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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adventures in Alaska, by Samuel Hall Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Adventures in Alaska
+
+Author: Samuel Hall Young
+
+Release Date: November 1, 2013 [EBook #44077]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN ALASKA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charlene Taylor, Chris Whitehead, Linda Cantoni
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Adventures in Alaska
+
+
+
+
+By
+
+S. HALL YOUNG, D.D.
+
+
+_Alaska Days with John Muir._ Illustrated, 12mo, cloth....
+
+"Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John Muir's dog story?
+Here is a book by the man who owned Stickeen and was Muir's companion
+on the adventurous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only
+a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Alaskan
+wilderness, it is also a living portrait of John Muir in the great
+moments of his career."--_New York Times._
+
+"I can see only one fault with the book, it is far too short. I should
+love to read such a book as big as the dictionary. Thank you very
+much!"--_Gene Stratton-Porter._
+
+"One need not be an admirer of John Muir to be thoroughly entertained
+by the lively pages. The Muir of this book is the familiar vibrant
+personality. This little book, the record of these trips, is written
+in a style animated and vivid without being journalistic--a style not
+unlike that of the lover of glaciers himself."--_The Nation._
+
+
+
+
+  Adventures in Alaska
+
+
+  By
+
+  S. HALL YOUNG
+
+  _Author of "Alaska Days with John Muir,"
+  "The Klondike Clan"_
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  NEW YORK     CHICAGO
+  Fleming H. Revell Company
+  LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1919, by
+  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+  Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
+  London: 21 Paternoster Square
+  Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Stalking Walrus in an Oomiak
+
+Dr. Young's figure is to the left. This is the time he got his ivory
+for the gavels]
+
+
+
+
+Foreword
+
+
+The author puts forth this little book of actual adventures in
+the great new land of Alaska with the hope that it will afford
+healthy-minded young people a true idea of some phases of human and
+animal life there. These stories are picked out of an experience of
+forty years and selected with a view to both unity and variety.
+
+The first three chapters are an attempt to draw in bold outline some
+dramatic episodes of the author's experience in the second of the
+three great gold stampedes of the Northwest. All these struggles
+for gold have in them richly dramatic elements. Life in such camps
+pulses strongly with all human ambitions, affections and passions. The
+missionary, if he is really to commend himself to the men who rush into
+the wilderness for gold, and do them good, must, first of all, prove
+himself a _man_, ready and able to do and suffer everything that falls
+to the lot of the gold seekers. He must live their life and play the
+game with them. He must cheerfully put up with the privations they
+endure, must take the lead in their healthy sports, must alleviate
+their sufferings, and, keeping himself free from the deadly gold-lust,
+must show that he has in himself and can give to his fellow pioneers
+something better than gold. His heart must be, for himself and those
+about him, a living fountain of joy and peace.
+
+As in his earlier work, "The Klondike Clan," the author endeavored to
+draw a true picture not only of the life and conditions of the first
+Northwestern gold-rush, but also of the minister's aims and field of
+duty; so in this short sketch of the second Stampede his aim has been,
+above all things, _truth_. Every incident is actual history, and even
+the names are real. The dog story is also conscientiously true history,
+and belongs to one of the minor gold stampedes.
+
+The second section of the book--the three bear stories and the walrus
+story--are also bits of history. Every pioneer missionary in Alaska
+should be an ardent hunter. The author's life has often depended upon
+his gun and fishing tackle. For ten years in Southeastern Alaska he
+and his family had no beef or pork or mutton, but the game--animals,
+birds and fish--more than made up for the lack of these.
+
+In Interior Alaska the same conditions prevail. The wild animals
+furnish not only the food of the people, both natives and whites,
+but also their winter clothing. Life would be unbearable there in
+"sixty-below weather" were the inhabitants unable to procure the
+warm coats provided by kindly Mother Nature for the use both of her
+four-footed and her human children.
+
+The Eskimo faces the hardest conditions of almost any native race in
+his battle for life; and yet he is, perhaps, the most comfortable of
+any. He gets his living from the Arctic seas, the seal and walrus being
+his main dependence. From the great walrus he gets meat, clam chowder,
+light and fuel; its skin makes his foot-wear, the walls and roof of
+his house, and his boats; its ivory furnishes his tools and implements
+of the chase. When the author and his friends brought the great supply
+of walrus meat to the Eskimo village of East Cape they insured the
+life and comfort of its inhabitants for the winter. All this is an
+essential part of a missionary's beneficent work. Good service for God
+and humanity is not inconsistent with the joy of the chase.
+
+As the author confidently expects that many of his young readers will
+find their permanent homes in "The great big, broad land 'way up
+yonder," he hopes this book may prove, in some degree, an introduction
+to the enjoyments and achievements of the life there.
+
+S. H. Y.
+
+_New York._
+
+
+
+
+  Contents
+
+
+  I. THE NOME STAMPEDE                            13
+
+  II. THE ANVIL                                   33
+
+  III. BUNCH-GRASS BILL                           49
+
+  IV. MY DOGS                                     76
+
+  V. LOUIE PAUL AND THE HOOTZ                    100
+
+  VI. OLD SNOOK AND THE COW                      112
+
+  VII. NINA AND THE BEARS                        131
+
+  VIII. THE ABSURD WALRUS                        153
+
+
+
+
+  Illustrations
+
+
+  STALKING WALRUS IN AN OOMIAK        _Frontispiece_
+
+                                       _Facing page_
+
+  NOME, ALASKA, SUMMER OF 1900                    28
+
+  ANVIL ROCK, OVERLOOKING NOME                    36
+
+  THE ODORIFEROUS BUT INTERESTING ESKIMO          48
+
+  DR. YOUNG AND HIS DOG TEAM                      80
+
+  FORT WRANGELL, ALASKA, ON ETOLIN HARBOR        100
+
+  NATIVE HOUSES, SHOWING TOTEM POLES             118
+
+  FIVE KODIAK BEARS                              148
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE NOME STAMPEDE
+
+
+It was with the excitement of a veteran soldier going into a fresh
+battle that I teetered over the springy plank from the Rampart shore to
+the deck of the Yukon River steamboat. My year's outfit of "grub and
+duds," as the miners would put it, was aboard. I grasped the hand of
+Dr. Koonce, with whom I had just floated in an open boat down the Yukon
+twelve hundred miles. A fine fellow--"Kooncie"! We had been camping,
+and fishing, and packing, and boating together since the first of May,
+1899, and it was now the middle of August. He was to stay at the new
+mining town of Rampart, build a church there and learn the joyous life
+of a pioneer missionary.
+
+What a queer mix-up of men on the crowded decks of the steamboat! Wild
+rumors of a ridiculous sort had reached the ears of gold hunters clear
+up the two thousand miles of the swift and crooked Yukon to Dawson.
+Gold! Not snugly reposing in the frozen gravel of deep gulches and
+canyons cut through the high hills--where respectable and orthodox gold
+ought to be; but gold on the wind-swept, stormy, treeless, exposed
+coast of Seward Peninsula--the tongue that impudent young Alaska sticks
+out at old Asia. Gold, like yellow corn-meal, in the beach-sands of
+Bering Sea, where nobody could lawfully stake a claim, but where
+anybody could go with shovel, pan and rocker and gather it up. Nuggets
+a-plenty and coarse gold--enticing shallow diggings--in the bed of
+Anvil Creek and other creeks and runlets in the hills, and the flat
+tundra about Nome.
+
+The reports of the new "strike," often wild and exaggerated, came
+as a life-saver to weary and discouraged thousands of Klondikers,
+who had packed their outfits over the terrible thirty miles of the
+Chilcoot Pass in the fall of '97 or the spring of '98, sawed the
+lumber themselves in the "armstrong sawmill," sailed their clumsy
+boats through the lakes, shot the rapids of the Upper Yukon, spent the
+summer of '98 and the winter that followed surging here and there on
+"wildcat" stampedes or putting down "dry" holes on unprofitable lays,
+and were now eagerly snatching at this new straw, hoping to "strike it"
+on the Nome beach. From Dawson, Forty Mile, Eagle, Circle, Fort Yukon;
+from wood camps and prospectors' tents along the Yukon, and now from
+Rampart, these bearded, battered, sun-blistered men came rushing aboard
+the steamboat.
+
+I had engaged a state-room before the steamboat arrived, but when it
+came a placard of the company owning the boat menaced us in the office:
+"_All reservations cancelled. Boat overcrowded. No passengers to be
+taken at Rampart_."
+
+Of course there was a mighty howl from the Rampart men, nearly half of
+whom had packed up to go on the boat. I hurried to the purser, whom I
+knew, and showed my pass from the manager of the company.
+
+"Can't help it, Doctor," he said in a loud tone, for the benefit of the
+bystanders. "The boat's past her limit now, and we're liable for big
+damages if anything happens. We can't take _anybody_."
+
+Presently he slyly pulled my arm, and I followed him to an inner office
+of the store. "Get your goods aboard," he directed. "You can spread
+your blankets on the floor of my office."
+
+While I was checking off my outfit and seeing it on board, I noticed
+a lot of the Rampart men, with hand-trucks gathered from the various
+stores, taking their own outfits aboard, ignoring the shipping clerk
+and dumping their goods wherever they found a place to put them. The
+officers and deck-hands were protesting and swearing, but the men went
+right along loading their outfits.
+
+Presently the captain pulled the whistle rope and ordered the plank
+drawn in and the cable cast off from the "dead man." Instantly three
+men marched to the cable's end, seized the man who was to cast it off
+and held him. Then fully fifty men with their packs on their backs
+filed down the plank. The first mate tried to stop them. He even made a
+move to draw his pistol; but the foremost man--a big six-footer--threw
+his arms around him and carried him back against the stairway and held
+him until the men with their packs were all aboard. It was all done
+quietly, and with the utmost good humor. The men grinned up at the
+swearing, red-faced captain on the upper deck, and one shouted, "We'll
+give you a poke of dust, Cap., when we get to Nome."
+
+When all were aboard, somebody on the bank cast off the cable, the
+swift current caught the boat, the wheel backed, and we swung around
+and headed down the Yukon, bound for the new strike.
+
+Whiskers were very much in evidence in that closely packed mob of men
+that stood around on all the decks, stepping on each other's feet,
+perching on stairways, boxes, pole-bunks--anywhere for a resting place.
+To go from one part of the boat to another was a difficult proposition.
+
+The most evident trait of the crowd was its good nature. The
+deck-hands, among whom I recognized a lawyer friend from Dawson and
+a former customs collector from Juneau, were gold-seekers like all
+the rest; and it was, "Hello, Shorty!" "Ah, there, Dutch!" "Where
+you goin', Jim?" between them and the newcomers. A rollicking,
+happy-go-lucky crowd, all joyful at being on the way to the new
+diggings. Even the officers of the boat began to smile, secretly
+pleased that they had a record-breaking and most profitable load
+aboard, and were free from blame for overloading, because they could
+not help it.
+
+As for me, I was well content, even to be hustled and jostled and
+elbow-punched by this horde of scraggly-bearded men of the northwestern
+wilderness. This was my parish, my home; and these were my comrades, my
+chums, my brothers. I was just as sunburned and weather-beaten as they
+were, and felt the same tingling of nerves, the same leap of the blood
+at the call of fresh adventure.
+
+I was dressed in the same sort of rough woolen mackinaw clothes and
+soft flannel underwear as the men around me. I had left my clerical
+suit and white shirts and collars behind, for three reasons: First,
+for the sake of economy. These strong, loose garments did not cost a
+third as much as broadcloth, and would wear twice as well. Besides,
+it would cost a dollar and a half to have a white shirt laundered in
+Interior Alaska (which, at that time, was twice the original cost of
+the shirt), and twenty-five cents to do up a collar, the cost price of
+which "outside" was three for a quarter. I could wash my flannel shirts
+myself. Second, for comfort's sake. The soft wool of these garments
+was so much warmer and more pliable than a "Prince Albert" suit; and
+a starched collar would sear one's neck like fire, when it was "sixty
+below." My chief reason, however, was that I wished to create no
+artificial barriers between my parishioners and myself. I wished to
+stand on the same social level. I desired these men to feel that I was
+one of them, and could camp and "rustle," carry a pack, live on rabbits
+and rough it generally as deftly and cheerfully as they--live the same
+outdoor life and endure the same so-called "hardships."
+
+The view-point of these "sour-doughs" was shown in a funny way at our
+first landing place after leaving Rampart, which was the little town
+of Tanana. When the boat tied up, the whistle gave three sharp hoots,
+showing that the stay would be very short. As soon as the plank was
+ashore a man ran up it, and when he reached the deck he called loudly:
+"Is there a preacher aboard? Is there a preacher aboard?"
