and then become at once glowing warm again in
+the hot cabin. Baked bread to-day and it turned out very well.
+Painted, shivered, wrote, and to-night shall try to design a picture
+of the "Weird of the Gods." But at this moment our supper is ready and
+two hungry, cold mortals cannot be kept from their corn mush.
+
+
+ Saturday, December seventh.
+
+Late! Now that we have a clock--I stole one in Seward--we live by
+system, our hours are regular. The clock I set by the tide, marking
+the rise of the water in the new-fallen snow. We rise at 7.30. It is
+then not yet sunrise but fairly light. Breakfast is soon cooked and
+eaten. To start the blood going hard for a good day's work we spring
+out-of-doors and chop and split and saw in the glorious, icy
+north-wind. Then painting begins. I have scared Olson away--poor
+soul--but I make it up by calling on him just at dark when my painting
+hours are over.
+
+Now it's eleven at night and I've still my bit to read. Whew, but
+it's cold to-night and the wind is rising to a gale. And last
+night!--what a bitter one. I got up four times to feed the ravenous
+fire. And even so the water pails froze. We cannot afford to let it
+freeze much in the cabin for our stores are all exposed. What if the
+Christmas cider should freeze and burst! I painted out of doors
+to-day--in sneakers! and stood it just about as long as one would
+imagine. To love the cold is a sign of youth--and we do love it, the
+Awakener.
+
+
+ Sunday, December eighth.
+
+Log cabins stuffed with moss should be wonderful in the tropics. I'm
+about frozen. On this work table I must weight my papers down to keep
+them from flying about the room. And the wind is icy; it is bitterly,
+bitterly cold. Olson says we need expect no colder weather than this
+all winter. Of course we don't really mind it. The stove is red hot
+and we may go as close to it as we please, and the bed is warm--except
+towards morning. At night I move my jugs of yeast and cider toward the
+stove, fill the "air-tight" to the top, pile blankets and wrappers
+upon the bed, and sleep happily.
+
+The gale still rages, fortunately not with its utmost fury. This
+morning Rockwell and I hurried through our chores and then climbed to
+the low ridge of the island. The snow in the woods is crusted and bore
+us up well so that we traveled with ease and soon reached the crest.
+Ah, there it was glorious; such blue and gold and rose! We looked down
+upon the spit and saw the sea piling upon it; we looked seaward and
+saw the snow blown from the land, the spray and the mist rising in
+clouds toward the sun,--and the sun, the beautiful sun shone on us. We
+took a number of pictures and then with numbed fingers and toes raced
+down the slope playing man-pursued-by-a-bear. Rockwell was wonderful
+to look at with his cheeks so red and clear. He loved our little
+excursion.
+
+And for the rest of the day we've worked. I stretched and coated
+three large canvases, hateful job! painted, sawed wood, felled a
+tree--which the wind carried over onto another so that there it hangs
+neither up nor down,--and that's about all. It's again eleven and time
+for bed. The night is beautiful even if it is terrible; and the young
+moon is near setting.
+
+[Illustration: MAN]
+
+
+ Monday, December ninth.
+
+It blows worse than ever, and it is colder. All day the blue sky has
+been hidden in clouds of vapor and flying spray. The bay seethes and
+smokes and huge breakers race across it. It is truly bitter weather.
+Olson to-night ventured the prophecy that this was about the
+culmination of winter--but I know Olson by now. I cut another tree
+this morning to release the one of yesterday and both fell with a
+magnificent crash. Then we went to work with the cross-cut saw and
+stocked our day's wood.
+
+Olson called this afternoon and related his recollection of the early
+days of Nome.
+
+ "A certain man," he began, "deserted from a whaler that stopped
+ for water on the north coast of Alaska. He'd been shanghaied in
+ San Francisco and was a tailor by trade. He made his way down
+ the coast with the occasional help of the esquimaux. At last he
+ came to Nome. The men were gone from the native village but a
+ woman took him in. She was named English Mary. Now she had heard
+ of the gold finds on the Yukon and she asked the man if he was a
+ miner. He answered, 'Yes.' 'You come with me,' she said, and led
+ him to a certain creek and showed him the shining nuggets lying
+ thick upon the bottom. But the tailor really knew nothing about
+ gold and let it lie. He continued down the coast and was at last
+ carried to St. Michael. There he met a missionary and a young
+ fellow who had come to Alaska with a party of prospectors. With
+ those two he returned in a boat to Nome. You'll hear different
+ stories, to be sure, of how they got there but this is the right
+ one, for I've seen the boat they came in lying there off the
+ beach. Well, they came and saw the gold but none of them could
+ say for certain what it was. So one of them went off to get a
+ man from the party of prospectors with whom the young fellow had
+ come to Alaska. At last they got him there and he proved that it
+ was sure enough gold. They staked their claims and began to work
+ them. But word of gold travels fast and already others began to
+ come. The miner of that first party drew up mining laws for the
+ country and these were enforced. I was up on the Yukon when I
+ heard of the first find at Nome. I went down and arrived there
+ in the fall, a little more than a year after the strike. By that
+ time there was quite a number there.
+
+ "Some man had drawn up a plan of a town and was selling lots. I
+ bought one on the northwest corner of the block. It was on the
+ tundra. (Tundra is vegetation covered ice, soggy to a foot's
+ depth.) There was a tent on my lot and some wood, so I bought
+ those too. But shortly after when I came home one day from
+ prospecting I found that both the tent and the wood had been
+ stolen. I bought lumber for the frame of a new tent. It cost me
+ thirty dollars; that is, fifty cents a foot. By that time all
+ kinds of people were pouring into Nome. They were taking out
+ gold on the creek, those that had claims, at the rate of $5000
+ in a couple of hours. It was so heavy in the sand you couldn't
+ handle a pan-full.
+
+ "Someone cut into my tent and cleaned me out--but I had nothing
+ much besides a jack-knife. I borrowed ten dollars and went to
+ work at a dollar an hour. A couple of rascals had come there, a
+ judge and a lawyer; and they began to get busy swindling
+ everybody out of their titles to claims. It was said openly
+ that if you saw anyone's claim 'jump it,' and the lawyers would
+ make more money for you than you could get out in gold. There
+ was no use in a man without money trying to hold a claim. And
+ the crowd that was there! Gamblers, sharps, actors,--men and
+ women of every kind--and they did act so foolish!--all out of
+ their heads over the gold. The brothels were running wide open
+ and robberies occurred in the town by daylight. Every man slept
+ with his gun beside him and if he shot it was to kill. The
+ robbers chloroformed men as they slept in their tents.
+
+ "There were thousands of people then and you could look out on
+ the beach and see them swarming like flies. Everything was
+ overturned for gold,--the entire beach for ten miles both ways
+ from Nome was shoveled off into the sea. They dug under the
+ Indian village till the houses fell in, and even under the
+ graveyard."
+
+[Illustration: WOMAN]
+
+And so Olson's story continues. A story of his life would really
+be--as an old pioneer in Seward told me--a history of Alaska. Because
+Olson has never succeeded he has been everywhere and tried everything.
+I have not done him justice in my abridgment of his Nome story. His
+recollections are so intimate. He remembers the words spoken in every
+situation and never, no matter how much an adventure centers in
+himself, does he depart in what he tells of himself from his character
+as I know him.
+
+I would not have devoted all of the time I have to this day's entry if
+I had not a good day's work to my credit including the conception of a
+new picture so vivid that the doing of it will be mere copying. It is
+the "North Wind." Surely after the past four days I may tell with
+authority of that wild Prince from the North.
+
+
+ Wednesday, December eleventh.
+
+Yesterday was too gloomy a day for me to risk a page in this journal.
+As to weather it was another fierce one, cold and windy. As to work
+accomplished--nothing. Olson in his cabin, on such a day, is a treat
+to see. I open the door and enter. There he sits near the stove, a
+black astrakhan cap on his head and the two female goats in full
+possession of the cabin. Nanny the milch goat is a most affectionate
+creature. She lays her head on Olson's lap and as he scratches her
+head her eyes close in blissful content.
+
+"See her pretty little face," says Olson, "and her lovely lips." He's
+certainly the kindest creature to animals--and to human ones too we
+have good reason to know.
+
+To-day it is milder. The vapor is thick on the bay but it lies low
+upon the water and the magnificent mountains sparkle in the sunlight.
+
+Work has gone better for me and it has been a day not without
+accomplishment. I baked bread--beautiful bread, cut wood, helped Olson
+a bit, and had a glorious rough-house with my son. He's a great
+fighter. I train him for the fights he's bound to have some day by
+letting him attack me with all his strength; and that has come to be
+not a little thing.
+
+
+ Friday, December thirteenth.
+
+In the midst of letter writing I stop to note down a dramatic cloud
+effect. That's the way the day's work goes. If I'm out-of-doors busy
+with the saw or axe I jump at once to my paints when an idea comes.
+It's a fine life and more and more I realize that for me at least such
+isolation--not from my friends but from the unfriendly world--is the
+only right life for me. My energy is too unrestrained to have offered
+to it the bait for fight and play that the city holds out, without its
+being spent in absolutely profitless and trivial enterprises. And here
+what a haven of peace! Almost the last touch is added to its
+perfection by the sweet nature of the old man Olson. I have never
+known such a man. I'm no admirer of the "picturesqueness" of rustic
+character. Seen close to it's generally damnably stupid and coarse. I
+have seen the working class from near at hand and without illusion.
+But Olson! he has such tact and understanding, such kindness and
+courtesy as put him outside of all classes, where true men belong.
+
+To-night it looked like the picture I have drawn. These are beautiful
+days. Yesterday it was as calm in our little cove as one would look
+for on a summer's day. The day was blue and mild, a day for work. I
+made of my "North Wind" the most beautiful picture that ever was. I
+stood it facing outwards in the doorway and from far off it still
+showed as vivid, _more_ vivid, and brilliant than nature itself. It's
+the first time I've taken my pictures into the broad light. There's
+where they should be seen.
+
+Last night was calm until four o'clock in the morning. Then the wind
+again struck in and the trees roared and the roof creaked and groaned.
+To-day it was calmer. We began by felling a tall spruce more than two
+feet in diameter. It lies now near the cabin a great screen of
+evergreen. Its wood should last us many weeks. I painted out-of-doors
+on two pictures. That's bitterly cold work--to crouch down in the
+snow; through bent knees the blood goes slowly, feet are numbed,
+fingers stiffen. But then the warm cabin is near....
+
+This minute I've returned from splitting wood out in the moonlight. On
+days when painting goes with spirit the chores are left undone.
+
+If only it were possible to put down faithfully all of Olson's
+stories! Last night he told of his return to San Francisco from the
+Yukon thirty years ago, how the little band of weather-beaten,
+crippled miners appeared on their return to civilization. Olson was on
+crutches from scurvy, his beard and hair were of a year's growth; all
+were in their working clothes, all bearded, brown, free spirited. And
+their wealth they carried on them in bags, gold, some to $7000 worth.
+As Olson tells it you yourself live in that day. You hear the German
+landlady of the "Chicago Hotel" in San Francisco, a motherly woman who
+put all the grub on the table at once so you could help yourself, say,
+"You boys have some of you been in Alaska for years and I know about
+how you've lived. Now that you're back you must have a hankering for
+some things. Tell me whatever you want and I'll get it for you." And
+up spoke one big fellow, "I remember how my mother used to have
+cabbage. I want you to get me one big head and cook it and let me have
+it all to myself!"
+
+That night they went to the music halls in their miners' clothes all
+as they were, and drank gallons of beer; and from the boxes and the
+balconies the girls all clamored to be asked to join them--who were
+such free spenders. Two days later they were paid in coin for their
+gold--by the mint--and all went to the tailors and got them fine suits
+of clothes.... And so it continues. And he told of Custer's massacre.
+And, to-night of the sagacity of horses in leading a trapper back to
+the traps he'd set and maybe lost. When a horse swims with you across
+a stream guide him with your hand on his neck, but pull not ever so
+little on the line or he'll rear backwards in the water and likely
+drown himself and you.
+
+
+ Saturday, December fourteenth.
+
+A pretty useless day. No work accomplished but the daily chores. What
+is there to say of such a day. Olson brought over his letter to
+Kathleen to-night and read it to us. It's just like him to be really
+himself even at letter writing. The letter is full of nice humor.
+"She'll think what kind of an old fool is that," he said, "but what do
+I care. I'll just say whatever I feel like saying." And he always
+does. In a mild way he lives Blake's proverb, "Always speak the
+truth and base men will avoid you." Some people have found Olson
+very rough and ill-mannered.
+
+[Illustration: FOREBODING]
+
+Made bread to-night and stamped about seventy-five envelopes with my
+device. To-night it is mild and overcast. A light snow has begun to
+fall. So far this winter the fall of snow has been extremely light. It
+should bank up almost to the cabin's eaves.... My bed awaits me.
+Good-night.
+
+
+ Sunday, December fifteenth.
+
+This is another day that is hardly worth recording, one that would not
+be missed from a life.
+
+It's time something were again said about young Rockwell who is the
+real, live, crowning beauty of the community. Weeks have passed since
+I last recorded his fresh delight in everything here. It is the same
+to-day. For hours he plays alone out-of-doors. Now he's an animal
+crawling on all fours along the trunk of a tree that I have felled,
+going out upon its horizontal branches as the porcupines do, hiding
+himself in the foliage and growling fiercely--hours long it
+seems--while the foolish goats flee in terror and the foxes race
+wildly up and down the extent of their corral. Again he's a browsing
+creature eating the spruce needles with decided relish,--doing it so
+seriously. Truly he lives the part he plays when it is one of his
+beloved wild creatures. Then he tears up and down the beach mounted
+like a four-year-old kid on a stick horse, yelling as loud as he can,
+going to the water's edge, and racing the swell as it mounts the
+slope. And presently I capture him for his end of the saw. At that he
+no longer knows fatigue,--he's as good as a man. He really never tires
+and the work goes on with a fine, jolly good-will that makes of the
+hardest chore one of the day's pleasures. Rockwell is lonely at times;
+but if he tells me he'd like somebody to play with he's sure to add in
+the same breath, "Ah well, never mind."
+
+I don't know how such a haphazard education if continued would fit him
+for participation in the "practical" affairs of life. But I am
+convinced that if all the little beauties of spirit that can now be
+seen budding could be allowed free, clean growth, quite away from the
+brutal hand of mass influences, we'd have nothing less than the full
+and perfect flowering of a human soul;--and in our reachings toward
+supermanhood none can do more.
+
+Here, as an example, is an achievement of his imagination that it is
+hard to picture as surviving long in the atmosphere of a large school.
+Rockwell for two or three years has called himself the "mother of all
+things." It is not a figure of speech with him but an attitude towards
+life. If it were the creed of a great poet--and it could be--the
+discerning critic might discover it to be of the profoundest
+significance in modern thought. In little Rockwell it is of one piece
+with his whole spirit which expresses itself in his love for all
+animals, the fiercest to the mildest, and for all growing things. The
+least manifestation of that which is thought to be _typical_ cruelty
+of boys outrages his whole nature.
+
+I am far from believing Rockwell to be a unique example of childhood.
+I think that while cruelty appears uppermost where boys herd together,
+the love of animals is no less characteristic of many sensitive
+children. But of this I am certain,--that nothing will make a child
+more ridiculous in the eyes of the mob child than this most perfect
+and most beautiful attitude of some children toward life. In
+considering the education of a child and weighing what is to be gained
+or lost by one system or another I am inclined to think that no gain
+can outweigh the loss to a child of its loving, non-predatory
+impulses.
+
+
+ Tuesday, December seventeenth.
+
+Once a miner died and presently found his way to the gates of heaven.
+
+
+"What do you want?" said St. Peter.
+
+"To come in, of course."
+
+"What sort of man are you?"
+
+"I'm a miner."
+
+"Well," said St. Peter, "we've never had anyone of that kind here
+before, so I suppose you might as well come in."
+
+But the miner once within the gates fell to tearing up the golden
+streets of heaven, digging ditches and tunnels all over the place and
+making a frightful mess of it all. At last a second miner presented
+himself at the gates.
+
+"Not on your life," said St. Peter. "We have one miner here and we
+only wish we knew some way to get rid of him. He's tearing up the
+whole place."
+
+"Only let me in," said the second miner, "and I'll promise to get rid
+of that fellow for you." So St. Peter admitted him.
+
+This second miner easily found the other who was hard at work amid a
+shower of flying earth. Going up to him he cried in an undertone:
+"Partner! They've struck gold in Hell!"
+
+The miner dropped his work and sprang toward the gates. "Peter, Peter,
+open, open! Let me out of Heaven, I'm off to Hell!"
+
+[Illustration: LONE MAN]
+
+What a book of yarns and jokes this is becoming! To-day work went a
+little better--and the weather a little worse. It pours. For the end
+of December it is wonderfully mild; but then I expect little really
+cold weather here. To-night it is full moon. The tide is at its
+highest for the year and the southeast wind piles the water up till it
+reaches and overflows the land. Olson expects it to touch his house
+to-night if the wind continues. Tree trunks, uprooted somewhere from
+the soil, monstrous and grotesque, grind along our beach; the water is
+full of driftwood and wreckage.
+
+
+ Wednesday, December eighteenth.
+
+There's a little bucket of dough that stands forever on the shelf
+behind the stove. Sour dough is made with yeast, flour, and water to
+the consistency of a bread sponge and then allowed to stand
+indefinitely. For all that you take out you add more flour and water
+to what's left in the bucket and that shortly is as fit for use as the
+original mixture. Alaskans use it extensively as the basis for bread
+and hot cakes. You add but a pinch of soda and a little water to the
+proper consistency and it's all ready for use. The old time Alaskans
+rejoice in the honorable title of "Sour Doughs."
+
+Olson's cabin in Seward stands comfortably on a little lot in a quite
+thickly settled part of the town. I wondered at his affluence in
+possessing a house and lot. Here is its history as he told it to me
+to-night. When Olson first came to Seward he built--or he bought
+already built--a little cabin standing on a part of the beach now
+occupied by the railroad yard. In course of time he went to Valdez for
+a winter's work. Returning, he found no cabin. It was gone from that
+spot and he has not found it since. But corporations and governments
+are nothing to Olson when he feels himself injured. He went to one
+official and said, "See here! Winter's at hand and I have no house,
+what are you going to do about it?" Well, they would see what could be
+done, and in time referred him to a higher authority. "I want a
+cabin," Olson said to this one. "If you don't _give_ me the lumber to
+build one with I'll have to steal it from you. I have no money and no
+cabin. Winter is here and I'm certainly going to live in a cabin this
+winter." So they gave him an old shed to tear down and use but told
+him not to build on the beach. The town of Seward was laid off in
+lots. By the stakes Olson could tell a lot from a street, and fair and
+square on a lot, somebody's lot, he put his cabin. The owner of the
+land was tolerant and let it stay there a few years; but one day he
+ordered Olson's house taken off. So Olson carried it somehow out into
+the middle of the street where it fitted in nicely among the tree
+stumps. Well and good for a little time till in the summer before last
+the town of Seward improved that street and sent a man and team to
+remove the stumps. "If you're paid to remove the stumps you may as
+well move my house for me," said Olson. "Where to?" asked the man.
+"You can suit yourself," said Olson. So the cabin was again planted on
+a "desirable" lot of somebody's,--and there it stands to-day, neat and
+trim, with a little wooden walk connecting its doorway with the plank
+sidewalk of the street. Alaska is, to be sure, a great free country!
+
+To-day has been wonderfully mild and comfortable. From time to time
+the rain has fallen gently. Over the water the clouds have drooped,
+hiding the mountain peaks. The sea has been glassy save for the long
+swell--and this more to be _heard_ upon the beach than seen. Rockwell
+and I at dusk walked the shore out to the point between the coves. We
+saw the glowing sky where the sun had set, the mountainous islands to
+the southward, and our own cove and its mountain ramparts--beautiful
+in the black and white of the spruces and the snow. If I but had my
+prepared canvas I'd make large studies of the many views from this
+point.
+
+Rockwell at dinner begged me repeatedly to have part of his junket
+besides my own. I wondered at it for although he is always considerate
+and polite this was almost too much. And in other ways I noticed his
+alacrity to be obliging. Later in the day he told me, after much
+embarrassment, that he had made up his mind to be nicer about
+everything and to do more for me,--and yet I had previously found no
+fault with him; how could I! So ends a day;--and again I think that in
+this country I would gladly live for years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHRISTMAS
+
+
+ Thursday, December nineteenth.
+
+This day is never to be forgotten, so beautiful, so calm, so still
+with the earth and every branch and tree muffled in deep, feathery,
+new-fallen snow. And all day the softest clouds have drifted lazily
+over the heaven shrouding the land here and there in veils of falling
+snow, while elsewhere or through the snow itself the sun shone. Golden
+shadows, dazzling peaks, fairy tracery of branches against the blue
+summer sea! It was a day to Live,--and work could be forgotten.
+
+So Rockwell and I explored the woods, at first reverently treading one
+path that the snow about us might still lie undisturbed. But soon the
+cub in the boy broke out and he rolled in the deepest thickets, shook
+the trees down upon himself, lay still in the snow for me to cover him
+completely, washed his face till it was crimson, and wound up with a
+naked snow-bath. I photographed him standing thus in the deep snow at
+the water's edge with the mountains far off behind him. Then he dried
+himself at the roaring fire we'd made ready and felt like a new
+boy--if that can be imagined. We both sketched out-of-doors for a
+little while in the morning like young lady amateurs. I tried it again
+two or three times throughout the day with indifferent results; it was
+too beautiful. We cut wood too, and that went with a zest. While
+Rockwell dried himself after his bath I searched in the woods for a
+Christmas tree and cut a fair-sized one at last for its top. Christmas
+is right upon us now. To-night the cranberries stew on the stove.
+
+
+ Friday, December twentieth.
+
+The beautiful snow is fast going under the falling rain! With only
+five more days before Christmas it is probable we'll have little if
+any snow on the ground then. A snowless Christmas in Alaska!
+
+This day was as uneventful as could be. Part of the morning was
+consumed in putting a new handle into the sledge hammer. It was too
+dark to paint long, really hardly an hour of daylight. These days slip
+by so easily and with so little accomplished! Only by burning midnight
+oil can much be done.
+
+
+ Sunday, December twenty-second.
+
+Both yesterday and to-day it has poured rain. They've not been
+unpleasant days, however. Occasional let-ups have allowed us to cut
+wood and get water without inconvenience. This morning Olson, fearing
+that a continuance of the mild weather would melt the ice in the lake
+and send his bags of fish to the bottom, went out to the center of the
+lake where they hung suspended through a hole in the ice and brought
+them in. But so precarious has the ice become that he carried a rope
+and took me along in case of trouble. To get out upon the ice we had
+to go some distance along the lake's shore.
+
+Returning we missed meeting Rockwell who had gone to join us. Not for
+some time did it occur to me to call him. It was well I did call. The
+poor boy on not seeing us had suddenly concluded we were drowned. A
+strip of water separated him from the ice. He was on the point of
+wading into this at the moment I called him. He was still terribly
+excited when he reached us.
+
+Both days I have been occupied with humble, housewifely
+duties,--baking, washing, mending, and now the cabin is adorned with
+our drying clothes. Here where water must be carried so far it is the
+wet days that are wash days. Darning is a wretched nuisance. We should
+have socks enough to tide us over our stay here. Last night after
+Rockwell had been put to bed I sat down and did two of the best
+drawings I have made. At half past twelve I finished them, and then to
+calm my elation a bit for sleep read in the "Odyssey." At this my
+second reading of the book it's as intensely interesting--or more
+so--than before. As a story it is incomparably better than the
+"Iliad." To me it is full of suggestions for wonderful pictures.
+
+Ten days from now it comes due for Olson to go to Seward. If only then
+we have mild, calm weather! But as yet we have seen no steamer go to
+Seward since early in the month. It looks as if the steamship
+companies had combined to deprive Alaska of its Christmas mail and
+freight in a policy of making the deadlock with the government over
+the mail contracts intolerable. Meanwhile, instead of serving us, the
+jaunty little naval cruisers that summered here in idleness doubtless
+loaf away the winter months in comfortable southern ports.
+
+[Illustration: CAIN]
+
+
+ Monday, December twenty-third.