+
+A grizzled old miner, who did not know me, pointed to the only man on
+the steamboat who wore a Prince Albert coat and white shirt and collar,
+and drawled: "Wa-al, that there feller, he's either a preacher or a
+gambler; I don't know which."
+
+The "dressed-up" man proved to be a gambler. I made myself known to the
+anxious man from the village, followed him ashore and married him to a
+woman who was waiting in the company's office.
+
+That was one voyage of mingled discomfort and pleasure. Discomforts and
+hardships are as you make them and take them. There were a few of that
+company who grumbled and swore at being crowded, at being obliged to
+stand up all day, to lie on the floor or on the piles of cord-wood at
+night, besides being compelled to fairly fight for their meals or to
+get their food from their own kits. But the majority of these men had
+been camping and roughing it for two years. Many of them had packed
+heavy loads over the Chilcoot Pass in the great Klondike Stampede, had
+made their own boats and navigated hundreds of miles of unknown and
+dangerous rivers, had encountered and overcome thousands of untried
+experiences. To all of them these little discomforts were trifles to be
+dismissed with a smile or joke, and they had contempt for any man who
+fussed or complained.
+
+One of the cheeriest of the crowd aboard the steamboat was a newsboy
+twelve or thirteen years old. His name was Joe: I never knew his
+surname. He had had a very wonderful time. The year before--the summer
+of 1898--he was selling papers in Seattle. He heard of the high prices
+paid for newspapers and magazines at the camps of the Northwest.
+He bought three or four hundred copies of the Seattle P. I. (_Post
+Intelligencer_) and _Times_. He paid two and a half and three cents
+apiece for them, the selling price at Seattle being five cents. Then he
+got five or six hundred back numbers of these papers, from a day to a
+week old, for nothing. He also got, mostly by gift from those who had
+read them, three or four hundred of the cheaper magazines, some new,
+some a month or two old. For his whole stock he paid scarcely fifteen
+dollars.
+
+Joe smuggled himself and his papers aboard a steamboat bound for
+Skagway, and worked his passage as cabin boy, waiter and general
+roustabout. At Juneau and Skagway he sold about one-fourth of his
+papers and magazines--the papers for twenty-five cents each and the
+ten-cent magazines for fifty cents. He could have sold out, but
+hearing that he could get double these prices at Dawson and down the
+Yukon, held on to his stock.
+
+He formed a partnership with an old "sour-dough" miner, who helped him
+get his papers over the Chilcoot Pass and down the Yukon to Dawson.
+At the great Klondike camp he quickly sold out his papers at a dollar
+each, and the magazines at a dollar and a half to two and a half.
+
+Joe spent the winter of 1898-9 at Dawson, selling the two papers
+published in that city and running a general news stand, in which he
+sold the reading matter he had sold before but gathered up again from
+the buyers. Sometimes he sold the same magazine four or five times.
+
+When the Nome Stampede began, Joe got into the good graces of the
+manager of the steamboat company and got free passage down the Yukon.
+He shared my wolf-robe on the floor of the purser's room, and we became
+great chums. The boy was so bright and quick, and at the same time so
+polite and accommodating, that he made friends everywhere. He was a
+Sunday-school boy, and distributed my little red hymn-books when I
+held service in the social hall of the steamboat on Sunday, and his
+clear soprano sounded sweetly above the bass notes of the men.
+
+"Joe," I asked him one day, "how much money have you made during the
+last year and a half?"
+
+"Well," he replied, "I sent two thousand dollars out home from Dawson
+before I started down here, and with what I am making on this trip and
+what I hope to make at Nome, I think I'll have five thousand dollars
+clear when I land at Seattle the last of October."
+
+"That's a dangerous amount of money for a small boy to have," I warned
+him. "Have you lost any of it?"
+
+Joe grinned. "No, I dassen't. Some card sharps tried to get me to
+gamble at Dawson. They said I could double my money. But my partner
+[the old miner] said he'd lick me half to death if I ever went near the
+green tables. I didn't want to, anyhow. Everybody helps me take care of
+my money."
+
+"What are you going to do with it?"
+
+"Why, give it all to mother, of course. She'll use it for me and my
+sister. I'm going to school as soon as I get home. Mother works in a
+store, but I guess this money'll give her a rest. She needs it."
+
+A word more about little Joe before I leave him. He made good at Nome
+in September, and sailed for Seattle the last of October. The last I
+heard of him, four or five years later, he was making his way through
+the University of Washington, and still managing newspaper routes in
+Seattle. His is a case of exceptional good fortune; and yet I know of a
+number of boys who have made remarkable sums selling papers in Alaska.
+It is a boy's land of opportunity as well as a man's.
+
+Our voyage to St. Michael was a tedious one--down the long stretches
+of the Lower Yukon, worming through the sand-bars and muddy shallows
+of the interminable delta, waiting through weary hours for tide and
+wind to be just right before venturing out on Bering Sea. Hurrying at
+last under full steam through the choppy sea, with the waves washing
+the lower deck and producing panic, uproar and swearing among the men
+packed upon it--we came to the harbor of St. Michael on the wind-swept,
+treeless, mossy shore of Norton Sound.
+
+I was still to work my way through a tangle of delays and adventures
+before I could reach my goal--the great new camp at Nome, one hundred
+and thirty miles from St. Michael.
+
+I had first to get my outfit together on the wharf, counting the boxes
+and war bags, pursuing the missing ones to other outfits and proving
+my claim to them. In the confusion this was a hard job, but I only
+lost two or three of my boxes. I piled my goods in a corner of the big
+warehouse of the North American Trading and Transportation Co., and set
+up my tent on the beach, for I was near the end of my money, and could
+not pay the high prices charged at the hotels. I got into my camp kit
+and did my own cooking, protecting my food as best I could against the
+thievish Eskimo dogs.
+
+Then began a search, which lasted a week, for means of getting to Nome.
+The gold-hunters were putting off every day in whale boats, Eskimo
+_oomiaks_, and small sloops and schooners; but these craft were too
+small and uncertain for me to risk passage in them. My caution proved
+wise, for five or six of these small boats, after setting out, were
+never heard of again.
+
+While I was waiting, the U. S. Revenue Cutter, _Bear_, came into the
+harbor, and aboard her was Sheldon Jackson, Superintendent of Education
+for Alaska, the noted pioneer missionary. He was just returning from
+a tour of the native schools and reindeer stations. (He was the man
+who had introduced the reindeer into Alaska from Siberia to supply the
+wants of the Eskimo.)
+
+"Hurry on to Nome," he counseled me. "You were never needed more in all
+your life."
+
+At length there limped into the harbor a little tub-like side-wheel
+steamboat, belonging to the Alaska Exploration Company, whose wharf was
+a mile and a half distant up the harbor. There was no way of getting my
+goods across the swampy tundra of St. Michael Island to the wharf. On
+the beach I found an abandoned old rowboat with open seams. I procured
+pieces of boards, some oakum and pitch, and set to work to repair the
+old boat. The steamboat was to sail for Nome the next forenoon. I
+worked all night. I made a pair of clumsy oars out of boards. Then I
+carried my goods to the leaky boat and rowed them to the dock. It took
+three trips to transfer my outfit, and while I was rowing back and
+forth somebody carried off my most valuable war-bag, containing most of
+my foot-wear and underclothes--one hundred dollars' worth.
+
+I was a tired man when I stumbled down the steep stairs into the dark
+and stuffy hold of the little steamboat; and much more tired when,
+after two and a half days of seasickness, bobbing up and down in the
+choppy seas like a man on a bucking broncho, I pulled up the stairs
+again and let myself down the rope-ladder into the dory which was to
+take the passengers ashore at Nome.
+
+"You can only take what you can carry on your back," announced the
+captain. "There's a storm coming up and I've got to hurry to the lee of
+Sledge Island, twenty miles away. You'll get your outfits when I come
+back. Lucky we're not all down in Davy Jones's locker."
+
+I strapped my pack-sack, containing my wolf-robe and a pair of
+blankets, on my back, glad to get ashore on any terms. The dory
+wallowed heavily in the waves, the strong wind driving it towards the
+sandy beach. Boats have to anchor from one to two miles offshore at
+Nome. When we reached the beach, a big wave lifted the dory and swung
+it sideways. The keel struck the sand, and she turned over, dumping us
+all out, the comber overwhelming us and rolling us over and over like
+barrels. Drenched and battered, we crawled to land.
+
+A heavy rain was falling as I staggered up the beach with my
+water-soaked blankets on my back, looking for a lodging-house. The
+beach was lined with tents, placed without regard to order or the
+convenience of anybody except the owner of each tent. A few straggling
+board-shacks were stuck here and there on the swampy tundra. Two or
+three large, low store buildings represented the various pioneer
+trading companies. The one street, which ran parallel to the beach, was
+full of mud. The buildings most in evidence were saloons, generally
+with dance-hall attachments. The absence of trees, the leaden, weeping
+sky, the mud, the swampy tundra, the want of all light and beauty, made
+this reception the dreariest of all my experiences in the new mining
+camps.
+
+But I long ago learned that nothing is so bad but that it might be
+worse. I had not at that time seen Edmund Vance Cook's sturdy lines,
+but the spirit of them was in my heart:
+
+    "Did you tackle the trouble that came your way
+       With a resolute heart and cheerful,
+    Or hide your face from the light of day
+       With a craven heart and fearful?
+    Oh, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce,
+       Or a trouble is what you make it;
+    And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
+       But only, how did you take it!"
+
+[Illustration: Nome, Alaska, Summer of 1900
+
+A city of tents, twenty miles long]
+
+I soon found a sign written in charcoal on the lid of a paper
+box--_Lodging_. I entered the rough building and found a cheery Irish
+woman named M'Grath. There was no furniture in the house except two or
+three cheap chairs and a home-made board table.
+
+"Shure, ye can," she answered in reply to my question about spending
+the night there. "Ye'll spread yer robe an' blankets on the flure, an'
+it'll only cost ye a dollar an' four bits. Ye'll plaze pay in advance."
+
+I took stock of the contents of my pocketbook. There was just five
+dollars and a quarter left of the thousand dollars with which I
+had started from home on the first of May. It was now the first of
+September, and no more money was due me until the next spring. My food
+and tent were on the steamboat and would not be likely to come ashore
+for many days. It was Sunday evening, and a whole week must elapse
+before I could take up a collection.
+
+I paid my landlady and she put my blankets by her stove to dry. I paid
+another dollar and a half for a supper of beans and flap-jacks--the
+first food I had tasted for three days. I slept soundly that night on
+the floor, without a care or anxiety. The next morning I paid another
+dollar and a half for breakfast, and could not resist the temptation of
+purchasing a Seattle paper (only three weeks old--what a luxury!). I
+had just twenty-five cents left--and I was a stranger in this strange
+corner of the earth!
+
+I could not help laughing at my predicament as I entered the Alaska
+Exploration Company's store. A bearded man standing by the stove bade
+me "good-morning."
+
+"You seem to be pleased about something," he said. "Have you struck it
+rich?"
+
+"Well, yes!" I replied; "a rich joke on me," and I told him of the fix
+I was in.
+
+"What? You are Dr. Young?" he exclaimed, shaking me heartily by the
+hand. "Why, I'm a Presbyterian elder from San Francisco."
+
+The man's name was Fickus, a carpenter, who had come to Nome to build
+the store and warehouses of one of the big companies. He had held the
+first religious meetings in the new camp and had found quite a circle
+of Christian people.
+
+He offered to lend me money, but I refused to take it. "No," I said,
+"let us wait and see what happens."
+
+Something happened very quickly. While we were talking a young man
+entered the store and came up to me.
+
+"I understand that you are a minister," he said.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "What can I do for you?"
+
+"You can marry me to the best woman in Alaska."
+
+"Is she here?" I asked, with a triumphant smile at Fickus.
+
+"Oh, yes; she came on the last boat from Seattle."
+
+"When do you wish the ceremony to take place?" I inquired.
+
+"Right now," he replied. "You can't tie the knot too quickly to suit
+me."
+
+I followed the eager young man, married him to a nice-looking girl
+who was waiting in a near-by cabin, received a wedding-fee of twenty
+dollars, and returned to my newly-found friend with the assurance that
+my wants were supplied until my outfit would come ashore.