+
+Up to this morning the hard warm rain continued, and now the stars are
+all out and it might be thought a night in spring. At eight-thirty I
+walked over in sneakers and underwear for a moment's call on Olson,
+but he had gone to bed. And now although we'll have no snow the
+weather is fair for Christmas.
+
+If Olson believes, as he says, that Christmas will pass as any other
+day he is quite wrong. The tree waits to be set up and it will surely
+be a thing of beauty blazing with its many candles in this somber log
+interior. I've given up the idea of dressing Olson as Santa Claus in
+goat's wool whiskers. Santa Claus without presents would move us to
+tears. There are a few little gifts,--a pocketknife and a kitchen set
+of knife, fork, and can-opener for Olson. An old broken fountain pen
+for Rockwell, some sticks of candy,--and the dinner! What shall it be?
+Wait!
+
+It is midnight. I've just finished a good drawing. The lamp is about
+at its accustomed low mark--yesterday it had to be filled twice! Those
+nights when without a clock I sat up so late and to so uncertain an
+hour I have discovered by the lamp and clock together to have been
+really long. My bedtime then was after two or three o'clock--but I
+arose later. To-day I finished a little picture for Olson and so did
+Rockwell. These were forgotten in my list of presents as I've just
+written it. I have shown in my picture the king of the island himself
+striding out to feed the goats while Billy, rearing on his hind legs,
+tries to steal the food on the way. Rockwell's picture is of Olson
+surrounded by all the goats in a more peaceful mood. Olson's cabin is
+in the background. I wish we had more to give the good old man. At any
+rate he dines with us.
+
+
+ Christmas Eve!
+
+We've cleaned house, stowed everything away upon shelves and hooks and
+in corners, moved even my easel aside; decorated the roof timbers
+with dense hemlock boughs, stowed quantities of wood behind the
+stove--for there must be no work on that holiday--and now both
+Rockwell and I are in a state of suppressed excitement over to-morrow.
+
+What a strange thing! Nothing is coming to us, no change in any
+respect in the routine of our lives but what we make ourselves,--and
+yet the day looms so large and magnificent before us! I suppose the
+greatest festivals of our lives are those at which we dance ourselves.
+You need nothing from outside,--not even illusion. Certainly children
+need to be given scarcely an idea to develop out of it an atmosphere
+of mystery and expectation as real and thrilling to themselves as if
+it rested upon true belief.
+
+Well, the tree is ready, cut to length with a cross at the foot to
+stand upon, and a cardboard and tin-foil star to hang at its top. And
+now as to Christmas weather. This morning, as might just as well have
+been expected, was again overcast. Toward evening light snow began to
+fall. It soon turned to rain and the rain now has settled down to a
+gentle, even, all-night-and-day pace. Let it snow or rain and grow
+dark at midday! The better shall be our good Christmas cheer within.
+This is the true Christmas land. The day _should_ be dark, the house
+further overshadowed by the woods, tall and black. And there in the
+midst of that somber, dreadful gloom the Christmas tree should blaze
+in glory unrivaled by moon or sun or star.
+
+
+ Christmas Day on Fox Island.
+
+It is mild; the ground is almost bare and a warm rain falls. First the
+Christmas tree all dripping wet is brought into the house and set upon
+its feet. It is nine feet and a half high and just touches the peak of
+the cabin. There it stands and dries its leaves while Rockwell and I
+prepare the feast.
+
+[Illustration: SUPERMAN]
+
+Both stoves are kept burning and the open door lets in the cool air.
+Everything goes beautifully; the wood burns as it should, the oven
+heats, the kettle boils, the beans stew, the bread browns in the oven
+just right, and the new pudding sauce foams up as rich and delicious
+as if instead of the first it were the hundredth time I'd made it. And
+now everything is ready. The clock stands at a quarter to three. Night
+has about fallen and lamp light is in the cabin.
+
+"Run, Rockwell, out-of-doors and play awhile." Quickly I stow the
+presents about the tree, hang sticks of candy from it, and light the
+candles.
+
+Rockwell runs for Mr. Olson, and just as they approach the cabin the
+door opens and fairyland is revealed to them. It is wonderful. The
+interior of the cabin is illuminated as never before, as perhaps no
+cabin interior ever was among these wild mountains. Then all amazed
+and wondering those two children come in. Who knows which is the more
+entranced?
+
+Then Olson and I drink in deep solemnity a silent toast; and the old
+man says, "I'd give everything--yes everything I have in the world--to
+have your wife here now!"
+
+And the presents are handed out. For Olson this picture from Rockwell.
+Ah, he thinks it's wonderful! Then for Rockwell this book--a surprise
+from Seward. Next for Olson a painting, a kitchen set, and a
+pocketknife. By this time he's quite overcome. It's the first
+Christmas he has ever had! And Rockwell, when he is handed two old
+copies of the "Geographic Magazine" cries in amazement, "Why I thought
+I was to have no presents!" But he gets besides a pocketknife and the
+broken fountain pen and sits on the bed looking at the things as if
+they were the most wonderful of gifts.
+
+Dinner is now set upon the table. Olson adjusts his glasses and reads
+the formal menu that lies at his place. So we feast and have a jolly
+good time.
+
+It is a true party and looks like one. Rockwell and I are in clean
+white shirts, Olson is magnificent in a new flannel shirt and his
+Sunday trousers and waistcoat. He wears a silk tie and in it a gold
+nugget pin. He is shaven, and clipped about the ears. How grand he
+looks! The food is good and plentiful, the night is long, only the
+Christmas candles are short-lived and we extinguish them to save them
+for another time. Finally as the night deepens Olson leaves us amid
+mutual expressions of delight in each other's friendship, and Rockwell
+and I tumble into bed.
+
+The next day and the next it is mild, resting--the weather seems to
+be--at this peaceful holiday season. We cut no wood and do little
+work. We write long letters, both of us, and consume at meal-time the
+food left over from Christmas. I read the "Odyssey," great story! Just
+now I am past that magnificent slaughter of the wooers, else these
+delayed pages would still be unwritten. A few more Odysseys to read
+here in this wild place and one could forget the modern world and
+return in manners and speech and thought to the heroic age. That
+would be an adventure worth trying! Maybe we are not so deeply
+permeated with the culture of to-day that we could not throw it off.
+Surely the spirit of the heroes strikes home to our hearts as we read
+of them in the ancient books.
+
+
+ Saturday, December twenty-eighth.
+
+For the first time in days the sun has risen in a clear sky and shone
+upon the mountains across from us. It is colder, for ice has formed
+again on the tub of water out-of-doors. But there is a little wind.
+
+I am writing in preparation for Olson's trip. He too is making ready.
+Food for the foxes is on the stove for many days' feeding, his engine
+gets a little burnishing--it's no insignificant voyage to Seward in
+the winter. If only it holds out fair and calm until a steamer comes!
+There's the hitch now. We have seen none go to Seward since the first
+of the month.
+
+To-morrow probably the Christmas tree must come down. The hemlock
+trimmings shed all over the cabin till to-day I tore them out. Last
+night we had our final lighting of the tree. Rockwell and I stood
+out-of-doors and looked in at it. What a marvelous sight in the
+wilderness. If only some hapless castaways had strayed in upon us
+lured by that light! We sang Christmas carols out there in the dark,
+did a Christmas dance on the shore, and then came in and while the
+tree still burned told each other stories. Rockwell's story was about
+the adventures of some children in the woods, full of thrilling
+climaxes. It came by the yard. I told him of an Indian boy who,
+longing for Christmas, went out into the dark woods at night and
+closed his eyes. And how behind his closed eyes he found a world rich
+in everything the other lacked. There was his Christmas tree and to it
+came the wild animals. They got each a present, the mother porcupine a
+box of little silken balls to stick onto her quills for decoration,
+and the father porcupine a toothbrush because his large teeth were so
+very yellow. After the story it was bedtime. Well ... this fair day
+has passed, and with the night have come clouds and a cold gloom
+foreboding snow. But I have learned to expect nothing of the weather
+but what it gives us.
+
+
+ Sunday, December twenty-ninth.
+
+Squirlie's birthday party. Squirlie is seated in a condensed milk box.
+At his back hangs a brown sweater. About him stand his presents
+consisting chiefly of feathers. The table is spread with the feast in
+shells and the whole is brilliantly illuminated by a Christmas tree
+candle. Long life to Squirlie and may he never fall to pieces nor be
+devoured by moths!
+
+
+ Monday, December thirtieth.
+
+Yesterday it rained gently, to-day it pours. I sit here with the door
+open and the stove slumbering--such weather in this country that the
+world believes to be an iceberg! But in Seward and on the mountains no
+doubt it is snowing enough. To-day I made so good a drawing that I'm
+sitting up as if the flight of time and the coming of morning were no
+concern of mine. It is half-past twelve!
+
+New Year's Eve! Tuesday. This is the tenth anniversary of Rockwell's
+parents and I have kept it as well as I could, working all day upon a
+drawing for his mother and to-night holding a kind of song service
+with Rockwell. Rockwell, who at nine years has every reason to
+celebrate to-day, however he may feel at twenty-nine, has written his
+mother a sweet little letter. I'm terribly homesick to-night and don't
+know what to say about it in these genial pages. It has been a solemn
+day.
+
+When Olson was here to-night I began from playing the flute to sing.
+He was delighted and I continued. What a strange performance here
+in the wilderness, a little boy, an old man, listening as I sing
+loudly and solemnly to them without accompaniment. Olson brought us a
+pan of goat's milk to-day, as he often does. I make junket of it and
+it is a truly delicious dish, ever so much better than when made of
+cow's milk. It resembles a jelly of pure cream.
+
+[Illustration: THE NORTH WIND]
+
+It has rained hard most of the day. At times a mist has hung in a band
+halfway up the mountain's height across the bay. It is a remarkable
+sight. To-night is as warm as any night in spring or autumn. It thaws
+continually and even the ice that once covered the ground beneath the
+snow is fast disappearing. The year goes out without a steamer having
+been seen to come with the Christmas mail.
+
+It is close to midnight. I have one secret resolution to make for the
+new year and, that I may make it as earnestly and as truly as
+possible, the stars and the black sky shall be my witness. And so with
+the year nineteen hundred and eighteen I end this page.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+NEW YEAR
+
+
+To Rockwell who asked what happened on the New Year that everybody sat
+up to see it come we tried hard to tell all sorts of yarns about
+explosions and rumblings, but he wouldn't believe a bit of it. He
+might have said, "How can anything like that happen here where nothing
+ever comes from the sky except rain?"
+
+So far the new year is just exactly like the old's latter end but that
+it is more joyous. And the joy came at eleven-thirty P.M. of January
+first, gliding by about two miles out in the bay, a dazzle of lights
+like a fairy citadel, the STEAMER! At my cry Rockwell sat up in bed
+and gazed too. Olson unfortunately was in bed and we did not call him.
+So I set at once to work writing, tying up parcels, making lists,
+until two o'clock of this morning.
+
+At eight we had Olson out of bed. I hung about there threatening him,
+ordering him, begging him to hurry. Old men are hard to move fast. He
+shaved standing up there in his cabin with the door wide open and the
+goats playing about him. I let him have a bite of breakfast, but not
+much. The dory had to be unbound--for we tie them to the ground--and
+turned right-side up, and loaded and launched,--but all that only
+after half an hour's cranking of the engine, the infernal things! It
+would look like snow one minute and be fair the next; but it held fair
+enough finally for Olson to get off and disappear--to our immense joy.
+He laughs at our eagerness to get him off for the mail.
+
+Yesterday was Olson's day for celebrating and many times we drank to
+the New Year together. But I _would_ work, to his disgust. Still he
+understands pretty well the strange madness that possesses me, and is
+not at all unsympathetic. I explained to him one day the difference
+between working to suit yourself and working to suit other people.
+He'd defy the world at any time he chose no matter how poor his
+fortunes.
+
+Well, now we wait for mail. Already I'm impatient for Olson's return
+and that cannot well be before the day after to-morrow. Rockwell and I
+walked around the bay in the afternoon more to have a look toward
+Seward where our mail comes from than for anything else. But Seward
+was hidden in falling snow. All the bay was shrouded in mist and snow.