+
+This was my introduction to the second great gold camp of the
+Northwest--the raw, crazy, confused stampede of Nome.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE ANVIL
+
+
+The first two great gold camps of the Northwest were very different,
+although largely composed of the same material. In physical features
+they were most unlike. The Klondike was in the great, beautiful,
+mountainous, forested Interior; Nome was on the bleak, treeless, low,
+exposed coast of Bering Sea. To reach the Klondike you steamed from
+Seattle through twelve hundred miles of the wonderful "Inside Passage,"
+broke through the chain of snowy mountains by the Chilcoot Pass, and,
+in your rough rowboat, shot down the six hundred miles of the untamed
+and untameable Yukon. Or else you sailed twenty-three hundred miles
+over the heaving Pacific and the choppy Bering Sea to St. Michael, and
+then steamed laboriously against the stiff current of the same Father
+Yukon eighteen hundred miles _up_ to Dawson. To reach Nome you simply
+steamed the twenty-three hundred miles of Pacific Ocean and Bering
+Sea; or, if you were up the Yukon, came down it to St. Michael and
+across Norton Sound a hundred and fifty miles to Nome.
+
+Though on the same parallel of north latitude, the climates of the two
+camps are very unlike. In the Klondike you have the light, dry, _hot_
+air of summer; the light, dry, _cold_ air of winter. There are long
+periods when the sky is cloudless. In the summer of unbroken day the
+land drowses, bathed in warm sunshine and humming with insect life,
+no breath of air shaking the aspens; in the winter of almost unbroken
+but luminous night, the Spirit of the North broods like James Whitcomb
+Riley's Lugubrious Whing-whang,
+
+    "Crouching low by the winding creeks,
+    And holding his breath for weeks and weeks."
+
+There are no wind-storms in the Klondike, and a blanket of fine, dry
+snow covers the land in unvarying depth of only a foot or two.
+
+On Seward Peninsula, the Spirit of Winter breathes hard, and hurls his
+snow-laden blasts with fearful velocity over the icy wastes. The snow
+falls to great depth, and never lies still in one place. It drifts,
+and will cover your house completely under in one night, and pack so
+hard that the Eskimo can drive his reindeer team over your roof in
+the morning. The air becomes so full of the flying particles that you
+cannot see the lead-dog of your team. Men have lost their way in the
+streets of Nome and wandered out on the tundra to their death. There is
+considerable sunshine in the summer, and some comparatively still days,
+but there is much rain, and mossy swamps are everywhere.
+
+The men at Nome in the fall of '99 included many who had been at Dawson
+in '97, but conditions were very different. The Klondike Stampede was
+composed of tenderfeet, not one in twenty of whom had ever mined for
+anything before--men of the city and village and workshop and farm,
+new to wilderness life, unused to roughing it. Those who reached Nome
+in '99 were mostly victims of hard luck. Many were Klondikers who had
+spent two winters rushing wildly from creek to creek on fake reports,
+possessing themselves of a multitude of worthless claims, eating up the
+outfits they had brought in with them, and then working for wages in
+mines of the lucky ones to buy a passage to the new diggings. Many had
+come down the Yukon in their own rowboats.
+
+But the Klondike Stampede was the cause of other smaller but more
+fruitless stampedes. These were started by steamboat companies, or by
+trading companies, and often by "wildcat" mining companies, and were
+generally cruel hoaxes. Scores of small steamboats, hastily built for
+the purpose, went up the Yukon to the Koyakuk and other tributaries
+in the summer of '98. Other scores of power-schooners and small
+sailing vessels sailed through Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and
+through Kotzebue Sound to the Kobuk and Sewalik Rivers. Almost without
+exception these eager gold-seekers of '98 found only disappointment,
+endured the savage winter as best they could, and, out of money and
+food, were making their way back to the States, when news of the
+marvelous "beach diggings" at Nome met them and they flocked thither in
+hopes of at least making back their "grub-stake."
+
+As these vessels approached the new camp, the most prominent landmark
+which met their eyes was a lone rock in the shape of an anvil, which
+crowned the summit of the highest of the hills near the coast. At the
+base of this hill rich gold diggings were found in a creek. The town
+which sprung up was first called Anvil City; but the Government postal
+authorities, looking at the map, found Cape Nome in the vicinity, and
+the post-office was named after the Cape.
+
+[Illustration: Anvil Rock. Overlooking Nome]
+
+For the name "Nome" two explanations are given. It is said that the
+American and Canadian surveyors who were laying out the projected
+Western Union Telegraph Line across the American and Asiatic
+Continents, failed to find a name for this cape and wrote it down
+"No name," which was afterwards shortened to Nome. The more probable
+explanation is that the surveyors asked an Eskimo the name of the cape.
+Now the Eskimo negative is "No-me," and the man not understanding, or
+not knowing its name said "No-me." This was written down and put on the
+map as the name.
+
+But I like Anvil, and spoke and voted for that name at the first town
+meeting, held soon after I landed at the new camp. For the camp has
+been a place of hard knocks from the first. Rugged men have come there
+to meet severe conditions and have been hammered and broken by the
+blows of adversity. Others have been shaped and moulded by fiery trial
+and "the bludgeonings of chance." When I see that stone anvil I think
+of Tennyson's inspired lines:
+
+    "For life is not an idle ore,
+    But iron, dug from central gloom,
+      And heated hot with burning fears,
+      And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
+    And battered with the shocks of doom,
+    To shape and use."
+
+I was battered as hard as any one on this anvil of the Northwest; but
+to-day I feel nothing but gratitude for the severe experience.
+
+I had to wait until Saturday before the little steamer on which I came
+from St. Michael returned from the shelter of Sledge Island and put my
+goods ashore. In the meantime I had obtained permission to spread my
+blankets on the floor of the Alaska Exploration Company's store. During
+that first week we had constant storms. Five or six vessels were driven
+ashore and broken up by the violence of the waves.
+
+But I was getting my congregation together, and so was happy. A goodly
+proportion of Christian men and women are always found in these gold
+camps, and they are very willing workers. Before Sunday came I had
+found an old acquaintance, Minor Bruce, whom I had known fifteen years
+before when he was a trader in Southeastern Alaska. He offered me
+the use of the loft over his fur store. Mr. Fickus, the man from San
+Francisco, to whom I have made reference in a former chapter, fixed up
+some seats. I got my organ carried up the ladder and found singers.
+"Judge" McNulty, a lawyer friend who was handy with crayons, made fancy
+posters out of some pasteboard boxes I had got from the store.
+
+The floor of Bruce's store was cluttered with Eskimo mucklucks, bales
+of hair-seal skins, and other unsavory articles; and an old Eskimo
+woman, who had her lower lip and chin tattooed downwards in streaks
+after the fashion of these people, sat among the skins, chewing walrus
+hides and shaping them into soles for mucklucks, while the congregation
+was gathering. One usher received the people at the store door, steered
+them carefully between the bales and skins, and headed them to another
+who helped them up the steep stairway, while a third seated them. We
+had a good congregation and a rousing meeting. Our choir was one of the
+best I ever heard. Our organist and leader was Dr. Humphrey, a dentist,
+who had been director of a large chorus and choir; Mr. Beebe, our chief
+baritone, had sung in the choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church of
+Oakland, Cal.; and there were other professionals. I give these details
+as a typical beginning in a frontier camp. There is always fine talent
+of all sorts in a new gold town.
+
+Let me give right here two or three instances of the bread of kindness
+"cast upon the waters" and "found after many days." Nowhere is this
+Bible saying oftener realized than in the friendly wilderness.
+
+One of the first men I met at Nome was an old Colorado miner, whom I
+had known at Dawson. I had done him some kindness at the Klondike camp
+during the illness and after the death of his nephew. When he found me
+at Nome he greeted me warmly. "You're just the man I've been looking
+for. I know you don't do any mining, but I'm going to do some for you.
+I expect to go 'outside' in a few days. You come out on the tundra
+with me to-morrow, and I'll stake some ground for you; then I'll take
+your papers out with me and try to sell the claims."
+
+I went with him and he marked off three claims for me, which he had
+already selected. The next spring, when my long illness had plunged me
+deeply into debt and I was wondering how I could pay my obligations, my
+old friend returned with a thousand dollars, from the sale of one of my
+claims. I paid my doctor's bills and the other debts, and rejoiced. It
+was as money thrown down to me from heaven, in my time of dire need.
+
+At Dawson, in the summer of '98, I helped an old G. A. R. man from
+Missouri. He had been sick with the scurvy and was drowned out by the
+spring freshets and driven to the roof of his cabin, where I found him
+helpless and half-devoured by mosquitoes. I raised money for his need
+and sent him out home by one of the first steamboats down the Yukon.
+Before he left he pressed upon me the only gift he could offer--a fine
+Parker shotgun. I took this gun with me when I went to stake my claims
+and bagged a lot of ptarmigan; and a number of times afterwards I shot
+others of these delicious wild chickens with it. And when I was taken
+ill and my money all spent, I was able to sell the gun for a goodly sum.
+
+One more link in this chain of kindness: When my goods came ashore and
+I was able to set up my tent, I found two men, one a Norwegian, the
+other a Michigander, both of whom had just arrived, without a shelter.
+I took them into my tent. They helped me to move my goods, made me a
+cot and fixed up tables, box-chairs and shelves for me. The Norwegian
+was a very fine cook and baked my "shickens" for me most deliciously. I
+kept the men in my tent until they could build a cabin. When I became
+ill they would come to see me, bringing ptarmigan broth and other
+delicacies; and when I was convalescing and ravenous the Norwegian came
+again and again to my cabin, bringing "shickens for Mr. Zhung," and
+roasted them for me, serving them with his famous nut-butter gravy. In
+the language of the Northwest, "I didn't do a thing to those chickens."
+Of all places in the world, I think Alaska is most fruitful in return
+for little acts of kindness.
+
+Men such as I have just described were pure metal, and the heavy blows
+they received on the anvil only made their characters more beautiful
+and efficient.
+
+It was in the metal of the men themselves--what this hard life would do
+for them. Some it made--some it ruined. Among the "Lucky Swedes," who
+leaped in a few months from poverty to wealth by the discovery of gold
+in Anvil Creek, three form a typical illustration.
+
+One was a missionary to the Eskimos, on a small salary. At first his
+gold gave him much perplexity and trouble while he was being shaped
+to fit new conditions; but he rose finely to the occasion, gave a
+large part of his wealth to his church board for building missions and
+schools among the natives, and pursued his Christian way, honored and
+beloved, to broader paths of greater usefulness.
+
+A second Swede was also a missionary, teaching the little Eskimos on
+a salary of six hundred dollars a year. His gold completely turned
+his head. He fell an easy prey to designing men and women. He became
+dissipated and broken in body and character. He tried to keep for his
+own use the gold taken from the claim he had staked in the name of his
+Mission. His Board sued him for their rights. Long litigation, in which
+he figured as dishonest, selfish and grasping, followed, his church
+getting only a small part of its dues. The last I heard of him he was
+a mere wreck of a man, disgraced, despised and shunned by his former
+friends. The anvil battering, the trial by fire, the hard blows, proved
+him base metal.
+
+The third man was a Swedish sailor and longshoreman, ignorant and
+low, living a hand-to-mouth, sordid life, with no prospects of honor
+or wealth. His gold at first plunged him into a wild orgy of gambling
+and dissipation. He took the typhoid fever and was taken "outside."
+Everybody prophesied that he would simply "go the pace" to complete
+destruction.
+
+But there was true steel in his composition. His moral fiber stiffened.
+He began to think and study. He broke away from his drunken associates.
+He sought the companionship of the cultured. A good woman married
+and educated him. He has become one of Alaska's wealthiest and most
+influential citizens, and his charities abound. The stern anvil shaped
+him to world-usefulness. It is all in the _man_!
+
+Here at Nome I first made the acquaintance of that strange race in
+which I afterwards became so much interested--the Eskimo. At first they
+were a source of considerable annoyance. I always felt like laughing
+aloud when the queer, fat, dish-faced, pudgy folk came in sight. As
+we had to depend upon driftwood for our fuel, they would come several
+times a day, bringing huge basketfuls of the soggy sticks for sale at
+fifty cents a basket.
+
+They soon learned that I was a missionary, and then they would come
+rolling along, forty or fifty of them at a time, and "bunch up" in
+front of my tent. If I were cooking dinner they were sure to gather in
+full force, and would lift up the flap of my tent, grinning at me and
+eyeing every mouthful I ate. I did not know enough of their language
+even to tell them to go away. Their rank native odors were overpowering
+in the hot tent. You could detect the presence of one of those fellows
+half a mile away if the wind were blowing from him to you. The combined
+smells of a company of natives, not one of whom had ever taken a bath
+in his or her life, and who lived upon ancient fish and "ripe" seal
+blubber--well, I'll stop right here!
+
+One evening at a social in our warehouse-church we played the
+"limerick" game, which was then a popular craze. We would take a word
+and each one would write a verse on it. One of the words was Esquimaux.
+A number of the "limericks" were published in the _Nome Nugget_. With
+a man's usual egotism I can only remember my own, which I saw at
+intervals for several years in Eastern periodicals:
+
+    "Oh, look at this queer Esquimaux!