+But our own cove was beautiful to look back upon with its white peaks
+and dark forest, and far down at the water's edge our tiny cabins from
+one of which the thick smoke of the smoldering fire curled upwards.
+
+
+ Sunday, January fifth.
+
+Olson is still away. It is wearing to wait this way in hope,--for we
+will hope even if the wind blows and the snow falls. And so it has
+done. The day following Olson's departure it was wonderfully fair and
+calm, but the next day, it being the day he should have returned, a
+heavy snowstorm set in. And to-day with less snow there was more
+wind,--not so much that he could not have come but enough that he
+didn't. We walked down the beach and scanned the bay with the glasses,
+and up to dark I looked continually for the little boat to be rounding
+the headland.
+
+[Illustration: ANOTHER OF ROCKWELL'S DRAWINGS]
+
+It seems as if that were all the news, but the days have really been
+full of work and other interest. The snow itself, lying deep and light
+and over all--even the tree tops--is a delight. Rockwell and I played
+bear and hunter to-day tracking each other in the woods. Only the
+goats are miserable these days with their browse all covered but what
+they can gnaw from the tree trunks. Billy at this season is a fury.
+One has really to go armed with a clout. Yesterday he burst in the
+door of Olson's shed and then inside managed to shut the door on
+himself. When I investigated the strange banging that I'd been hearing
+for some time, I found him. He had even piled things against the door.
+While no actual damage has been done he has tossed every blessed thing
+about with his horns. Boxes, pails, sacks of grain, cans, rope, tools,
+all lie piled in confusion about the floor. It does no good to beat
+the creature. He will learn nothing. It is about one-thirty A. M. I've
+written more than I intended writing. My heart is set upon the mail
+and nothing else.
+
+
+ Monday, January sixth.
+
+With Olson still away and the mail with him what can there be to
+report. It snows. It is so mild that we walk about hatless, coatless,
+mittenless. Drip, drip, drip, goes it from the eaves continuously. The
+snow has fallen from the trees. On the ground it lies deep and heavy.
+To-morrow maybe we shall take to snowshoes. Rockwell and I each took a
+trip along the beach to look for Olson. As I stood there peering into
+the haze toward Seward a head arose from the water close to me. It was
+a seal. He looked all about him for the greatest while, went under,
+reappeared again near by once more, and then was gone. Billy burst
+open that shed of Olson's again. Some day I shall murder a goat!
+
+
+ Wednesday, January eighth.
+
+Two more days and Olson still away. I'm furious at him. Yesterday he
+could well have come, to-day it has been impossible. We seem to do
+little here but wait. Even at the height of to-day's storm I found
+myself continually going to the little window to look for a boat. Rain
+and snow, rain and snow! Ah, if only we had our mail here--then these
+warm, white days would be delightful. Yesterday we wore our snowshoes
+for the first time, but only to tramp down the cove and look toward
+Seward.
+
+The only recompense for Olson's absence is Nanny's milk. I'm an expert
+milker now and can do the job before she finishes her cup of oats. I
+_have_ to, for at the finish she leaps madly to escape me. Goat's milk
+junket and orange marmalade; sublime!
+
+
+ Friday, January tenth.
+
+One hour ago it was as beautiful a moonlit night as one ever beheld.
+The softest veils of cloud passed the moon and cast over the earth
+endlessly varied, luminous shadows. The mountain tops, trees, rocks,
+and all, are covered with new snow; the valleys and the lower levels
+are black where rain has cleared the trees. It is so beautiful here at
+times that it seems hard to bear. And now at this moment the rain
+falls as if it had fallen for all time and never would cease. Oh
+Olson, Olson! Is it anything to you in your old age to be so madly
+wanted? Here it truly is conceivable that any condition of bad weather
+could visit us for months without relief. There seems no rhyme or
+reason to it until you see it as the reverse of marvelously fair
+weather; a blue sky is here as wrong as rain in a rainless desert
+land.
+
+Nothing has happened. I am making good drawings and have made two
+small woodcuts. Billy to-day again tackled the door of Olson's shed.
+My fixing of the lock proved _too_ good. That held--while he burst the
+door to pieces. I caught him at the finish of it; I become a maniac at
+such a time. I pursued the beast with a club in a mad chase through
+the heavy snow, catching him often enough to get some satisfaction at
+least in the beating I gave him. He fears me now and that's something
+gained. But it's a bad matter both for Billy and for me.
+
+It is now after midnight and I've just finished a drawing. Rockwell is
+concerned about these late hours and when I told him that I could work
+so very well alone at night he seriously suggested that I send him out
+in the daytime to stay all day without dinner so that I could work
+better. I'm reading about King Arthur and the round table to him;
+that's good for both of us. He has made himself a lance and a sword
+and to-morrow I expect to confer some sort of knighthood upon him.
+Apropos of the book of King Arthur, Rockwell said to-day, "I don't
+think the pictures in the book are half nice enough. I think of a
+wonderful picture when you read the story and then when I see the one
+in the book I'm disappointed." And these King Arthur pictures are
+rarely good in execution. It just shows that one need not attempt to
+palm off unimaginative stuff, much less trash, on children. The
+greatest artists are none too good to make the drawings for children's
+books. Imagination and romance in pictures and stories a child asks
+for above all, and those qualities in illustration are the rarest.
+
+[Illustration: WELTSCHMERZ]
+
+
+ Monday, January thirteenth.
+
+Of the three days that have again passed two have been quite fair
+enough for Olson to have come. Both yesterday and to-day Rockwell and
+I made frequent trips down the shore to look for him. It is terribly
+depressing to have your heart set upon that mail that doesn't come. I
+begin to think that some other cause than the weather holds Olson
+away. It is possible that the steamer we saw going to Seward was no
+mail steamer, and that Olson, who has gone for his pension money, is
+waiting for a mail. I feel like making no record of these days. I take
+pleasure only in their quick passage.
+
+Saturday night Rockwell received the order of knighthood. For three
+quarters of an hour he stayed upon his knees watching over his arms.
+He was all that time as motionless as stone and as silent. Now he is
+Sir Lancelot of the Lake and jousts all day with imaginary giants and
+wicked knights. He has rescued one queen for himself but as yet none
+for me.
+
+We have run about some on our snowshoes, though the snow is nowhere
+deep enough for that except along the shore. The weather is still
+mild--hardly freezing at all--and it forever successively rains,
+snows, and hails. All the animals are still alive. I don't love them,
+they're rather a nuisance. Nothing could be less amusing than a blue
+fox,--small creatures, excessively timid, of cowed demeanor. Saturday
+I had to get a bag of fish from the lake where they had been soaking
+and cook up another great supply of fox food.
+
+
+ Wednesday, January fifteenth.
+
+Yesterday to begin with a snowstorm and then a clear, gray day. To-day
+blue sky in the morning, a north wind and bitter cold; gray again at
+noon and mild. By the geological survey report of Kenai Peninsular,
+January should average in temperature at Seward sixteen degrees. From
+now on it must average close to zero to give us sixteen for the month.
+Here it's not as cold as New York. Rockwell bathed to-night standing
+within six feet of the open door. I have definitely decided that Olson
+stays for some cause other than the weather, although to-day and
+yesterday he could not have come. We snowshoed a bit to-day. Alaska
+snowshoes are certainly the easiest that ever were to travel on.
+
+
+ Thursday, January sixteenth.
+
+Well, after to-day there remains no doubt that Olson stays away
+purposely--unless he's sick or dead. Rockwell's theory that Seward has
+been totally swept away by a terrible fire, with every man, woman, and
+child of its inhabitants, I disproved to-night. We walked down the
+beach and there were the lights of the great city brighter it seemed
+than ever. Either there has been no mail boat at all since early in
+December or there has been no mail from Juneau whence Olson's
+"check-que," as he calls it, comes. Well it profits us nothing to
+speculate on this.
+
+The day has been glorious, mild, fair, with snow everywhere even on
+the trees. The snow sticks to the mountain tops even to the steepest,
+barest peaks painting them all a spotless, dazzling white. It's a
+marvelous sight. Rockwell and I journeyed around the point to-day and
+saw the sun again. To-night in the brilliant moonlight I snowshoed
+around the cove. There never was so beautiful a land as this! Now at
+midnight the moon is overhead. Our clearing seems as bright as
+day,--and the shadows are so dark! From the little window the
+lamplight shines out through the fringe of icicles along the eaves,
+and they glisten like diamonds. And in the still air the smoke ascends
+straight up into the blue night sky.
+
+[Illustration: VICTORY]
+
+
+ Saturday, January eighteenth.
+
+Two beautiful days, these last. And to-night the wind blows and the
+snow falls and it is very cold. The days are uneventful. We journey
+many times down the beach over our snowshoe trail. That's our
+out-of-doors diversion,--to look up the bay toward Seward. But the
+view is beautiful. Loftier mountains, more volcano shaped are about
+Seward, and they're dazzling white.
+
+Yesterday Rockwell found otter tracks crossing from the salt water to
+the lake,--a lot of them. It's wonderful to think that those fine
+creatures have crossed the five long miles of water. Their footprints
+are as large as a good-sized dog's. They seem to have a great time
+frisking about as they travel. On one little slope they have made a
+slide. No footprints are there at all,--only the smoothly worn track.
+We see no wild life as a rule but the eagles. They're all about in
+plenty, magnificent birds when seen close to, and when flying at the
+mountain's height still surprisingly large.
+
+The milk goat is dry,--so that's one chore less. Rockwell feeds the
+goats every day, but I can't trust him with the foxes; he'd leave the
+door open as likely as not. (It was reserved for Olson himself to let
+this happen. May twenty-ninth he writes in a letter to me:
+
+ "Had a skear or acksedent on the eighteenth, i vas putteng som
+ grase in to the fox Corrals an i most heav left the hok of van i
+ turnd around the dor vas open and 1. fox goan the litle femall
+ in the Corall naxst to the goat Hous. And the fox var over at
+ the tant i cald to em et vas suppertam to Com bake and get som
+ sepper and He sat down and luckt at me bot finly mosed of op in
+ the Hill. i take the other fox and put em in the other Corall
+ and left the 2--tow Coralls open and put feed in the seam es
+ nothing ad apen. the first night i did not sleep vary val. the
+ sakond night and not showing up, bot naxst morning i Came out to
+ the Corall the feed vas goin en the pan and the fox vas sleping
+ on the box var he allves du and i felt a litle Beatter van the
+ doors ar shut.")
+
+I'm hard at work painting by day and drawing at night. Twenty-five
+good drawings are done. On the fair, warm days Rockwell spends most of
+his time out-of-doors. Being Sir Lancelot still delights him and
+there's not a stump in the vicinity that has not been scarred by his
+attacks with lance and sword. These stumps are really mostly all
+giants. I am now reading the Department of Agriculture year book. It's
+very instructive.
+
+
+ Tuesday, January twenty-first.
+
+The north wind rages to-night. It is cold and clear starlight. With
+the violent wind-gusts the snow sweeps by in clouds-sweeps _by_ except
+for what sweeps _in_. Over my work table it descends in a fine, wet
+spray so that I've had to cover that place with canvas and work
+elsewhere. A wild day it has been and a wild night is before us. And
+yesterday was little brother to it.
+
+These days are wonderful but they are terrible. It is thrilling now
+with Olson absent to reflect that we are absolutely cut off from all
+mankind, that we cannot, in this raging sea, return to the world nor
+the world come to us. Barriers must secure your isolation in order
+that you may experience the full significance of it. The romance of an
+adventure hangs upon slender threads. A banana peeling on a mountain
+top tames the wilderness. Much of the glory of this Alaska is in the
+knowledge I have that the next bay--which I may never choose to
+enter--is uninhabited, that beyond those mountains across the water is
+a vast region that no man has ever trodden, a terrible ice-bound
+wilderness.
+
+We begin to think less of Olson's return. I have settled to my work
+and can imagine things continuing as they are for weeks. They _will_
+continue so unless the wind forsakes the north. Two days ago after a
+very cold night we awoke to thunder and lightning--and snow! In two
+hours the sun was out. That afternoon I stripped and danced awhile in
+the snow--a _little_ while. Then, after a hot bath, out again in my
+nakedness for a roll in the snow, dressed,--and felt a new man.
+Rockwell loves it all more and more. He seems absolutely contented and
+spends hours a day outdoors.