+    His nose is too pudgy to blaux.
+        His odors are awful;
+        To tell them unlawful.
+    The thought of them fills me with waux."
+
+One day I was getting dinner in my tent and the usual company of
+natives watching the performance, when there came along a couple of
+men who had just landed and who, evidently, had never seen an Eskimo
+before. I overheard their conversation.
+
+"Say, Jim," said one, "just look there. Did you ever see the like?" (A
+pause.) "Say, do you think them things has souls?"
+
+"We-e-ll," drawled Jim, "I reckon they must have. They're human bein's.
+But I'll tell you this: If they do, they've all got to go to heaven,
+sure; for the devil'd never have them around."
+
+Now let me tell you a sequel: Two years afterwards I was a Commissioner
+from the newly organized Presbytery of Yukon to the General
+Assembly, which met at Philadelphia. My fellow Commissioner from the
+Presbytery--the elder who sat by my side--was Peter Koonooya, an
+Eskimo elder from Ukeavik Church, Point Barrow. Ten years earlier,
+Dr. Sheldon Jackson, then Superintendent of Education for Alaska,
+had visited that northernmost point of the Continent and had started
+a school and mission. Peter Koonooya was one of the fruits. He was
+a native of extraordinary intelligence, a man of property, owning a
+fleet of whaling _oomiaks_. He could read, write and talk English, was
+a constant student of the Bible, and was considered by the Presbytery
+of sufficient intelligence and piety to represent us in the supreme
+Council of the Church.
+
+I am quite certain that Peter always voted exactly right on all
+questions which were up before that Assembly; because he watched me
+very closely and voted as I did.
+
+I was able, then, and in after years, to do these gentle, good-natured
+natives some good, and other Christian teachers have done much more for
+them. So it comes about that the condition of the Alaska Eskimo, under
+the influence of the various Christian missions and schools among them,
+as compared with that of their brothers and sisters of the same race
+across Bering Strait in Asia, for whom nothing in a Christian way has
+been done, is as day to night. They are pliable metal, and the Anvil of
+the Northwest is shaping them into vessels and implements of usefulness
+and honor.
+
+[Illustration: The Odoriferous but Interesting Eskimo
+
+Two of Dr. Young's Parishioners]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BUNCH-GRASS BILL
+
+
+Although I had often met him on the streets of Dawson in '98, I had
+not come into hand-shaking contact with Bunch-grass Bill until my
+first week at Nome. Of all the social orders whose members gathered
+together in clubs for humane work during the epidemic of typhoid fever,
+the first to organize, besides being the strongest and most active,
+was the Odd Fellows' Club. It was already organized when I arrived
+and, as I belonged to the order, I was present at the second meeting.
+The young lawyer who was president of the Club, taking me around the
+little circle of earnest men, brought me to a black-haired, black-eyed,
+sturdily-built and singularly handsome young Irishman by the name of
+Billy Murtagh.
+
+"Billy owns and runs the 'Beach Saloon,' and goes by the name of
+Bunch-grass Bill," introduced our president. "I don't know how he got
+into the Odd Fellows, under rules which bar saloon-keepers and bad men.
+But he's in, and we'll not turn him out of the Club, at least so long
+as this distress continues."
+
+Bill made no reply to this rather uncomplimentary introduction, but
+shook hands with Irish heartiness and looked at me with level gaze.
+"I've seen you in my saloon at Dawson," he said.
+
+The others laughed, and the president chided, "You oughtn't to give a
+preacher away like that, Bill."
+
+Taking a closer look at the young man, a scene at Dawson a year earlier
+flashed upon me. I was collecting money to pay the passage on the
+steamboat bound down the Yukon of some poor fellows who were broken and
+sick, and who must go "outside" or die. I made the round of the saloons
+and gambling halls, and going into one of these places was curtly
+refused by one of the partners. The other, who was this young man, came
+up and quietly said to the cashier, "Weigh him out two ounces ($32.00)."
+
+"Oh, I remember you now, and your two ounces," I said to Bill; and to
+the others, "I can vouch for his knowing the Second Degree of the
+order, at least."
+
+I was made chairman of the Relief Committee of the Club, and found
+work a-plenty cut out for me. Although the members of the Club did not
+look with indifference upon any case of distress, yet its prime object
+was to look up and help the sick Odd Fellows. I prepared a bulletin
+and tacked it up in the stores and saloons, directing that any cases
+of distress among the members of the order should be reported to the
+Committee. As the typhoid epidemic increased in virulence, the Club
+found its hands full.
+
+A day or two after this first meeting, I was passing Bill's saloon when
+he called me in.
+
+"I've just heard of a sick man," he reported, "and I think he's an Odd
+Fellow." Then, after a pause, he added, "But if he isn't that doesn't
+make a ---- bit of difference."
+
+He led the way along the beach for half a mile or more, to an isolated
+tent, where we found the typhoid case. Billy stayed until he made sure
+that the man was well cared for in the charge of friends and a good
+physician. Then he took me aside and slipped a twenty-dollar gold
+piece into my hand. "Use that for him," he directed.
+
+The next day I had to raise a hundred and fifty dollars to send an old
+miner who was poor and crippled "outside." I marched at once to the
+"Beach Saloon." "Billy," I said, "this old-timer has blown in all his
+dust for booze; and it's up to you who have got it from him to take
+care of him now."
+
+"That's right," he promptly answered. "There's ten saloons; what would
+be my share?"
+
+"An ounce," I replied, passing him the paper.
+
+He weighed out the gold dust. "Wait a while before going on. I'll pass
+the word down the line," he said.
+
+Half an hour afterwards I stopped again at his door. "They're all
+ready," reported Bill. "If any of them guys don't come across, just
+tell me."
+
+They all "came across," and thereafter, until I left Nome, all the
+saloon-keepers met every demand I made upon them without question.
+When a man had been impoverished or made sick through drink I went to
+the saloons, _only_, for his relief. In other cases I made a general
+canvass. When collecting money for church purposes I went to everybody,
+_except_ the saloon-keepers and their following.
+
+The day before my second meeting with the Odd Fellows' Club--a rainy,
+blustering day--I came to Bunch-grass Bill with a greater demand.
+
+"It is you I want this time, Billy, not just your money," I said.
+"There is a sick Odd Fellow in a tent almost a mile from here. He is
+alone and lying in a puddle of water. Get your gum-boots and find three
+or four other stout men and come with me."
+
+Bill agreed at once, found a man to tend his bar, secured a squad of
+strong and willing men, a stretcher from the army post and a good
+physician and went with me on the errand of mercy. He worked all day
+in the mud and rain. He carried the sick man to the warehouse which
+we had turned into a temporary hospital, visited all the stores in an
+attempt to find mattresses, and, failing in that, bought eight large
+reindeer skins and piled them on the floor for a bed, bought underwear,
+dry blankets and other comforts for the sick man, and laid in a supply
+of delicacies for the use of the hospital. In all, he spent over fifty
+dollars and a whole day of strenuous work upon the case.
+
+When I asked him at dusk if he were not tired he laughed: "Never had a
+better time in all my life."
+
+That night was the regular weekly meeting of the Club. I made my
+report, which was quite long, and mentioned many distressing cases,
+showing an alarming increase of the typhoid. Then I asked for a rotary
+relief committee of three to be chosen at every other meeting, and a
+permanent relief committee of two.
+
+"I've found the biggest-hearted man in all Alaska," I said. "His
+business and mine are not quite the same. In fact I have been all
+my life fighting saloons and saloon-keepers, and I expect to keep
+on fighting them until I die. But this man's heart of love for his
+fellow-men fights his business harder than I can."
+
+Then I related some of the things Billy had done during the past week,
+and ended my speech by asking that he be put on the permanent relief
+committee with me. "We two will find the sick and cut out the work for
+the rest of you," I promised.
+
+The Club applauded, much to the confusion of Bill, who tried his best
+to shrink out of sight. One of the boys reported next morning.
+
+"Say, Doctor," he began, "you sure scared Bunch-grass Bill near to
+death last night. Tickled, too. He asked us all to come in and have one
+on him. He doesn't know anything else to do when he feels good. 'That's
+a new one on me,' he said. 'I never had anything to do with a preacher
+in my life. Didn't like 'em. Kept shy of 'em. But if Father Young sees
+fit to come into my saloon--and he's in it every day--I'll go with him
+wherever he wants me to go--even if it's to his church.'"
+
+That touched me, for I could sense something of the sacrifice
+it would involve. It would be far easier for Bill to start on a
+three-thousand-mile winter mush on snow-shoes, over unbroken trails,
+than to step inside of a Protestant meeting-house.
+
+From that time on, Bill was my right hand. As the number of typhoid
+victims increased, he made his saloon an intelligence office, finding
+and reporting to me all new cases. The example of the Odd Fellows
+stimulated the various social orders represented in the camp--the
+Masons, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Eagles, and others--to a like
+humane work; and Bill looked up their sick members and reported to
+their committees. He saw that all the sick had medical attention, and
+guaranteed the payment of scores of doctor's bills. Each steamboat
+that left Nome for the "outside" carried a number of convalescents and
+broken-down and moneyless men, and funds had to be raised for their
+passage. Bill headed nearly all of these subscription lists, as well as
+those for fitting up the four temporary hospitals we opened and filled
+with sick men.
+
+Being for over six weeks the only clergyman in that whole region, I
+conducted all the funerals. One week I had eleven--all typhoid cases.
+Bill attended them all, looking after the digging of the graves and
+making coffins, and often acting as undertaker.
+
+Now, I am not setting up my saloon friend as a saint. Quite the
+contrary. I suppose he had been guilty of every crime mentioned in the
+Decalogue. He had never known any home life, but had knocked about from
+camp to camp of the western frontiers ever since boyhood. His ideas of
+morality, therefore, were very vague. He was said to have been "run
+out" of several towns in Montana and Idaho. He had a violent temper
+and, as the phrase went, was "quick on the trigger." Rumor said that
+he had the blood of more than one man on his hands; although it was
+claimed, in every case, that he had not sought the quarrel. He sold
+whiskey and drank it, gambled and swore habitually without a thought of
+any of these things being wrong. He was simply an uncultured, ignorant,
+rough-and-ready, Irish-American backwoodsman.
+
+But to those of us in the raw camp of Nome who witnessed Bill's
+untiring kindness and self-sacrifice during those weeks of distress,
+his faults faded into the background behind the light of his many good
+deeds. St. Peter says, "Charity covers a multitude of sins," and surely
+Bill's charity "abounded" overwhelmingly, putting out of sight much of
+the evil in his life.
+
+As for me, I shall always think of him as one of the most loyal,
+devoted friends I ever had, and the saver of my life. For after seven
+weeks of most strenuous and wearing work, I was suddenly stricken
+down with the typhoid myself. The blow came when I was fairly drowned
+in the multitude of my duties. I was raising the money to send out
+on the steamboat four or five men who must leave the country or
+die--poor fellows whose vitality was so low that they could not combat
+the cold and storms of a Nome winter. I was also preparing another
+warehouse-hospital. So great was the demand for space for the care of
+the sick that I had felt compelled to take into my own ten-by-twelve
+tent three men sick with the disease. So crowded was the tent that I
+had to sleep under the bed of one of them. Billy Murtagh and others of
+the Odd Fellows' Club warned me against thus exposing myself to the
+infection, but there seemed to be no other way. Billy brought me all
+his remaining Apollinaris water that I might not have to drink the
+impure seepage of the tundra. Some of the brothers carried me pails of
+water from the one well which had been recently put down.
+
+While I was in the midst of the canvass for funds, and in the bustle of
+preparation for the departure of the last steamboats, I had a terrific
+headache for several days. I was besieged day and night by friends of
+sick men for places to put the stricken ones where they could be cared
+for. The life of a number of these men seemed to depend on my keeping
+on my feet. I had no _time_ to be sick. I kept away from Billy and my
+other friends, for fear they might forcibly interfere.
+
+But one of the Odd Fellows saw me as I was coming out of a store with a
+subscription paper in my hand. He looked at me for a moment and hurried
+to the "Beach Saloon."
+
+"Bill," he shouted, "get a doctor, quick, and go to the parson. I saw
+him just now staggering along with his face as red as fire and his hand
+to his head. He's got the fever, sure."
+
+Billy came running down the beach with Dr. Davy at his heels and caught
+me as I was entering my tent. Without ceremony they picked up the sick
+man who was in my cot and carried him to another tent near by. Then, in
+spite of my protests, they undressed me and laid me in my blankets. I
+was half delirious and stubborn. I fought them.
+
+"This is all nonsense, Doctor," I protested. "I have only a headache.