+
+What a marvel is a child's imagination! It is a treat for Rockwell to
+play "man-eater" at bedtime and attack me furiously. And if at any
+time I'll just enter his pretend-world it's all he can wish for.
+Another filthy mess of fox-food has been prepared and a new sack of
+salt fish put to soak in the lake. I do hate that chore. Pioneering I
+relish; ranching I despise, at least blue fox ranching. The miserable
+things slink about so in such sick and mean spirited fashion.
+
+
+ Thursday, January twenty-third.
+
+Sometimes the smoke goes up the flue--and sometimes down. And that's
+not good for the fire. I sit within six inches of the stove with a
+frozen nose and icy feet. The wind sifts through the walls. Now, with
+our moss calking shrunken and dried and shriveled further with the
+cold, our cabin would be light without windows. These are so far the
+coldest days of winter. Although it blows straight from the north,
+whence only fair weather comes, the day is dark with drifting snow
+cloud high. The water of the bay is hidden in driving vapor. We cut
+wood and stuff it everlastingly into the stove. To-day seventy pieces
+for the ravenous air-tight, big chunks, have been cut and split--and
+we'll cut again to-morrow. But with all the trouble of cold weather
+we'd be mightily disappointed if the winter slipped by without it.
+
+It's a real satisfaction to find that my calculations in supplies, in
+bedding, in heating equipment were just right for conditions here.
+We're running low now in cereals and milk but we had planned to visit
+Seward this month to restock. Olson's absence is quite outside of all
+plans. If he isn't sick it's hard to explain reasonably in any way.
+
+For the past three weeks I have made on an average no less than one
+good drawing a day, really drawings I'm delighted with. I've struck a
+fine stride and moreover a good system for my work here to continue
+upon. During the day I paint out-of-doors from nature by way of fixing
+the forms and above all the color of the out-of-doors in my mind. Then
+after dark I go into a trance for a while with Rockwell subdued into
+absolute silence. I lie down or sit with closed eyes until I "see" a
+composition,--then I make a quick note of it or maybe give an
+hour's time to perfecting the arrangement on a small scale. Then when
+that's done I'm care free. Rockwell and I play cards for half an hour,
+I get supper, he goes to bed. When he's naked I get him to pose for me
+in some needed fantastic position, and make a note of the anatomy in
+the gesture of my contemplated drawing. Little Rockwell's tender form
+is my model perhaps for some huge, hairy ruffian. It's a great joke
+how I use him. Generally I have to feel for the bone or tendon that I
+want to place correctly.
+
+[Illustration: ZARATHUSTRA AND HIS PLAYMATES]
+
+Last night I drew laughing to myself. A lion was my subject. I have
+often envied Blake and some of the old masters their _ignorance_ of
+certain forms that let them be at times so delightfully, impressively
+naïve. I've thought it matters not a bit how little you know about the
+living form provided you proceed to draw the thing according to some
+definite, consistent idea. Don't conceal your ignorance with a slur,
+be definite and precise even there. Well, by golly, this lion gave me
+my chance to be unsophisticated; such a silly, smirking beast as I
+drew! At last it became somewhat rational and a little dignified, but
+it still looks like a judge in a great wig. But a lion that lets a
+naked youth sleep in his paws as this one does may be expected to be a
+little unbeastly. When I began to write these pages to-night the stars
+were out. Now it snows or hails on the roof!
+
+
+ Saturday, January twenty-fifth.
+
+It is bitterly cold weather, as cold continuously as I've ever
+experienced. Both yesterday and to-day the wind has been exceptionally
+violent and the air full of flying snow. Both of Olson's water
+barrels--in the house--have frozen solid. One bulged and burst the
+bottom rolling itself off onto the floor.
+
+
+ Sunday, January twenty-sixth.
+
+A day of hard work with Rockwell in bed for a change. Just a little
+stomach upset--and he's all right now. Felled a tree and cut up
+fifteen feet of it, taking advantage of this glorious day. It was much
+milder than for days it has been and it still holds so to-night.
+There's no wind and that makes ever so much difference in the cabin.
+Now if it will hold calm and mild for a day we'll see whether or not
+Olson is yet ready to return.
+
+
+ Tuesday, January twenty-eighth.
+
+I'm reading "Zarathustra," "Write with blood, and thou wilt learn that
+blood is spirit." So that book was written. Last night I made a
+drawing of Zarathustra leading the ugliest man by the hand out into
+the night to behold the round moon and the silver waterfall. What a
+book to illustrate! The translator of it says that Zarathustra is such
+a being as Nietzsche would have liked himself to be,--in other words
+his ideal man. It seems to me that the ideal of a man _is_ the real
+man. You _are_ that which in your soul you choose to be; your most
+beautiful and cherished vision is yourself. What are the true, normal
+conditions of life for any man but just those perfect conditions with
+which he would ideally surround himself. A man is not a sum of
+discordant tendencies--but rather a being perfect for one special
+place; and this is Olson's creed.
+
+My chief criticism of Zarathustra is his taste for propaganda. Why,
+after all, concern himself with the mob. In picturing his hero as a
+teacher has not Nietzsche been tricked away from a true ideal to an
+historical one? Of necessity the great _selfish_ figures of all time
+have gone down to oblivion. It's the will of human society that only
+the benefactors of mankind shall be cherished in memory. A pure ideal
+is to be the thing yourself, concerning yourself no bit with proving
+it. And if the onward path of mankind seems to go another way than
+yours--proud soul, let it.
+
+[Illustration: FROZEN FALL]
+
+
+ Wednesday, January twenty-ninth.
+
+Alaska _can_ be cold! Monday broke all records for the winter. Tuesday
+made that seem balmy. It was so bitterly cold here last night in our
+"tight little cabin" that we had to laugh. Until ten o'clock when I
+went to bed the large stove was continuously red hot and running at
+full blast. And yet by then the water pails were frozen two inches
+thick--but ten feet from the stove and open water at supper time, my
+fountain pen was frozen on the table, Rockwell required a hot water
+bottle in bed, the fox food was solid ice, my paste was frozen, and
+that's all. My potatoes and milk I had stood near the stove. At twelve
+o'clock the clock stopped-starting again from the warmth of breakfast
+cooking. I put the water pail at night behind the stove close to it,
+and yet it was solid in the morning. We burn an unbelievable amount of
+wood, at least a cord a week in one stove. So I figure we earn a
+dollar a day cutting wood. We felled another tree to-day and cut most
+of it up. Still we manage to gain steadily with our wood pile always
+in anticipation of worse weather. Last night at sundown the bay
+appeared indescribably dramatic. Dense clouds of vapor were rising
+from the water obscuring all but a few peaks of the mountains and
+darkening the bay. But above the sun shone dazzlingly on the peaks and
+through the thinner vapor, coloring this like flames. It was as if a
+terrible fire raged over the bay. This morning for hours it was dark
+from clouds of vapor. They swept in over our land and coated the trees
+of the shore with white frost.
+
+Yesterday I had to go to the lake and chop out a bag of fish for the
+foxes. I returned covered with ice and the fish were frozen solid
+before I reached the cabin. I cut them up to-day with the axe and
+cooked a week's supply of food for the foxes.
+
+Rockwell has been a trump. The weather can't be too cold for him. This
+morning he pulled his end of the saw without rest. He rarely goes out
+now without his horse, lance, and sword and he addresses me always as
+"My lord." Surely Lancelot himself was no gentler knight. And now it's
+bedtime. The cold is less than last night but still I sit huddled at
+the stove. It is the bitter wind that makes the trouble.
+
+
+ Thursday, January thirtieth.
+
+A splendid day of wood cutting. It was milder and quite windless in
+our cove, although in the bay there were whitecaps. A light snow had
+begun to fall by noon and it continues. To increase our lead on the
+weather we set to work upon a twenty-eight inch tree. We had to throw
+it somewhat against its natural lean and it was a terrible job. The
+wedge would not enter the frozen tree and when it at last did it
+wouldn't lift the great mass that rested on it. Only after an hour's
+continuous pounding with the heavy sledge-hammer did I drive the wedge
+in clear to the head, and then the great tree fell. The fall of one of
+these monsters--for to us they seem gigantic--is thrilling. This one
+went straight where we had aimed it, down a narrow avenue in the
+woods. Ripping and crashing it fell carrying down a smaller tree with
+its limbs. Then Rockwell and I set to work with the saw. When the
+drums were split we hauled them to the cabin on Olson's Yukon sled.
+And now our wood pile is a joyous sight, while within the cabin we
+have a whole, cold day's supply.
+
+Last night just as I was going to bed Rockwell began to talk in his
+sleep about some wild adventure with his imaginary savages. I asked
+him if he were cold. "No, my lord," he murmured and slept on. Very
+fine barley soup to-day. Water in which barley had been boiled, two
+bouillon cubes, onions browned in bacon fat. Rockwell said it was the
+best yet.
+
+
+ Saturday, February first.
+
+Again the days are like spring. Yesterday began the thaw and today
+continues it with rain most of the time. So we've stayed within
+doors, Sir Lancelot and my lordship working here at our craft. I
+have just completed my second drawing for the day. One a day has been
+the rate for a month--but yesterday the spirit didn't work. But the
+news! A great, old tramp steamer entered yesterday. That must carry
+mail and freight and send Olson back to us. If only it were a regular
+liner I'd know for sure. It is possible this steamer has been
+chartered to relieve the situation. Well--the next fair, calm day will
+show.
+
+[Illustration: THE HERMIT]
+
+
+ Sunday, February second.
+
+It's before supper. Rockwell, who has just run out-of-doors for a
+romp, calls at this moment that he has lost his slipper in the snow
+and is barefooted. Out-of-doors is to us like another room. Mornings
+we wash in the snow, invariably. And with a mug of water in hand clean
+our teeth out there--and this in the coldest weather. We scour our
+pots with snow before washing them, throw the dish water right out of
+the door, and generally are in and out all day.... It is surely
+nonsense to think that changes of temperature give men colds. Neither
+of us has had a trace of a cold this winter, we haven't even used
+handkerchiefs--only sleeves. Nor does it give one a cold to _be_ cold.
+I've tried that often enough to know. And a variable climate has, too,
+nothing to do with it, for what variableness could exceed an Alaska
+winter. Colds, like bad temper and loss of faith, are a malady of the
+city crowd.
+
+It rains--this moment, the next it will hail--and then snow. Sometime
+to-day the sun has shone, sometime the wind has blown, and for the
+rest been calm. Altogether it has been too uncertain for us to expect
+Olson. And now for the sour-dough hot cakes and supper. For Rockwell,
+barley, "the marrow of men."
+
+Rockwell to-day asked me how kings earned their living. I said they
+didn't earn it--just got the people to give it to them.
+
+"What's that," he said laughing, "some sort of a joke they play on the
+people?"
+
+So I guess it takes education to appreciate privilege. Incidentally,
+the war must be over and the heroes, having proved by their might that
+might does _not_ make right--or that it does? (!) now have doffed the
+soldier's uniform of glory for the little-honored clothes of toil.
+
+
+ Monday, February third.
+
+We are in the second month of Olson's absence. To-day it stormed
+mostly; heavy snow in the morning. Through the thick of it we heard
+faintly a steamer whistle. It seemed to be receding, outward bound. At
+four o'clock while a light snow fell the lightning played merrily and
+thunder crashed. It is like this: snow for half an hour, then
+rain--silence and calm for a few minutes. Suddenly huge hailstones
+pelt the roof, for all the world like rocks. This lasts a few seconds,
+there's a fierce gust of wind showering ice and snow from the tree
+tops down upon us, again calm and silence--and the performance is
+ready to begin again.
+
+
+ Tuesday, February fourth.
+
+It has been so changeable to-day that we are still uncertain of
+Olson's intentions. We snowshoed down the beach in the beautiful,
+soft, new snow so at least to have a look toward Seward. There lay the
+bay calm and beautiful--and spotless. The scale of things is so
+tremendous here that I've little idea how far we shall be able to see
+the little, bobbing boat when it does come.
+
+We sawed a lot of wood to-day bringing our pile clear up into the
+gable peak. It becomes a mania seeing the pile grow. In quiet weather
+we cut to forestall the storm; in the storm we still cut to be well
+ahead for days that may be worse. It is beautifully mild now. On
+February first Rockwell brought in some budding twigs. The alders
+all seem to be in bud and some charming, red-stemmed shrubs as well.