+There is no time to fool away. These men must go out on this steamboat,
+and the money is not raised. Let me alone."
+
+Dr. Davy finished his examination and turned to Bunch-grass Bill. "He
+has a bad case of typhoid," was his verdict, "and ought to have been in
+bed three or four days ago. Find a house to put him in and a woman to
+nurse him."
+
+Bill had one of the softest and sweetest voices I ever heard. He came
+to me and laid his cool hand on my forehead. "Don't you worry about
+those men, Father," he said gently. "I'll attend to that. Now who do
+you want to nurse you?"
+
+"Mrs. Perrigo," I replied. "She has just built a new cabin. I helped
+her with it. Her husband is recovering from the fever."
+
+Soon the good woman was in my tent, eager to serve. I was carried
+through a driving snow-storm to her cabin. It was a rude affair built
+of rough boards set upright and battened with narrow, half-inch strips.
+A single thickness of building-paper poorly supplemented the inch
+boards. But cold and uncomfortable as it was, it was the only available
+shelter. I had them bring my tent and make a storm-shed of it in front
+of the door. There, for more than two months, I was to lie helpless.
+
+My friends told me afterwards of the consternation that my illness
+caused. I was chairman of all the general relief committees--those
+of the town council, the citizens, the mission, the Odd Fellows. That
+the leader should thus be laid aside seemed a greater calamity than
+was actually the case. For Mr. Wirt of the Congregational Church
+arrived with lumber to erect a hospital, and Raymond Robins, a young
+man of great earnestness and talent, who has since arisen to national
+prominence, came with him to help in Christian work.
+
+The night after I was taken to the Perrigo cabin, there was a meeting
+of the Odd Fellows' Club. Billy Murtagh was present and made his first
+public speech. As my illness and the general situation was discussed
+he rose to his feet, the tears streaming down his face. He seemed
+unconscious of them--or, at least, unashamed.
+
+"Fellers," he faltered, "I'm hard hit. This gets me where I live. Now
+I'll tell you this: you fellers can look after the other sick folks,
+and call on me when you need any money. But I want you to leave Father
+Young to me. I've adopted him. He's my father. All I've got is his. If
+there's anything in this camp he needs, he's goin' to have it."
+
+Ah, that long, desperate fight for life! The stunning pain in my head,
+the high fever, the delirium, the nervous terror, the deadly weakness,
+the emaciation, the chills and nausea! I was badly handicapped in my
+fight. The two months of wearing work and strain which preceded my
+illness had exhausted me, body and mind--there was no vital reserve to
+draw upon.
+
+I was in a little, cold shanty, twelve feet square, crowded and
+unhealthy. Two people besides myself must live in that tiny room--sleep
+there, cook there. The savage arctic winter raged against us, howling
+his vengeance upon our impudence in thus braving him, unprepared.
+He made every nail-head inside the house a knob of frost. When my
+blankets, damp with the steam of cooking, touched the wall, he clamped
+them so tight one must tear the fabric in pulling it free. He made my
+clothing, stowed under the cot, a solid lump of ice. He asphyxiated us
+with foul gases when the door was closed, and filled the room instantly
+with fine snow from the condensation of the moisture when it was
+opened. He charged constantly upon the thin shell of the house with his
+high October and November winds, shaking it wildly and threatening
+to bowl it over. He drove, in horizontal sheets, the fine, flour-like
+snow, shooting it through batten-crevice, door-crack and keyhole; and,
+finding myriad small apertures in the shake roof, sifted it down upon
+my face. He piled it in fantastic whirls around the house, selecting
+the side on which our one small window was, to bank it highest, so that
+he might shut out our light. He sent the red spirit in the thermometer
+tube down, down, down--ten below zero, twenty, thirty when it stormed,
+and forty, fifty, sixty below when it was still, and the black
+death-mist brooded over the icy wastes and men breathed ice-splinters
+instead of air.
+
+The fuel supply for the Nome camp was very poor and scanty. Men were
+digging old, sodden logs of driftwood out of the snow, and hauling this
+sorry fire-wood twenty miles by hand. Coal was scarce and sold by the
+ton for $150.00, or by the bucket for ten cents a pound.
+
+Having had experience with typhoid epidemics and other sicknesses in
+the Klondike Stampede, I had laid in a good supply of nice foods for
+the sick, such as malted milk, the best brands of condensed milk,
+tapioca, farina, and other delicacies; but all of these had been given
+away before my own illness, and there was a scarcity of such articles
+in the stores.
+
+But my friends, women and men,--indeed, everybody in the camp seemed
+interested in me and anxious to do something for me--arose to meet all
+these emergencies and "ministered to mine infirmities." The Odd Fellows
+supplemented the efforts of the convalescent, but still shaky Perrigo,
+and cut the wind-packed snow into bricks and built it around the house,
+until it looked like a veritable Eskimo igloo. It was much warmer after
+this was done.
+
+The doctors at Nome all prescribed a diet of milk and whiskey for their
+fever patients. Upon the news of my illness circulating in the camp a
+dozen bottles of different brands were at once sent to me. Billy came,
+examined, smelled at, and tasted these liquors, with the air of an
+expert. Then he bundled all the bottles into a gunny sack and carried
+them away, saying, "He's not going to have any of this dope. I've got
+some of the pure stuff, made in Ireland." And he brought me an ample
+supply for all my needs, and a gallon of pure alcohol for sponge-baths.
+
+The Odd Fellows organized wood-cutting "bees" for my benefit, and
+daily carried water from the well for Mrs. Perrigo's use. The women
+collected food and milk from their own stores and those of others, and
+brought them to me. The fellowship of the wilderness, the finest in the
+world, had its full exercise for my benefit there at Nome. I doubt if
+there was a person in all that great camp who would not have given me
+cheerfully his last can of milk.
+
+As the fever progressed and my condition grew more serious, the daily
+visitors were restricted to two--Mrs. Strong and Bunch-grass Bill. The
+lady looked after matters of business, my letters, and information
+about other sick people. Billy, with his soft, low voice and gentle
+manner, hovered over me, sitting for hours at my bedside, lifting me
+in his two big hands with infinite care and deftness. Never did son
+care for father with more tender solicitude and fuller devotion than
+did this Irish Catholic saloon-keeper, this "bad man" of the western
+frontier, for me--a Protestant preacher.
+
+There were many malamute dogs at Nome, great, beautiful, wolf-like
+beasts, and the "malamute chorus" was much in evidence in the late
+hours of the night. One, in particular, which was tied up not far from
+Perrigo's cabin, tuned up regularly every morning at three o'clock
+with his high-pitched tremolo, waking every dog within a mile, until
+all were howling, and keeping it up till daylight. There was no sleep
+possible for me while this concert was in progress, and I used to lie
+awake for hours, waiting fearfully for the leader to begin, and to
+cower in my robes with nervous chills coursing down my spine at every
+renewal of the long-drawn cadence, "Oo-o-o-o-o, oo-o-o-o-o, ow, ow, ow,
+ow."
+
+My fever would always rise with the commencement of this discordant
+chorus and increase as long as it continued, and the doctor on his
+morning visit would find me exhausted and trembling. The words of
+Clarence would chase each other through my brain:
+
+    "With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
+    Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
+    Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise
+    I trembling wak'd, and, for a season after
+    Could not believe but what I was in hell."
+
+Mrs. Perrigo told Billy of the nuisance. He stayed up that night until
+the leading canine musician shrieked his solo to the moon. He followed
+up the sound until he found the dog, roused the grumbling owner, paid
+the high price asked for the animal, led him down the beach half a
+mile, and shot him.
+
+An errand of an opposite character also fell to Billy's lot. The
+barracks which housed a squadron of United States soldiers was less
+than a block from the cabin in which I lay. Every night at eleven
+o'clock a bugle of remarkable sweetness and expression would blow
+"Taps." I would listen for the soothing melody, and when it would sound
+I would turn over in my robe and obey its command, "Go-o-o to sle-e-ep."
+
+Lieutenant Craig, the commander of the post, ordered the discontinuance
+of "Taps," thinking it would disturb me and the other sick people. That
+night I waited, as usual, for the "good-night" bugle, and when it did
+not sound I grew anxious and distraught. I thought my watch was wrong
+or the bugler must be sick. I grew excited, restless and feverish,
+and passed a sleepless night, missing my accustomed lullaby. We told
+Billy; he went to see the Lieutenant, and the next night the lovely,
+soothing phrase sounded forth on the still night air, and I slept.
+
+TAPS.
+
+[Music]
+
+Another cause of nervousness and anxiety arose, requiring the efforts
+of both Mrs. Strong and Billy Murtagh to solve the difficulty. I was
+paying my nurse, Mrs. Perrigo, five dollars a day, which was almost all
+she and her husband had to live on. They had been eating for a year and
+a half a food outfit designed for only a single season, and there was
+but little of it left. Mr. Perrigo, who was a Yankee tintype-picture
+peddler and knew no other trade, had tried his best to be a gold-miner;
+but, in common with the rest of the forlorn "Kobuckers," had made
+nothing at all. His wife, who had been a bookkeeper in Boston,
+valiantly took up the trades of waitress, washerwoman and cook in the
+Arctic wilderness, but there was but little money in that disappointed
+crowd. Almost immediately after landing on the "golden sands" of Nome
+in August Mr. Perrigo was stricken with the fever. With the fearful
+prices that prevailed, my five dollars a day was little enough to feed
+them and meet the monthly payments on their house.
+
+I had accumulated $125.00--mostly wedding fees--when I was taken sick.
+It melted away like a spoonful of sugar in a cup of hot coffee. Every
+Monday I must have thirty-five dollars for my faithful nurse. I placed
+in Mrs. Strong's hands for sale my Parker shotgun, my typewriter, my
+gold-scales, my extra overcoat, all gifts from friends. She got good
+prices for them, and for the few articles I could spare from my food
+supply--but still the phantom weekly payment menaced me. When I closed
+my eyes the figures--$35.00--big and lurid--stared at me, and in my
+delirious dreams became red goblins, mocking me.
+
+A splendid woman, member of the church which assumed my salary, had
+given me two beautiful wolf robes. I was lying in the heavier one. I
+delivered the other to Mrs. Strong. "Sell it for me," I requested. "You
+ought to get fifty or sixty dollars for it."
+
+A week passed--then another. Mrs. Strong reported she "was holding the
+robe for a higher price." The crisis I had dreaded had arrived. My
+money was gone. I had none to meet next Monday's payment.
+
+"Sell the robe for what it will bring," I directed Mrs. Strong. "I must
+have the money."
+
+"I'll sell it on Saturday," she promised.
+
+Monday morning Mrs. Strong marched in with a large canvas money-bag in
+her hand. With Mrs. Perrigo's assistance she counted out the money,
+which was mostly in silver coins. Then she wrote in large figures,
+"$158.50," and pinned the paper on the wall by my head.
+
+"Where on earth did you get that money?" I cried.
+
+"Why, for the robe, of course."
+
+"You never got all that for it."
+
+"Yes, I did," she affirmed.
+
+Then the truth dawned upon me. "Mrs. Strong!" I exclaimed, "you raffled
+the robe!"
+
+"Yes," she laughed. "What are you going to do about it?"
+
+Then she explained. Finding it impossible to get a fair price for the
+fur blanket she and Bunch-grass Bill had laid their heads together.
+They knew that I would not consent to a raffle, so they kept the
+matter quiet. Bill displayed the robe in front of his saloon. Shares
+were offered at fifty cents each. My lady friends of the mission sold
+tickets. Bill bought fifty and others of my friends did almost as well.
+Their purpose if they won the robe was to give it back to me.
+
+What could I do? To rebuke their kindly deception would be ungracious
+indeed. With brimming eyes I thanked my friends, and Mrs. Perrigo got
+her money.
+
+But the greatest of Bunch-grass Bill's many acts of kindness towards
+me remains to be told. As Dr. Davy had said from the first, mine was
+"a bad case." I had seven and a half weeks of high fever before it
+broke, whereas the usual limit of fever was three weeks. I reached the
+extreme of emaciation and weakness. I could hardly lift my hand. When
+they bundled me in a blanket like a baby and hung me on the hook of a
+big steelyard I weighed sixty pounds! I was long in the Valley of the
+Shadow of Death and reached its utmost boundary, until the very waters
+of the dark river lapped my feet.
+
+"Well, Bill," said Dr. Davy with a sigh, as he was returning one
+morning from his call upon me, and stopped, as was his custom, to
+report to the "Beach Saloon," "I'm afraid it's about over. I don't
+think Dr. Young can last much longer. He can retain nothing on his
+stomach. We've tried all the brands of condensed milk in the camp to
+no avail. Everything comes up the instant it is swallowed. There are
+many internal complications, and he may go off any hour in one of those
+deathly convulsive chills."