+It is midnight and past. My drawing is finished, the stove is piled
+for the night, cereal and beans in place upon it, so--Good-night.
+
+[Illustration: ECSTASY]
+
+
+ Wednesday, February fifth.
+
+A beautiful snowstorm all the day and to-night, still and mild.
+Rockwell has been out in it all day dressed in my overalls and
+mittens. He plays seal and swims in the deep snow. We built a snow
+house together. It is now about seven feet in diameter inside and as
+cozy as can be. I'm sure Rockwell will want to sleep there when it's
+finished. A curtain of icicles hangs before our little window.
+
+I have carefully figured the cost of our living here from the food
+bills, all of which I have kept. I have bought $114.82 worth of
+provisions. I still have on hand $19.10 worth. For one hundred and
+fifty days it has cost us sixty-four cents a day for two, or
+thirty-two cents each,--a little over ten cents a meal. This for the
+current high prices everywhere and additionally high in Alaska seems
+very reasonable living. The figures include the very expensive
+Christmas luxuries.
+
+
+ Friday, February seventh.
+
+Yesterday, THE SUN! For how many days he might have been shining at us
+I don't know, for it has been cloudy. However at noon it was all over
+the ground about us and shining in at my window. What a joyous sight
+after months of shadow! To-night the sun at setting again almost
+reached us. And yesterday as if spring had already come we begin the
+day with snow baths at sunrise. Ha! That's the real morning bath! And
+to-day again. We step out-of-doors and plunge full length into the
+deep snow, scour our bodies with it, and rush back into the sheltering
+house and the red-hot stove. To Rockwell belongs all credit, or blame,
+for this madness. He _will_ do it--and I'm ashamed not to follow.
+These two days have been cold and windy, north days,--but how
+beautiful! All of the day Rockwell plays out-of-doors swimming in the
+deep snow, now a seal, again a walrus. Gee, he's the great fellow for
+northern weather. Cooked the filthy fox mess yesterday, washed clothes
+to-day, sawed wood on both. Now it's twelve-thirty at night and I'm
+tired.
+
+
+ Saturday, February eighth.
+
+All about me stand the drawings of my series, the "Mad Hermit." They
+look mighty fine to me. Myself with whiskers and hair! First, to-day,
+when the storm abated a bit, we sank a bag of fish in the lake and
+then started on snowshoes for the ridge to the eastward. The snow lay
+in the woods there heavy and deep. No breath of wind had touched it.
+The small trees, loaded, bent double making shapes like frozen
+fountains. Some little trees with their branches starting far from the
+ground formed with their drooping limbs domed chambers about their
+stems. Coming down it was great sport. We could slide down even in our
+sticky snowshoes. Rockwell, who was soaked through, undressed and
+spent the afternoon naked, playing wild animal about the cabin. Then
+at six-thirty we both had hot baths, and snow baths following. I begin
+to relish the snow bath. Rockwell was the picture of health and beauty
+afterwards with his rose-red cheeks and blue eyes.
+
+
+ Monday, February tenth.
+
+Yesterday morning I bathed in a snowstorm, this morning it was too
+terribly, howlingly blusterous to run out into it. And now since one
+o'clock it is as calm and mild as it ever could be. Within the cabin
+it's even more cozy than usual. The snow is banked up against the big
+window to a third the window's height. By day the light seems
+curtained, by night doubly bright from reflected lamplight. Heavy
+drifts are everywhere. Last night fine snow filtered in upon our
+faces as we slept but not enough to be uncomfortable. The cabin is
+fortunately placed as to drifts and our door-yard remains clear with a
+splendid bathing bank skirting it. Rockwell is at work now upon
+multiplication tables. He's a real student and is always seriously
+occupied with something in his hours indoors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OLSON!
+
+
+He returned last night, the eleventh of February, in a blaze of glory!
+Ah, the wonder of it and of all he brought. Rockwell and I sat at our
+cards just before supper-time. The day, a calm one, a fair one, had
+passed and Olson again had not come. We were downcast. Every possible
+cause for his continued absence had been reviewed in my mind. To wait
+longer was not to be endured. And so we sat with far-off thoughts and
+toyed with the silly cards. Suddenly the long, clear sound of a boat's
+horn reached us from the night outdoors. We ran and peered into the
+darkness. At last we saw a black spot moving far out on the water. Oh
+God! it was entering the cove. In what a frenzy of excitement we
+hurried down the beach! Nearer they come and nearer, men's voices, the
+little cabin light, and the vessel gliding toward us; they're abreast
+of us, they drop anchor. "Olson, Olson," I shout, "Olson, is that
+you?" "He's aboard," is answered, "How are you, and how's the little
+boy?" We see them loading a dory from the vessel's deck,--and now they
+row it to the shore. It's good to see a fine young fisherman and shake
+his hand. Again and once again the loads are ferried in and carried up
+the long and slippery low-tide beach. Rockwell has lighted Olson's
+lamp, he sweeps his cabin, and starts the fire in the stove. At the
+last load I slip aboard the vessel. I am "_wanted_." There stands
+Olson swaying gigantic on the deck above us as we bump the side. A
+bear's greeting! Olson is radiant, radiant and mellow with the joy of
+homecoming and the warmth of tasted spirits. The skipper I know, yes!
+the good Englishman, Hogg, who had us once to dinner at his camp. Down
+in the cabin in the heat and fumes of a cooking feast we tip the
+friendly bottle.
+
+Ah! tell me not, abstainer, of any glories you have known. One night,
+one midnight out on the black waters of a Newfoundland harbor, the
+million stars above, and on the wretched vessel's deck the hoard of
+half-drunk, soul-starved men saying their passionate farewells,--on
+the dull plain of their life a flash of lightning revealing an
+abyss;--this night on the still, dark cove of Resurrection Bay, rimmed
+with wild mountains and the wilderness, strong men about you, mad,
+loosened speech and winged, prophetic vision,--God! but sane daylight
+seeing seems to touch but the white, hard surface of where life is
+hidden.
+
+From the hot cabin I climbed the boat's ladder, up, up onto the
+world's heights. Ah, how the cold, clean wind from the wide spaces
+then swept my soul, and how close about my head the dome of heaven and
+the stars! This is no earth-ship but the deck of a meteor vessel that
+I tread, the moon ship of the ancient northern gods.
+
+I row ashore for Rockwell, stow the goods higher on the beach, and we
+return aboard for supper. Over Rockwell the skipper makes a great
+fuss, says he's a famous oarsman and could beat his daddy, a fine,
+big, strong boy. Warm hearted skipper!--and he reaches again for the
+bottle and I drink. It's _vinegar_! Profuse apologies, and the right
+one is found.
+
+We eat, we stuff!--and then the three of us, Rockwell laden with
+presents of fruit, say good-night and row ashore. Poor, tired Olson
+has little strength to move the heavy loads from the beach. No matter,
+I struggle alone and finally stow them in his cabin, a great pile.
+Then a cup of coffee with the old man, a little furious talk about the
+war,--fury at a world that could mess things so,--and home to bed
+where already Rockwell slept.
+
+This morning the icy bath. Then without breakfast we began upon our
+mail. What a wonderful Christmas at last! The bed was piled high with
+presents, the table high with letters. We sorted and gloated like
+hungry tigers that in the ecstasy of possession merely lick their
+food. All through the morning and deep into the afternoon I read the
+mail. Unwashed dishes stood about, for meals we but ate what was at
+hand. (Here follows in the journal a list two pages long of presents,
+of books--what a shelf of them!--woolen clothes and sheepskin
+slippers, music for the flute, plum-pudding, candy, chocolate,
+cigarettes,--and ever so much more.) And that being about seven times
+as much as we've ever had before is all. Ah, in the wilderness you
+love your friends and they too think of you. Better than all, though,
+are the letters; such friendly letters never were before.
+
+
+ Friday, February fourteenth.
+
+The days go like the wind. So warm to-day and yesterday! We live
+out-of-doors. Now as I write the door stands open and the soft, moist,
+spring air enters to dispel the fumes of turpentine. I primed eight
+canvases to-day, six of which I had also stretched. This afternoon I
+painted at the northern end of the beach almost beneath a frozen
+waterfall, an emerald of huge size and wonderful form.
+
+[Illustration: PELAGIC REVERIE]
+
+Rockwell is in high spirits. I think the augmentation of our diet
+brought by Olson's return will do him a lot of good. We had cut down
+on our use of milk to a can in two or three days. Now we may live on
+fish which Olson has in such quantities that we're to help ourselves.
+Olson has insisted on my accepting a fifty-pound sack of flour for my
+services during his six weeks' absence, and I expect to find it hard
+to be allowed to return the cereals that I am borrowing. What a
+contrast this free-handed country to the mean spirit of Newfoundland!
+
+
+ Monday, February seventeenth.
+
+Three days! and what has happened? I guess that on the first of them I
+stretched and painted canvas. On the second all day I painted
+out-of-doors, it was quite summer-like and the sun shone through
+diamond-dripping trees. And to-day I have written from early morning
+before breakfast until now, eleven at night. I have decided to go to
+Seward in a few days. It has become necessary to go back to New York
+very soon. I told Rockwell of this to-day and his eyes have scarcely
+been dry since. He has reasoned with me and inquired into every detail
+of the situation. He doesn't _want_ to go to New York nor even to live
+in the country in the East. There'll be no ocean near nor any warm
+pond for bathing. And not even the thought that elsewhere he'd have
+playmates weighs against his love for this spot.
+
+You should see Sir Lancelot now. His clothes are outgrown and outworn.
+They hang in tatters about him. His trousers are burst from the knee
+to the hip, his overalls that cover them are rags. His shirt is
+buttonless but for two in front. From above tattered elbows his
+sleeves hang in ribbons. His hair is long and shaggy; where it hung
+over his eyes I have cut it off short. _But_, his fair cheeks are as
+pink as roses, his eyes are beautiful and blue, his lips are red, and
+his face glows always with expression. So we don't care a rap for the
+rest--only Rockwell does! One day after he had regarded for a long
+time a certain unfortunate photograph of himself in which he looked
+like an idiot, he said, "Father, I'd like to dress up some day and put
+on my best clothes and brush my hair,--because I want to see if I
+really look like I do in this picture." Rockwell loves to look well
+and it's a real treat for him to dress up. So, that being the case and
+his tidy nature being so well assured I don't trouble a bit to adorn
+him. He cleans his teeth regularly and likes to do it. Mornings we get
+up together and go through a set of Dr. Sargent's exercises, do them
+with great energy. Then we go naked out-of-doors. The period of
+chattering teeth is past. No matter what the weather is we go calmly
+out into it, lie down in the drift, look up into the sky, and then
+scrub ourselves with snow. It's the finest bath in the world.
+
+It rains to-day--or snows. The snow lies three feet deep on the level.
+At our windows it is above the sills. In Seward,--have I written this
+before?--it lies so deep that one can't see across the street. The
+snow is the deepest, and that last cold snap the coldest, of any
+winter remembered or recorded. The cold was very many degrees below
+zero. So we _have_ experienced a true winter. We're so glad to know
+it.
+
+
+ Tuesday, February eighteenth.
+
+Such mild weather! With the fire nearly out it's hot indoors to-night.
+A little snow, a little rain, but altogether a pleasant day. It's
+always pleasant when I paint well. To-day I redeemed two straying
+pictures and they're among the elect now. To-night a steamer entered
+from the westward, the _Curaçao_, long expected. She must have been
+here two or three days ago and since then been to Seldovia. With
+incredible slowness she crept over the water. What old hulks they do
+put onto this Alaska service.
+
+[Illustration: PRISON BARS]
+
+Rockwell's mothering of all things exceeded reason to-day. He put two
+sticks of wood on the fire after I had intended it to go out. I
+removed them, blazing merrily. "Don't" cried Rockwell seriously,
+"you'll hurt the fire's feelings."
+
+Rockwell cleared off the boat to-day. Next we must dig her out.
+To-morrow the engine must be put in order. We must find a hole in the
+gasoline tank and solder it and then coax it into starting. It is on
+such jobs that whole precious days are wasted.