+
+"Big Wilbur," who reported the scene to me afterwards, said that Bill's
+face "went white as chalk, and then flushed red as fire." He jumped at
+the doctor as though he were going to assault him.
+
+"By God," he cried, "he's not goin' to die. We'll not let him, Doc. See
+here: When I had the fever at Dawson, what saved me was cow's milk.
+Now, there's a cow here. You come with me, and we'll go see her."
+
+"That cow," explained Wilbur, "was a wonderful animal. Her owner sold
+twenty gallons of milk a day from her, and she didn't look as if she
+gave one. Bill knew the owner was doping the milk with condensed milk
+and corn-starch and water and other stuff. So he strapped on his two
+big guns. He's great for bluff, is Bill. Doc. and I went along to see
+the fun. We found the owner in the stable 'tending to his cow. Bill
+didn't beat around the bush any.
+
+"'You look here' he said. 'Your cow's givin' too darned much milk. Now
+this man I want it for is my father, an' he's got enough microbes in
+him already. Doc. here, analyzed your milk; didn't you, Doc?' (Doc.
+Davy was game, and nodded.) 'He says you put tundra water and all
+kinds of dope in it. I'm goin' to keep tab on you, an' if you dope
+my milk--well, you know _me_! It don't make no difference what you
+charge--a dollar a bottle or five dollars a bottle--my father's got to
+have pure milk. Understand?'"
+
+For three months Billy went to the stable every day and superintended
+the milking. At a cost to him, sometimes, of three dollars for a pint
+bottle, and never less than a dollar a bottle, the "bad man" brought
+me every day, with his own hands, a bottle of fresh milk. When Bill
+and the doctor came in with that first bottle Mrs. Perrigo carefully
+raised my head and gave me a brimming glass of the rich milk. I drank
+it all and dropped off to sleep. I needed no more whiskey. The turning
+point of my illness was that glass of cow's milk. Bill's big bluff
+saved my life!
+
+To show the rough, yet fine sentiment of the man, let me tell one last
+word about the lone cow. She went dry before spring, and, as the camp
+was crazy for fresh meat, the owner butchered her. One of the Odd
+Fellows told me. Said he, "Bill just went wild when he heard of it, and
+we had all we could do to keep him from going gunning for the man who
+killed the cow that saved your life. Why, that man would lay down his
+life for you, and laugh while he was doin' it."
+
+I would I could tell of Bunch-grass Bill's conversion and entire
+reformation, but this is a true story, and I never heard that he ever
+got so far as that. This much, however, I am proud to tell. One day in
+the spring of 1900, when the army of gold-seekers was beginning to land
+on the "Golden Beach," I was standing with Bill near his saloon. On a
+sudden impulse I spoke to him.
+
+"Billy," I said, "I love you, but I don't like your business. It's a
+bad business. See what it has done to lots of good fellows around here.
+You are too big for that game. I wish you'd drop it and do something
+that's clean--that doesn't hurt anybody."
+
+Bill made no reply, and I supposed my words had been fruitless. But in
+a few weeks one of my friends informed me that Bill had sold out and
+had gone to gold-mining.
+
+"That's good!" I exclaimed. "Did he give any reason?"
+
+"Yes," the man replied, "Bill said you told him to."
+
+When I was returning to Alaska in 1901, I bought a nice buffalo
+smoking-set at the Pan-American Exposition and took it to Alaska for
+Bunch-grass Bill. I did not see him, as he was mining at a distance,
+but I heard of his pride and pleasure as he displayed the gift and
+talked affectionately of "Father Young." He left Alaska that summer,
+and I have heard vaguely of his presence in the Nevada gold-fields.
+But wherever he is, I pray that God may bless and save the Irish
+saloon-keeper, who loved me and saved my life.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MY DOGS
+
+
+Mushing with dogs in Alaska is the worst and the best mode of traveling
+in all the world--the most joyful and the most exasperating--according
+to the angle from which you look at it.
+
+Once I was preaching a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments to the
+miners at Council, a town on Seward Peninsula eighty-five miles east of
+Nome. I had come to the Third Commandment; and I bore down pretty hard
+upon the useless and foolish habit of profane swearing.
+
+When I was going home from the meeting, a group of young men stood on
+the corner waiting for me.
+
+"Come over here, Doctor," called one of the men. "I have a bet with
+Jim, and I want you to decide it."
+
+I crossed over to the jolly group. "What is your bet?" I asked.
+
+"Why," he replied, "I've bet Jim five dollars that you have never
+mushed a dog-team."
+
+"Well, you've lost," I answered. "I have driven dogs many times--and
+never found it necessary to swear at them, either."
+
+Before I go on with my story, perhaps I would better explain that word
+"mush," as it is used in the Northwest. The word is never used in
+Alaska as you use it in the East, to denote porridge, or some sort of
+cereal. There we say "oatmeal" or "corn-meal," or simply "cereal."
+
+In Alaska the word has but one use. It is a corruption of the French
+_marchez, marche_, which the Canadian _coureurs du bois_, or travelers
+of the woods, shout at their dogs when urging them along the trail.
+From _marche_ to "mush" is easy. So now, throughout the great
+Northwest, Canadian or Alaskan, when a man is traveling he is "on a
+mush." When he is speaking to his dogs, either to drive them out of the
+house or to urge them along the trail, he shouts "mush!" If he be a
+good traveler, he is a "great musher." Of all the pet names they used
+to give me up there, the one of which I was proudest was "The Mushing
+Parson."
+
+They tell a story, which has the ear-marks of truth, which illustrates
+this universal use of the word "mush" in the Northwest.
+
+Two miners, who for years had been in the mining camps of Alaska,
+at last came "outside" to Seattle. In the morning they went to
+a restaurant for breakfast and took seats at a table. A rather
+cross-looking waitress came to take their order. "Mush?" she asked. The
+miners looked at one another in surprise and alarm. The woman waited
+a while, and when they did not answer she supposed they were deaf and
+had not heard her question. "Mush?" she screamed. The two men arose
+and fled. When they got safely to the sidewalk, one said to the other,
+"Now, what the Sam Hill did she fire us for?"
+
+There are three principal breeds of native dogs found in Alaska--the
+Husky, the Malamute and the Siberian Dog--all descendants of wolves,
+with wolfish traits and the wolf's warm coat and powers of endurance.
+Of these the Malamute is the largest, descended, as he is, from the
+great gray wolves of the Arctic regions. The Husky seems to be derived
+from the red wolf of the McKenzie River Valley; while the Siberian Dog
+has for ancestor the smaller, shorter-legged, heavier-furred Arctic
+wolf of the Siberian coast. The smaller and more worthless dogs of
+the southern Alaska Coast, if descended from wolves, must have the
+coyote as their progenitor--having his lighter and slimmer body and his
+sneaking, thievish, cowardly disposition.
+
+Everywhere, however, the dog is largely what his master makes him, and
+these northern wolf-dogs have greatly improved since they have fallen
+into the hands of white masters. More intelligent breeding, greater
+care in feeding and more careful training, have made them what they
+are--the finest, most enduring and most dependable sleigh-dogs in the
+world.
+
+The dog is by all odds the most valuable animal of the Northwest to the
+white miner and settler. He is the miner's horse, bicycle, automobile,
+locomotive, all in one. Life in those wilds would be almost unendurable
+without him. The miners appreciate this, and cases of cruelty and
+mistreatment are very rare. In the days of the early gold stampedes the
+_cheechackos_ or tenderfeet, who knew but little about life in the
+wilderness, and still less about the dogs of the wilderness, sometimes
+were guilty of abusing their dogs; but this very seldom occurred, and
+the old-timers always frowned upon, and sometimes punished, cases of
+cruelty. I remember once holding, with joy, the coat of one of these
+old-timers at Dawson in the strenuous winter of 1897-8, while he
+administered a very beautiful and artistic thrashing to a newcomer who
+was guilty of beating his dogs with a heavy chain and knocking out the
+eye of one of them.
+
+But I cannot better give you an idea of what dog-mushing in the
+Northwest is than by sketching a trip I took to a meeting of the
+Presbytery of Yukon in March, 1912. I was at Iditarod, a new
+gold-mining town in the western interior of Alaska. The meeting was
+to be held at Cordova on the southern coast, seven hundred and twenty
+miles distant. To reach Cordova I must cross four mountain ranges--the
+Western, the Alaska, the Chugach and the Kenai Ranges; and traverse
+four great river valleys--the Yukon, the Kuskoquim, the Susitna and
+the Matanuska. There was first a very rough stretch of rudely marked
+trail five hundred and twenty miles to Seward. There I would take
+a steamboat two hundred miles to Cordova. Let us betake ourselves
+together to this big miner's camp, and talk the matter over in the
+free, familiar way of the Northwest:
+
+A young fellow of Scotch descent hailing from the north of Ireland,
+William Breeze, known far and wide as an experienced "dog musher," is
+to be my companion on this trip. He is bound for Susitna, three hundred
+miles from Iditarod, on a prospecting trip, and will take care of my
+dogs, boil their feed at night and do the heaviest part of the work.
+
+[Illustration: Dr. Young and his Dog Team
+
+Iditarod, February, 1912]
+
+And now let me introduce you to my team. It is one of the finest teams
+in all the North. There are five pups of the same litter, now six or
+seven years old. They are a cross between the McKenzie River husky and
+the shepherd dog, and have the long hair and hardy endurance of the
+former and the sagacity, intelligence and affection of the latter.
+Being brothers, they know each other and are taught to work together,
+although this fact does not hinder them from engaging in a general
+free-for-all fight now and again. However, if attacked by strange dogs
+the whole five work together beautifully, centering their forces with
+Napoleonic strategy and beating the enemy in detail.
+
+The leader is black, white and tan, marked like a shepherd dog. He has
+been named "Nigger," but I have changed his name simply to "Leader."
+It sounds enough like the original to please him and keep him going.
+He is a splendid leader. He has a swift, swinging pace, and can keep
+the trail when it is covered a foot deep by fresh snow and there is no
+external sign of it. He has that intelligence which leads him to avoid
+dangers, and he will stop and look back at you if there is a hole in
+the ice or a dangerous slide, awaiting your orders and co-operation
+before he essays the difficult problem. His knowledge of "Gee" and
+"Haw" is perfect, the tone in which you pronounce these words and the
+force with which you utter them telling him just how far to the right,
+or to the left, he is to swing. "_Gee!_" spoken in a short, explosive,
+loud tone will turn him square to the right, while "Ge-e-e, ge-e-e-e,"
+in soft lengthened syllables, will make him veer slowly and gradually.
+His sense of responsibility is very great, and his censorship of the
+conduct of his fellow teamsters very severe. He will not tolerate any
+shirking on their part and takes keen delight in their correction when
+they deserve it. But he will fly at your throat if you touch _him_ with
+the whip.
+
+The "swing dogs" just behind him are "Moose" and "Ring," colored like
+Irish setters. They have exactly the same gait, are the same size, and
+almost the same coloring, "Ring" a little lighter than "Moose" and with
+a white collar around his neck which suggested his name. "Moose" is a
+little gentleman, the loveliest dog I have ever known. His traces are
+always taut, and when you utter his name he will jump right up into the
+air, straining on his collar. He knows the words of command as well as
+the leader, and has never, perhaps, been touched with the whip. I think
+chastisement would break his heart, for he would know it was unmerited.
+He is my pet, the one dog of the team that I allow in my cabin, and
+my companion in my short journeys through the camp. He is remarkably
+clean and dainty in his habits, his coat shining like polished bronze.
+He would guard my person or my coat with his life, the most faithful,
+intelligent and affectionate dog I have ever had. I love that dog.
+
+"Ring" is also willing, but has not the intelligence or the good nature
+of "Moose." He is a scrapper and apt to embroil the rest of the team in
+a general fight. But he will work all day at his highest tension.
+
+"Teddy" and "Sheep," the "wheel dogs," are not so valuable as the other
+three. "Teddy" has the longest hair and the lightest weight of any, and
+the least strength; but he is a willing little fellow and a very keen
+hunter. Make a noise like a squirrel or a bird, and he will prick up
+his ears and dash down the path after the game, and when a real rabbit
+or ptarmigan crosses his path he will tear madly along until the game
+is passed. You can fool him every minute of the day, and Breeze has
+a way of imitating the little birds that keeps "Teddy" working his
+hardest.
+
+"Sheep" is a malingerer. He is a clown, and so comical that you cannot
+help laughing at him, even when you know he deserves a good thrashing.
+He is fat, heavy and awkward. In color he is a light, tawny yellow,
+with long hair like "Teddy," but labors under the serious disability
+of having a different gait from the others. They are pacers; he is a
+trotter. When they are swinging rhythmically along at a five-mile
+gait, "Sheep" has to lope, his trot not being equal to the occasion.
+He has a way of playing off sick or fagged; but if game appears, he
+forgets all about his pretenses, his lameness is all gone in a second
+and he is the keenest of the team. Also, when nearing the camp he
+forgets his weariness and pulls harder than any of the team. It is
+necessary to let him see the whip constantly, and occasionally to feel
+it, and he is the only one of the team that necessitates its use at all.
+
+About once a day, on the trail, a funny scene has to be enacted.
+We may be laboring up a long hill, or wallowing through deep snow,
+the difficult ascent requiring every man and dog to do his best.
+"Sheep" will get tired, and, with a backward look at me to see if I
+am noticing, will let his traces slacken. I give him a touch of the
+whip, and, although he can hardly feel the lash through his thick
+coat, he yelps and pulls manfully for a short distance; but presently
+his trace chain sags again. Soon "Leader" notices the heavier pulling
+and, knowing where the blame lies, turns his head, shows his teeth and
+growls at "Sheep," who jumps into his collar and pulls like a good
+fellow. Soon he forgets and lets up again, getting a fiercer growl
+from "Leader." A third time he is a slacker. Then "Leader" stops and
+begins to swing around carefully so as not to tangle the harness.
+"Moose" and "Ring" and "Teddy" all stand still and look at "Sheep."
+That unfortunate trotter lies down on his back with his feet in the
+air and begins to howl in anguish. I sit down on the sled and wait--I
+know what is coming. "Leader" reaches "Sheep" and for about a minute
+there is a bedlam of savage growls from "Leader" and piercing shrieks
+from "Sheep." I notice that "Leader" does not take the culprit by the
+throat, but only pinches the loose hide on his breast and side. That
+cannot injure him, so I am not uneasy. The punishment over, "Leader"
+resumes his place. "Sheep" gets up and shakes himself with an air of
+relief. I take the handle-bars and call "Mush." For the rest of the day
+"Sheep" pulls for all he is worth; but the next day he forgets and has
+to be trounced again.
+
+I am conscious that this story may have a "fishy" flavor for some of my
+readers, but I can assure them it is true.
+
+But mine are all fine little dogs, not as large as the malamute, but
+with more courage, spirit and intelligence. The long hair protects them
+from the cold and they will cuddle down in the snow contentedly, curled
+up like little shrimps, and let it cover them.
+
+We must take along enough feed for the dogs, to last them from salmon
+stream to salmon stream. The staple of their feed is dried salmon; it
+goes a long way for its weight. We start with a hundred pounds of it,
+and fifty pounds of rice and tallow. This, boiled into a savory mess
+and served once a day (when they stop for the night), keeps the dogs
+fat and hearty. We shall replenish the supply at intervals, for five
+dogs will eat an immense amount of food, and must have all that they
+can eat at their daily meal.
+
+The sled is a basket-sleigh with handle-bars and brake at the back and
+a "gee-pole" in front, with an extra rope when we have to "neck it" to
+help the dogs. My wolf-robe is spread on the floor of the sleigh for
+my accommodation in the brief intervals of riding. For dog mushing in
+Alaska does not mean luxuriously riding in your sleigh wrapped up in
+your fur robe while the dogs haul you along the trail. When Dr. Egbert
+Koonce sledded twelve hundred miles from Rampart to Valdez in 1902
+on his way to the General Assembly, I told the Assembly of the feat.
+A good friend from Philadelphia said: "It must after all be a really
+luxurious way of traveling, wrapped up in your furs and reclining in a
+comfortable sleigh behind your dogs." I turned to Koonce and asked him
+how much of that twelve hundred miles he rode. "About two miles," he
+replied.
+
+I shall ride more than this on my way to Seward, but there will not
+be many places where I can ride half a mile at a stretch without
+getting out and running behind the dogs. The beauty of "dog mushing"
+is that you are compelled to work as hard as the dogs. You are not
+on a well-beaten boulevard; you are wending your way around trees
+and stumps, over hummocks, up and down hills, along the sides of the
+mountains, and must keep your hands on the handle-bars, lifting the
+sled on the trail when it runs off and often breaking the trail ahead
+with your snow-shoes. When the dogs are on fairly good roads they swing
+along uninterruptedly and you run your best behind. If there are two
+of you, one holds the handle-bars and the other sprints along, either
+in front or behind the sleigh. You will get pretty tired the first two
+or three days, but after your muscles become hardened and you get your
+second wind, you can run at your keenest gait two or three miles at a
+time.
+
+But let us get started. All preparations are made, the supply of
+dog-feed loaded, our robes and blankets put aboard, heavy canvas corded
+around the load and our snow-shoes strapped on top. We shall not need
+a gun, for there will be plenty of game to be had at the roadhouses,
+and we shall not have time to bother with hunting. We have a long
+journey to make and everything must bend to getting over the ground.
+That "ribbon of the trail" must be unwound for five hundred and twenty
+miles. A company of warm and sympathetic friends foregather to bid us
+"good-bye," and off we go.
+
+The trail is well beaten from Iditarod to Flat City, seven and a half
+miles, and I get aboard, with Breeze at the handle-bars. My huskies
+leap into the harness at the word of command and we make a flying
+start. They are just as keen to go as we are, and seem to enjoy it as
+well. I ride perhaps half a mile then jump off without stopping the
+team, and run ahead of the dogs up the long hill. I soon find my fur
+parka too heavy, and discard it for the lighter one made of drilling,
+in which I do the rest of my mushing to the end of the trail. Moccasins
+are on my feet, for the trail must be taken flat-footed if one is to
+have reasonable comfort.
+
+After two or three miles we leave the broad road and strike the trail
+through the wilderness. Our sled is twenty-one inches wide, light and
+shod with steel, and the trail, henceforth, will be about twenty-four
+inches in width, sometimes sunken deep, where snow has not recently
+fallen and the trail has been well beaten, sometimes only a trace along
+the snow where the wind has blown it clean and where the trail is hard.
+
+We soon begin to labor up the first divide. No more riding now. The
+trail is hard enough to dispense with snow-shoes, but heavy enough to
+make us both walk and labor. I strike the trail ahead, leaving Breeze
+to the handle-bars. I begin to feel the joy of it. The keen, light, dry
+air is like wine. The trail winds through the woods, along the edges of
+gorges, then up a steep mountain. Now the timber ceases and we have
+rounded, wind-swept summits. I leave the dogs far behind, for it is
+heavy pulling up the steep. Their bells tinkle faintly from below. I
+gain nearly a mile on them before they round the summit. I strike my
+lope down the farther side, but soon hear the bells as they charge down
+upon me and pass me, swinging on towards the roadhouse.
+
+We only make twenty miles the first day, for it was nearly noon when
+we started, and we are glad to stop at "Bonanza Roadhouse" as dusk is
+coming on. How good the moose meat tastes! How sweet the beds of hard
+boards and blankets! The luxury of rest we enjoy to the full. The dogs
+are fed, our moccasins and socks hung up to dry, and we crawl in our
+bunks with sighs of relief. There is no floor in the roadhouse; all
+the lumber has been whipsawed by hand, the furniture manufactured out
+of boxes and stumps, the utensils of the rudest. But the luxury of
+splendid meat and good sour-dough bread and coffee makes us feel that
+we have all that goes to make life desirable.
+
+An early morning start is necessary. We eat our breakfast by
+candle-light, fill up our thermos bottle with hot coffee, take a
+big hunk of roasted meat for lunch, and "hit the trail" by daylight.
+Twenty-six miles to-day--to "Moorecreek Roadhouse." Snow begins to
+fall, and soon the trail is obliterated by the fast-coming feathery
+flakes. Now the snow-shoes must be unstrapped and one of us break the
+trail ahead. We take turns and swing along at a three and a half mile
+gait. This is real work, and we reach the roadhouse in the middle of
+the afternoon, but not so tired as on the preceding day.
+
+These are samples of the journey throughout; but oh, the variety!--no
+two miles alike--and the panorama of beauty that unfolds before us!
+
+    "Each fir tree flings a bridal veil,
+      A bridal veil of shimmering white,
+      Like stately maidens tall and bright,
+      Slow marching as to solemn rite
+    Beside the ribbon of the trail."
+
+Notice the beauty of the frost sparkling on the trees. The wonderful
+law that gives its own distinct varieties of frost crystals to
+each species of tree, fir, spruce, birch, cottonwood or alder, is
+exemplified so plainly here that, after the first examination, you can
+tell the kind of tree under the frost crystals by the shade of silver.
+The mountains tower above you, wind-swept, waving snow-banners. The
+vastness of that white hush awes and thrills you. A rough sound would
+be blasphemy in the solemn silence. The whole landscape is a poem.
+
+To relate even the leading incidents of this "joy-mush" of three weeks
+would take up too much space. The longest distance we traveled in any
+one day was fifty-five miles; while our hardest and longest day's
+struggle through drifted snow and over a steep mountain pass yielded
+us only twelve miles of trail. In most of the roadhouses I found old
+friends, and, in several of them, Christian people who had been members
+of missions I had established in new mining camps. What grand times
+we had together! No fellowship is so warm and sweet as that of the
+wilderness. Of many adventures on the trail I can give but two.
+
+One morning, about half-way from Iditarod to Seward, we left the fine
+cabin of French Joe, on the South Fork of the Kuskoquim River, under
+the two beautiful peaks, Mts. Egypt and Pyramid. We were making for
+Rainy Pass over the Alaskan Range. What follows is an extract from an
+account I wrote at the time.
+
+The day out from Joe's I meet with my first disaster. We have nineteen
+miles of absolutely clear ice on the South Fork of the Kuskoquim. The
+river is full of air-holes and open riffles. The dogs swing along at
+a ripping pace, digging their toe nails into the hard ice, the sled
+slipping sideways and sliding dangerously near to the open places.
+Breeze often has to run ahead at full speed to choose a route, for
+there is no trail on the ice. Half-way up the river I "get gay," as
+Breeze calls it. I leave the handle-bars to find a route, and fall down
+hard on the smooth ice. A sharp pang strikes through the small of my
+back as if from a spear-thrust. I get up and go along, thinking the
+pain will cease, but soon I realize that I am in the grip of an old
+enemy, lumbago.
+
+From this point on to Seward I cannot make a move without pain,
+sometimes so great that I gasp for breath. At night in the roadhouse I
+have great trouble in getting into my bunk, and sometimes Breeze has
+to lift me out in the morning. Were I at home I would be in bed for a
+couple of weeks with doctors and nurses fussing over me, but it is
+just as well that I cannot stop. I take the philosophy of an old fellow
+in the "Rainy Pass Roadhouse" near the summit of the range, who says
+the best cure for a lame back is to "keep on a-mushin'"!
+
+Beyond Rainy Pass we drop into the canyon of Happy River, and here we
+have our famous moose-hunt. Soon after we enter the gorge we come upon
+its tracks--a big bull-moose. We have already traveled nearly thirty
+miles to-day, and are anxious to make the roadhouse twelve or fifteen
+miles further on; and now, here comes this big, blundering beast to
+poke our trail full of deep holes and excite our dogs. He is running
+ahead of us. The snow is five or six feet deep and he goes in almost to
+his back at every step. The walls of the canyon are sheer and he cannot
+escape up its side. The river turns and winds, and here and there are
+little patches of level ground, thick with large spruce trees.
+
+For three miles we do not catch sight of the moose, but our dogs show
+that he is on ahead. In spite of my lame back I have to struggle on
+in front of them and bat "Leader" in the face with my cap, Breeze
+standing on the brake to keep them from running away. The moose tracks
+fill our trail for a while, smashing it all to pieces, then veer
+sideways to a little patch of woods, and the dogs go pell-mell in the
+moose track, burying our sled out of sight in the deep snow. Then we
+have to haul them around and lift the sled on the track again, and try
+to get them along the trail.
+
+Three miles down the river we catch sight of the big moose, and the
+dogs go wild. "Sheep," who has been disposed to malinger, is the worst
+of the lot. He forgets all his maladies and weariness and dashes
+forward, but "Leader" will not leave the track and swings along as
+best he can, except when the moose is in full sight. Then I have
+to bat him in the face to keep the team in bounds. Our bells are
+tingling, our dogs barking and we are shouting. It is a fearsome thing
+to the bull-moose, this animated machine that is charging down the
+river at him. So on he struggles through the deep snow, spoiling our
+trail and filling my companion's mind with blasphemous thoughts which
+occasionally break out in expression, in spite of his respect for my
+"cloth."