+
+Rockwell loves every foot of this spot of land. To-night he spoke of
+the beauties of the lake, its steep wooded shores, clean and pebbly,
+and the one low, clear, and level spot where we approached the water.
+He had planned to live this summer the day long on the shores of the
+lake, naked, playing in and out of the water or paddling some craft
+about. I thought of putting up a tent in some mossy dell along the
+shore and letting Rockwell sleep there nights alone and learn early
+the wonders of a hermit's life. And none of it is to be!
+
+
+ Wednesday, February nineteenth.
+
+It rains and storms. But to-day we repaired the engine and we're ready
+to start for Seward when it clears. Above every other thought now is
+the sad realization that our days on this beloved island are nearing
+an end. What is it that endears it so to a man near forty and a little
+boy of nine? We have such widely different outlooks upon life. It may
+be that Alaska stands midway between us, and that I, turning backward
+from the crowded world that I have known and learned to fear, meet
+Rockwell in his _forward_ march from nothing--to this. If that be so
+we have met only for a moment for such perfect sympathy. His love will
+pass on from this and mine will grow dissatisfied and wander still.
+But I think it's otherwise. It seems that we have both together by
+chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and come to stand face to
+face with that infinite and unfathomable thing which is the
+wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES--for the wilderness is
+nothing else. It is a kind of living mirror that gives back as its own
+all and only all that the imagination of a man brings to it. It _is_
+that which we believe it to be. So here we have stood, we two, and if
+we have not shuddered at the emptiness of the abyss and fled from its
+loneliness, it is because of the wealth of our own souls that filled
+the void with imagery, warmed it, and gave it speech and
+understanding. This vast, wild land we have made a child's world and a
+man's.
+
+I know nothing in all life more beautiful than the perfect belief of
+Rockwell in his Paradise here. Unopposed, his romance has kindled
+every object on the homestead; so that now for hours he can steal
+about in the forest, on the beach, along the lake,--in absolute
+contentment, for it is wonderland itself. The "King's road," the
+"Giant's path" where stand the gummy "ten-pound butter tree" and all
+the giants with whom Sir Lancelot must joust, the magpie's grave
+marked with a cross, the otter's cave, the marvelous frozen stream;
+those strange wild people, the Treaps, who visit these shores
+occasionally to hunt the white man for his skin as the white man has
+hunted their dear animals; rain-bears and wild-cat-eaters--appalling
+animals that inhabit the dark woods but are good friends to Rockwell.
+Every log and rotten stump, the gnarled trees, with or without
+"butter," every mound and path, the rocks, the streams, each is a
+being in itself; and with those most living goats, and the brilliant
+magpies, the pretty, little, dingy sparrows, the glorious and virtuous
+porcupines, the black, black crows, the great and noble eagle, the
+rare spider and the rarer fly, and the wonderful, strong, sleek otters
+that leap in sport through the snow and coast down-hill, they make a
+world of romance that has thrilled one little boy to the very bottom
+of his soul. To live here, to accumulate about him more and more
+animals and shelter them from harm, to live forever or, if he must,
+grow old, and _very_ old; here marry--not a Seward girl but one more
+beautiful--or an Indian!--here raise a great family--and here die.
+That now is the ideal of little Rockwell. And if we, his family, all
+of us, would count we must come here to him where with patriarchal
+magnificence and dignity he will care for us.
+
+[Illustration: RUNNING WATER]
+
+
+ Thursday, February twentieth.
+
+All day out-of-doors, both of us. In the morning Rockwell and I
+journeyed around the point between the two coves of the island. It's a
+rocky promontory with a great jumble of bowlders at its base that one
+must scramble over. These are generally wet and slippery and not much
+fun. However we went well around and I set up my canvas and painted
+while Rockwell crawled about in caves and crevasses playing some sort
+of wild beast. The wind rose as I finished and made it difficult to
+convey my wet canvas without damaging it. And in the afternoon again I
+painted on two pictures out-of-doors. That's to be my work now till
+the time I go. To-morrow if the day is right we start for Seward. Our
+boat is dug out of the snow, our goods are packed, the engine chafes
+at the throttle. I am tired to-night and it is bedtime.
+
+
+ Sunday, February twenty-third.
+
+Friday was calm. We left the island at about eleven--after the usual
+hours fussing with the engine. At Hogg's camp we called in for
+something to bale with, for the boat, being leaky, had taken in a lot
+of water. No one at home--so I stole a bowl from the shed and we
+proceeded. By then the sun shone upon us and we could observe, what we
+later confirmed at Seward, that the sun shines at the head of the bay
+while the island, _our_ island, is shrouded in clouds. Quite different
+conditions prevail in the two localities. With us it is warmer and
+much wetter. The recorded rainfall for Seward, that some time ago
+seemed incredibly small, does not fit Fox Island at all. Olson's
+records for last summer show prevailing rainy weather--and Seward
+rejoiced in unprecedented sunshine! And during these three days in
+Seward now, days wonderfully fair, thick clouds have always been over
+Fox Island. And even the wind blows there when Seward's waters are
+calm.
+
+And so on Friday we reached Seward with flying colors, stowed our boat
+up high, put the engine into Olson's cabin, and walked again the
+streets of civilization. Here everyone is friendly. The first night
+Rockwell dined out at one house and slept at another with a lot of
+children. What must they have thought of his underclothes! I went
+supperless--writing letters instead. And then flute music at the
+postmaster's. Next day very early the steamer came and the day passed
+for me in the wild excitement of receiving mail.
+
+
+ Wednesday, February twenty-sixth.
+
+Yesterday we came home! We left Seward with only a light load aboard.
+It blew briskly in the bay from the north. Before we reached Caine's
+Head there was a splendid, white-crested chop racing along with us.
+Midway across it was about all the engine could have stood. The
+propeller is not set at enough depth in our boat and in yesterday's
+sea it was most of the time out of water, racing at a furious pace.
+Then the boat would naturally lose steerage way and we'd swing far out
+of our course. But it was great sport. Into it we could have made no
+headway; _before_ it nothing could stop us. And the engine kept right
+on going!--only as usual it was continually falling apart. On Friday
+the flywheel came loose six times, the muffler four, and the valve
+spring fell off and stayed off. Coming back all went well till we were
+in the roughest sea; then the muffler came loose. Not wanting to stop
+the engine in that sea I spent half the time on my knees holding the
+tiller in one hand and the muffler nut with a pair of pliers in the
+other. Rockwell bailed most of the time. The boat leaks like a sieve.
+
+[Illustration: IMMANENCE]
+
+And how fine to get home again! Only an hour and we were again seated
+at dinner in our warm cabin. Rockwell said it was hard for him to
+remember whether Mr. Olson or we had just been to Seward. I brought
+Olson a battery box and batteries as a present. He was much pleased.
+But particularly his mail pleased him. I saw him soon after our
+arrival seated with his spectacles on studying his letters. He rarely
+gets any. This time came a post-card and letter from Rockwell's
+mother.
+
+The day passed and evening came. Then appeared entering our cove a
+cabined gasoline boat. Two young fellows came ashore and we all
+chatted in Olson's cabin. One had his wife aboard. They claimed to be
+hunting a stray boat,--but Olson whispered to me later, dramatically,
+that they were doubtless out dragging somewhere for a cache of
+whiskey. Lots of whiskey has been sunk in the bay. Marks were taken at
+the time to determine its location and now the owners as need arises
+fish up what they want. It's just like the buried treasure of the days
+of piracy. Doubtless there are now many charts extant with the
+position of liquid treasure marked upon them.
+
+To-day has been again overcast but beautifully mild. It is really a
+wonderful climate. Rockwell makes the most of these last days. He went
+this morning to the ridge's top east of us, and this afternoon high up
+on the mountain side. He now wants to stay here and become a wild man.
+There is no question in my mind about his entire willingness, his
+desire, to be left here when I go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TWILIGHT
+
+
+The first of March! If only the dull weather would clear up I could
+get more done these last days here. Fifteen brand-new canvases hang
+from my ridge pole waiting for pictures to adorn them. To-day is the
+only day that work out-of-doors has been quite out of the question. It
+snows hard. Last Thursday morning Rockwell and I began to take our
+morning baths in the bay--the snow having become too hard. And now at
+just seven-fifteen--on cloudy mornings, clothed in sneakers we scamper
+down the shore and plunge into the waves. Brrrrrrrr! it's cold, but
+mighty good. Olson, after predicting for some time a dire end to our
+morning performances, has at last evinced enough curiosity to drag
+himself out of bed and come over to see. But he has not yet been early
+enough to catch us.
+
+The days are lengthening rapidly. It is now after six o'clock in the
+evening and our lamp's not lighted!
+
+Last time in Seward Olson bought a lot of odds and ends of molding for
+picture frames. And now, with my help, all the little things that we
+have given him are gorgeously framed. On the little picture of himself
+that I painted he has what he calls a "comoflag" frame; it's made of
+_different_ moldings on the four sides. Well, Olson is mighty proud of
+his pictures. He's really very fond of us. People in Seward say he
+talks of us continually. And there it is thought quite remarkable how
+I have managed with the "crazy" old man. I guess the craziness
+explains it. I picture with horror having as a constant companion here
+one of the fine, stalwart, shrewd, honest, wholesome-to-sterility
+Americans that our country likes to be so proud of.
+
+I told Olson of Kathleen's amusement over the brusque ending of his
+letter, "Answer this if you feel like it--and if you don't it's all
+the same to me."
+
+"Well," he said, "that's the way it is here in Alaska; if anyone don't
+like the way a man does he can go to Hell!"
+
+I've heard an amusing story about Olson and his goats at a little
+Seward exposition at which they were shown. They put his two goats
+into narrow packing boxes that their dirt might not fall onto the
+floor of the building. Olson arrived and seeing the plight of his pets
+flew into a rage. He lifted them out, hurled the packing boxes out of
+the door into the street, and denounced the fair-committee for their
+abuse of animals. And although the whole place tumbled about the old
+man's ears, he won, and saw his goats given an honorable amount of
+freedom in a special enclosure--curtained off, "admission to see the
+goats ten cents,"--which notice Olson promptly disregarded, letting
+everyone in--and a big crowd at that--free.
+
+
+ Monday, March third.
+
+Inauguration day passed here without event. In this ideal community of
+Fox Island we're so little concerned with law-the only law that bears
+on us at all we delight in breaking--that one wonders how far _no
+government_ can be carried. One goes back to first principles in such
+speculation, endows man again with inalienable rights or at least
+inalienable desires, and then has simply to wonder how much of the
+love of order there is in the natural man. The fact that a large
+proportion of mankind can live and die without any definite knowledge
+of the laws of the community and without ever running counter to the
+forces of law is sign enough that most of the law code is but a
+writing down of what the average man naturally wants to do or keep
+from doing. There's a sharp difference between such "common" law and
+the exceptional law that strikes at the personal liberty of a man,
+laws concerning morals, temperance, or that conscript unwilling men
+for war. In all law there is tyranny, in these laws tyranny shows its
+hand. The man who wants true freedom must escape from the whole thing.
+If only such souls could gravitate to a common center and build the
+new community with inherent law and order as its sole guide!--well, we
+have returned to the problem. A state that was truly interested in
+progress would dedicate a portion of its territory to such an
+experiment. But no state is interested in anything but the gain of one
+class, which means the oppression of the rest. How farcical sound
+these days "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." "No
+government without the consent of the governed," and other
+old-fashioned principles. But they have still to be reckoned with till
+the last Bolshevik has been converted into a prosperous tradesman and
+the last idealist is dead. And now for Fox Island.
+
+The weather is dull and gray--only last evening an hour before sundown
+the clouds suddenly vanished out of the heavens and the sun shone as
+warm and beautiful as on the fairest summer day. Then I sat
+out-of-doors and painted while the snow and ice melted and dripped all
+about. The mornings are cold, doubly cold it seems when in the
+half-light of dawn and perhaps a driving snow squall we run naked down
+the long stretch of beach and plunge into the bay. I work ceaselessly.
+Time flies like mad and the day of our departure is close.
+
+[Illustration: THE VISION]
+
+
+ Tuesday, March fourth.
+
+A day of snow and rain spent by us indoors, Rockwell hard at work upon
+his chart of "Trobbeabl Island"--a wonderful imaginary land where his
+own strange species of wild animals live--and I washing and mending.
+My seaman's bag, damaged on its way here in the hold of the steamer,
+is now quite professionally patched, and the knee of my blue overalls
+shines with a square patch of white canvas.
+
+Olson was welcome and spent much of the day with us. He has reread
+Kathleen's letter to him and is charmed with it. He feels authorized
+by it to keep me here longer and surely does his best to persuade me.
+He treasures the picture little Kathleen sent him. All these things,
+the letters and little trifles that we have given him will be stored
+away in his too empty box of treasures among a very few old letters
+and a photograph or two of pioneer ladies and gentlemen in the
+dress-up costumes of thirty years ago. These scant treasures, what a
+memorial of a very lonely life! He showed me to-day a photograph of
+Tom Crane, an old associate of his in Idaho, and two large, splendid
+looking women, Crane's wife and his wife's sister. The wife was frozen
+to death in the snow while on a short journey with her husband. He
+lost both feet. Olson led the rescue party bringing in with great
+difficulty the dead woman and then tending Crane through long, painful
+days until his crippled recovery.
+
+
+ Thursday, March sixth.
+
+It's mighty hard work, this painting under pressure. I'm too tired to
+attempt more than the briefest record on this page of two days'
+doings. Yesterday it was gray. At sundown it cleared giving us the
+most splendid and beautiful sunset, the sun sinking behind the purple,
+snowy mountains and throwing its rays upward into a seething red-hot
+mass of clouds. I painted most of the afternoon out-of-doors.
+
+To-day we bathed at sunrise, brisk and cold and clear. The morning
+tide was so exceedingly low that I ran dry shod clear around the north
+side of the cove until the whole upper bay was visible. Olson had not
+known it could be done. Returning we put Olson's boat into the water
+and Rockwell and I embarked with my painting outfit. I landed on the
+point I had just visited afoot. Rockwell in jumping ashore with the
+painter timed it badly, slipped, and fell full length into the surf of
+the ground swell, the dory almost riding over him. I roared with
+laughter--to his great fury. He rowed about in the harbor for almost
+two hours returning to bring me home. In the afternoon we repeated our
+excursion--all but the water sports--going this time to the south side
+of the cove. Rockwell's a good little oarsman and above all to be
+trusted to do as he's told to--a vice in grown-ups, a virtue in
+children.
+
+
+ Friday, March seventh.
+
+That to-day began in snow and cloud matters not,--it ended in a glory.
+Olson, Rockwell, and I sat that late afternoon far out on the bay
+basking in the warmth of a summer sun, rocked gently on a blue summer
+sea. For hours we had explored the island's western shore, skirting
+its tumbled reefs, riding through perilous straits right up to where
+the eddying water seethed at some jagged chasm's mouth. That's fine
+adventuring! flirting with danger, safe enough but close--so close to
+death. We landed on the beach of Sunny Cove, found in the dark thicket
+the moldering ruins of an old feed house of the foxes, gruesome with
+the staring bones of devoured carcasses. And then we younger ones
+dashed up the sheer, snow-covered eastward ridge--dashed on all fours
+digging our feet into the snow, clinging with hands as to a ladder.
+There at the top two or three hundred feet above the bay we overlooked
+the farthest seaward mountains of Cape Resurrection, then Barwell
+Island and the open sea.
+
+Ah, to see again that far horizon! Wander where you will over all
+the world, from every valley seeing forever new hills calling you to
+climb them, from every mountain top farther peaks enticing you. Always
+the _distant_ land looks fairest, till you are made at last a restless
+wanderer never reaching home--_never_--until you stand one day on the
+last peak on the border of the interminable sea, stopped by the
+finality of that.
+
+[Illustration: THE IMPERISHABLE]
+
+From our feet the cliff dropped in a V-shaped divide straight down to
+the green ocean; and at its base the ground swell curled, broke white
+and eddied. The jagged mountains across shone white against black
+clouds,--what peaks! huge and sharp like the teeth of the Fenris-Wolf.
+
+We hurried back to Olson who waited in the boat. That side--the cove
+and the more familiar mountains to the westward--lay half shrouded in
+fast dissolving mist. The descent was real sport. We just sat down and
+slid clear to the bottom, going at toboggan pace. Poor Olson, who
+watched us from below, was aghast. On the shore I found a long, thick
+bamboo pole, doubtless carried directly here from the orient by the
+Japanese current. We longed to go across to Bear Glacier that we could
+now see, a broad, inclined plane, spotless white, with the tallest
+mountains rising steeply from its borders. But it was too late and we
+returned home. The wonders of this country, of this one bay in fact,
+it would take years to know!
+
+
+ Monday, March tenth.
+
+On the eighth it snowed hard all day and both of us worked at our
+trade indoors. The ninth dawned fresh and clear and cold. It was too
+windy to go out onto the bay as we had intended, so, not to be
+entirely cheated out of an excursion, we packed a bag of various
+supplies and set off for the ridge to the eastward.
+
+It was glorious in the woods. New fallen snow lay upon the tree
+branches; the sun touched only the tallest tops, the wind rustled
+them now and then and made it snow again below. We came out upon the
+summit of the ridge more to the north than we had ever been before and
+from there beheld again the open sea. Nothing can be more wonderful
+than to emerge from the dense forest onto such a view! Right on the
+ridge we built a fire beneath the arched roots of a large tree.
+Rockwell will long remember that wonderful chimney beneath the roots.
+I painted on one of the canvases I had brought while Rockwell played
+about or cut wood for the fire. Presently the can of beans that we'd
+laid in the ashes went pop!--and we knew that dinner was ready. So we
+sat down and ate the good beans, bread and peanut butter, and
+chocolate,--while our backs sizzled and our bellies froze. But we
+loved it and Rockwell proposed that we spend three or four days there
+like that. Then after more painting and some play in the snow we came
+home again.
+
+But the beautiful days must be busy ones for me. I painted out on the
+lake for an hour or more; after that again-this time the glorious
+sunset. After supper bread to bake and then, tired out, early to sleep
+in our great, hard, comfortable bed. Olson would have started to-day
+had the weather been moderate. But it has blown fiercely from the
+north--and still it blows. All day I worked packing and now my boxes
+are made and nearly filled. It is surely true that we are going! All
+day it has seemed to me to be fall. We had thought of that before
+during these recent days. We scent it and feel it. I believe that it's
+the end of a real summer in our lives that we taste the sadness of.
+
+
+ Tuesday, March eleventh.
+
+It blows incessantly, cold and clear,--blue days. I have painted most
+of to-day, first indoors, and then outdoors commencing a large
+picture. Olson has been with us much of the time. He treasures every
+little memento we can give him. In his pocket-book are snapshots of
+Kathleen, Clara, and Barbara. He wanted Barbara's curl that I
+have--but I couldn't give him that. It looks as if we should all go to
+Seward together. This wind is likely to hold until the full moon
+passes--and that's still some days off. My trunk is about packed and
+what remains can be done in a very few hours.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAR-LIGHTER]
+
+Speaking to Olson to-night about the possibility of a shipwrecked man
+being able to support life on this coast for any length of time he
+told of a native boy of Unga, "crazy Simyon," who lived four years at
+Nigger Head, a wild part of Unga Island, with no shelter but a hole in
+a sand bank, no fire, no weapons or clothes, or tools; a first-hand
+story, long, wild, terrible, beginning with a boy's theft of
+sacrificial wine, and ending in madness and murder.
+
+
+ Thursday, March thirteenth.
+
+Last night was bitterly cold. I had to get up repeatedly to attend to
+the fire. The wind howled and the vapor flew and Rockwell and I hugged
+close together beneath the blankets. Day dawned still icy cold. By
+noon it began to snow and the afternoon was calm and mild. And now
+again the wind blows fiercely from the northeast and we're freezing
+cold! The day was spent in packing. The dismantled cabin looks
+forlorn.
+
+
+ Sunday, March sixteenth.
+
+With the full moon has come the most perfect calm. If it holds through
+to-morrow we shall leave the island. The past three days have been
+busy ones. Bitterly cold weather has prevailed with the wind
+unceasingly from the north--almost the coldest days of the winter.
+Still I did some painting out-of-doors every day until yesterday,
+trying hard to pin upon the canvas a little more of the infinite
+splendors of this place. Meanwhile our packing was carried on. We have
+made a thoroughly good job of it--I hope! But who can tell what
+strain a trip of so many thousand miles will put upon our crates and
+bundles? But for a promise we had made Olson to go with him to Sunny
+Bay and Humpback Creek--on the eastern mainland--we'd have gone this
+day to Seward.
+
+By noon the most perfect calm had settled upon the water. The sky was
+cloudless, and although really it was still very cold the bright sun
+_looked_ like warmth--and that helped a lot. So Olson's little engine,
+sputtering, stammering, stopping a great deal, carried us upon our
+trip. At Humpback Creek there are falls maybe thirty feet high,
+perfect falls tumbling sheer down from a plateau into a deep round
+basin. The falls to-day were frozen and spread wide over the face of
+the cliff; but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form.
+We had to hurry from here or be stranded by the rapidly retreating
+tide. Next we went to a spot on the bay where Rockwell and I might
+have lived had we not met Olson that fair Sunday in August. A little
+cabin stood there--open to the weather through doorway and window but
+otherwise snug and comfortable. Still, even with that _great_ wonder,
+the fall, so near, that spot was not to be compared with our own Fox
+Island home. Next we went to Sunny Bay to visit the old trapper who
+has been wintering there--the same who stopped last fall at our island
+while on his way to camp. The old fellow came to meet us as we landed,
+a feeble, emaciated figure. He has been sick all winter and has done
+practically no trapping. What a forlorn latter end for a man! He drags
+himself about each day, cuts wood, lugs water, cooks, and when he
+stoops dizziness overcomes him. He sets a small circle of traps and
+drags himself around to tend them. His whole winter's work is twelve
+ermine and two mink-thirty or forty dollars' worth at the most. We
+offered to bring the old man back with us and from here on to
+Seward--but he preferred to stay there a few days longer.
+
+And now I sit here with our packed household goods about me, empty
+walls and a dismantled home. Still we hardly realize that this
+beautiful adventure of ours has come to an end. The enchantment of it
+has been complete; it has possessed us to the very last. How long such
+happiness could hold, such quiet life continue to fill up the full
+measure of human desires only a long experience could teach. The
+still, deep cup of the wilderness is potent with wisdom. Only to have
+tasted it is to have moved a lifetime forward to a finer youth.
+
+
+ Tuesday, March eighteenth.
+
+Fox Island is behind us. Last August Olson picked us up as strangers
+and towed us to his island; yesterday, after nearly seven months there
+with him we climbed again into our dories and crossed the bay--and now
+we extend the helping hand to the old man and tow him and his
+faltering engine back to Seward. The day dawned cold and windy. We
+proceeded however at once to the completion of our packing and the
+loading of the boat.
+
+A little after noon the wind moderating slightly we persuaded Olson to
+come with us. My engine working beautifully carried both boats along
+till the other little motor could be prevailed upon to start. In the
+bay the wind was fresh and the chop high. Half-way across the wind had
+risen and the water flew. Olson's engine worked so poorly that most of
+the time I had the full strain of his dory on the line. I feared the
+old man's courage would give out as the sea increased, and I grinned
+at him reassuringly from time to time. Finally, however, as the
+white-crested waves seemed to rush ever more fiercely upon us his face
+grew solemn. He waved to us to turn and run back to the island. But
+the tow line was fast in my boat and I neither chose to turn nor
+loosen it. Showing our backs to him we ran for the shelter of Caine's
+Head--and made it. From there onward we skirted the cliffs and found
+it smooth enough. The wind again died out and we entered Seward over a
+glassy sea.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+And now at last it _is_ over. Fox Island will soon become in our
+memories like a dream or vision, a remote experience too wonderful,
+for the full liberty we knew there and the deep peace, to be
+remembered or believed in as a _real_ experience in life. It was for
+us life as it should be, serene and wholesome; love--but no hate,
+faith without disillusionment, the absolute for the toiling hands of
+man and for his soaring spirit. Olson of the deep experience, strong,
+brave, generous and gentle like a child; and his island--like
+Paradise. Ah God,--and now the world again!
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43284 ***
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