+
+Four miles of this moose-hunt, with the big brute growing more tired
+and we more anxious to pass him. Instead of our hunting the moose he
+is haunting us. At last, around a little point of woods, we see him
+lying down in the middle of the river right ahead of us. The dogs break
+bounds and almost upset me as they dash down the trail with Breeze
+standing on the brake and yelling "Whoa!" The weary bull-moose staggers
+to his feet again and makes the edge of the woods, but there lies down
+again.
+
+The trail veers right up to him. I run ahead and take "Leader" and
+"Ring," one in each hand, and Breeze does the same with "Teddy" and
+"Sheep." "Moose" is more tractable and we can control him with our
+voices. We drag the dogs bodily with the sled behind, pass the big
+brute, his long face not a rod from us, and then, setting "Leader" on
+the trail again, we urge them down five miles further to "Happy River
+Roadhouse." That was _one_ hunt in which I was glad to lose the game.
+
+Four hundred miles from our starting point we put up at the "Pioneer
+Roadhouse" in the little town of Knik at the head of Cook's Inlet. This
+was one of half a dozen small towns around Knik Arm and Turn-again
+Arm, the two prongs of Cook's Inlet. These towns had been in existence
+for fifteen or twenty years, with gold-miners and their families living
+there; and yet, here at Knik, I preached the first sermon that had ever
+been preached in a region larger than the state of Pennsylvania! This
+visit led to the establishment of a number of missions in that region,
+which is now traversed by the new Government railroad. The towns of
+Anchorage and Matanuska have sprung into existence and a thriving
+population of railroad builders, coal miners, gold miners, farmers and
+men of other trades and professions has settled there.
+
+I left Iditarod on March fifth. I swung into Seward at nine o'clock
+on the morning of March twenty-eighth and was heartily greeted and
+entertained by Rev. L. S. Pedersen, pastor of the Methodist Church. He
+was a photographer as well as a preacher, and took the picture of my
+arrival. In spite of their hard work, my dogs were fatter and fuller of
+"pep" than when we started.
+
+I fairly cried when I bade my team good-bye at Seward, taking each
+beautiful head in my arms and talking to them all. They seemed to feel
+the parting as keenly as I, for there was a general chorus of mournful
+howls as I turned away. I never saw my splendid dogs again, for the
+man who engaged to take them back to Iditarod failed to keep to his
+bargain, and I had to give them to the man who cared for and fed them
+at Susitna. I shall never find another team like them.
+
+Notwithstanding the heaviness of the trail, the bitter struggles
+over mountains and through deep snows, not to mention the pains of
+lumbago, I look back upon that trip and other trips like it with joyful
+recollection and longing to repeat the experience. I would rather take
+a trip through that beautiful wilderness, with my dogs, than travel
+luxuriously around the world on palatial steamboats. There is more fun
+in dog-mushing.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LOUIE PAUL AND THE HOOTZ
+
+
+"Oh, 'e's bad feller, dat hootz," exclaimed Louie Paul, our half-breed
+Stickeen young man, the blood of his French father sparkling in his
+eyes and gesturing in his hands and shoulders. "'E's devil, 'im. Dat's
+no swear--dat's truf. Bad spirit got him, sure. _Quonsum sallix_
+(Always mad). 'E no savvy scare, no savvy love, no savvy die. 'E's
+devil, dat's all."
+
+Louie's handsome face and coal-black eyes were alive with excitement,
+as he danced about his big bundle of _tseek_ (black bear) skins, which
+he had just brought into Stevens' store at Fort Wrangell, and was
+unwrapping, preparatory to bartering. His outburst of language was
+called out by a question of mine. I had been noticing with surprise
+that among the great numbers of black bear skins that were being
+brought into the Wrangell stores daily by the Indians, were none
+of the big brown bear--the _hootz_. I knew these brown bears to be
+very plentiful up the Stickeen and Iskoot Rivers where Louie had been
+hunting. At this season (it was in early May) both species of bears,
+having wakened from their long winter's sleep, were roaming the banks
+of the streams restlessly day and night, making up in their fierce
+activity for their six months of torpor. Their coats were at their
+best--long, silky, glistening, thick and soft. The skins of the black
+bear Louie had brought were prime. They were more than black. Their
+ebony surfaces shone and sparkled, beneath our handling, like black
+diamonds.
+
+[Illustration: Fort Wrangell, Alaska, on Etolin Harbor
+
+To the left may be seen the first Protestant Church in Alaska, built by
+Dr. Young, 1879]
+
+I knew that the skins of the hootz would be equally beautiful and twice
+as large as those of the tseek. They would not be tawny at this season,
+but a rich, velvety brown, the color of the Irish setter's coat. In
+my canoe trips and steamboat voyages up the Stickeen I had seen more
+brown bears than black, standing boldly out on the bank to watch the
+sputtering steamboat, or grubbing for roots and worms in the green
+patches up the mountain slopes.
+
+"Why don't you shoot the big bears?" I asked Louie. "I saw four in a
+bunch the other day. Don't you see any in your hunting trips?"
+
+"Oh, yes," he confessed, "me plenty see hootz. All time me see heem.
+Yestaday me see tree--big fellers; stand up, all same man."
+
+"What's the matter, then?" I pressed him. "Are you afraid of them?"
+
+"Yes, you bet you boots, I scare of heem. I no shame scare about hootz.
+S'pose I big fool, I no scare; I shoot heem.--You never see me again no
+mo'."
+
+Louie Paul had two claims to special distinction. First, he was a very
+expert and successful bear hunter; and, second, he was the husband
+of the star pupil of Mrs. McFarland's Home for Girls,--Tilly, the
+handsomest and brightest of the girls whom we had rescued from the
+vileness, squalor and sin of heathen life, and were training to be
+examples and teachers of Christian civilization to their tribe.
+
+I had taken Louie and Tilly the preceding fall and established them
+at Tongas, one hundred miles south of Wrangell, outfitting Tilly with
+school books, Bibles, Sunday-school supplies, etc., and paying her a
+salary as teacher to that wild tribe. Louie's task was to keep up
+the fires for the school, and to cook for his wife and supply her
+needs. He had stayed at home faithfully during the winter, procuring
+the venison, ducks, geese, fish, clams, crabs, and other articles of
+food they needed, and making himself useful around the branch mission,
+even occasionally leading in prayer, and exhorting the people. But the
+trapper's "call of the wild" sounded in the early spring--a call he
+could not resist. So here he was, having left Tilly to cook her own
+meals and make her own fires, while he explored the streams, bayous and
+lakes in his small canoe, pursuing the elusive plantigrades.
+
+The natives of Alaska at that time were handicapped in their hunting
+by an order of the Government which forbade the Indians to own or use
+breech-loading guns. This order was enforced among our peaceful Alaska
+natives, who had never had a serious trouble with the whites, while the
+Sioux, Apaches and Nez Perces, who were often on the war-path, had all
+the Winchester, Henry and Enfield rifles they wanted.
+
+The natives of Alaska at that time--the early eighties--had only
+breech-loading, smooth-bore Hudson Bay muskets; and their round
+bullets had not much penetrating power. They were all right for deer,
+but you might fill a hootz full of those big, round balls and he would
+still have strength to tear you to pieces.
+
+"The more you pester them big bear with them old-fashioned
+smooth-bores," said one of the old white hunters at Fort Wrangell, "the
+madder he gits."
+
+Louie Paul looked so much more like a white man than like an Indian,
+and talked English so fluently, that I had persuaded the collector of
+customs--the only civil officer we had in that region--to permit me
+to lend Louie my new 45-75 Winchester repeating rifle. The repeater
+was a hard-shooting, accurate gun, chambering twelve cartridges in the
+magazine--the most efficient rifle made at that time. Louie was a fine
+shot, and the possession of this rifle gave him a great superiority
+over all the other Indian bear-hunters. He made more money in his
+three or four weeks of hunting in the spring than Tilly earned by her
+winter's teaching.
+
+"I should think you would not be afraid of a brown bear when you have
+my Winchester," I urged. "You could put half a dozen balls clean
+through him before he could get to you."
+
+Louie shook his curly head doubtfully. "Mebby so; mebby not."
+
+Then his face lit up with a broad grin. "Mebby so I be lak Buck. You
+hear about Buck an' Kokaekish?"
+
+"No," I replied, scenting a story. "What about them?"
+
+I knew both these men. Kokaekish was a fine old Indian, the father of
+one of our best boys, whose Christian name was Louis Kellogg, but whose
+Indian name was Kokaek. The name, Kokaekish, means "Kokaek's Father,"
+illustrating the curious custom of the Thlingets of naming parents
+after their children.
+
+"Buck" was a French Canadian, Alex Choquette--a white man who had
+married a Stickeen woman and had been adopted into the tribe. He had
+seemingly become in heart and life an Indian, talking the language of
+his tribe, thinking their thoughts and pursuing their customs. How
+thoroughly he had become Indianized was evidenced by the language of
+Shustaak--the old heathen chief who had adopted Buck. "Wuck," he said,
+"delate siwash. Yacka tolo konaway nesika kopa klemenhoot." (Buck is a
+genuine Indian. He can beat all the rest of us lying.)
+
+True to this definition of him, Buck had built his log house--a
+combined dwelling-house, hotel and store--thirty miles up the Stickeen
+River, opposite the Great Glacier, right on the boundary line between
+Alaska and British Columbia. Here he sold blankets, guns, groceries
+and whiskey to the white miners and to the Indians. When the Canadian
+authorities attempted to arrest him for his illicit traffic he claimed
+to be on the American side. When the Alaska custom officers went after
+him, he was a Canadian. Thus for years he had carried on his crooked
+business and escaped punishment.
+
+"You know Buck," Louie began, "he worse siwash dan anybody; but he
+alltam make fun odder Injun. One day Kokaekish come Buck store, buy
+powder.
+
+"'Where you come?' Buck say.
+
+"'Iskoot,' say Kokaekish, 'make dry dog salmon. Now too many hootz, me
+come back.'
+
+"Buck laugh. 'Eehya-a-ah! You _shawat-too_ (woman-heart); you coward!
+What for you 'fraid hootz? S'pose me, I shootem all.' Buck much laugh.
+
+"Kokaekish, he shame. He head hang down, so. Buck more laugh. Bimeby
+Kokaekish say, 'Buck, you strong heart. You want killem hootz?'
+
+"Buck big bluff. 'Sure' he say. 'You show me hootz, me shootem quick.'
+
+"'All light, come along. Me showem you hootz now.' Kokaekish go he
+canoe.
+
+"Buck shame for back out. He get Winchester, all same you rifle. 'Where
+you go?'
+
+"'No far. Ict tintin, nesika clap.' (One hour, we find.)
+
+"Dey go up Iskoot, mebby tree mile. Fin' leetle stream. Plenty humpback
+an' dog salmon dere. Flap, flap, splash in shallow place. All roun'
+de grass all flat--plenty tail, fin, bone. Buck look. He scare, but
+shame go back. Leetle hill dere by de creek. Plenty bush. Kokaekish
+an' Buck go up; sit down; wait. Pitty soon sitkum polakly (half
+night--twilight), Kokaekish ketch Buck arm. Whisper, 'Hootz come.'
+
+"Buck look. Bear all same house--delate hya-a-as! (very big), come down
+creek. Swing slow an' lazy. Go in water; slap out big salmon on bank
+pitty near two man; go an' eatem.
+
+"Kokaekish whisper, 'Why you no shootem, Buck? You brave man! You much
+want killem hootz. Shootem quick!'
+
+"Buck scare stiff. 'Sh-sh-sh! you ol' fool!' he say. He toof clap all
+same medicine-man rattle; water come out on he face; he shake like
+Cottonwood leaf.
+
+"Kokaekish laugh. 'More hootz come,' he say. Nodder big bear come;
+growl, gr-r-r! go fishin'. Den she-bear an' two leetle feller come.
+Mamma ketch salmon; leetle bear play; run up-hill mos' on top man.
+Nodder bear come. _Six Hootz_; ketch salmon; scrap; one chase nodder;
+play.
+
+"Buck not quite die. He lie flat down. He's finger count he's bead; he
+play Maly; he shake.
+
+"Kokaekish much laugh. He rub it in. 'You brave man, Buck. You white
+man--no scare nuttin'. You want see hootz. Me fin' heem. Why you no
+shootem?'
+
+"Bimeby delate polakly (quite dark). All hootz go leetle way up creek.
+Kokaekish shake Buck. 'Mebby so, you no want more hootz, we go now.'
+Dey walk han' an' foot--all same dog. Buck fo'get he's rifle. Dey fin'
+canoe; paddle quick Buck house.
+
+"Now all Injun put shame on Buck face. 'Hey, Buck, you want shootem
+hootz? You white man; you brave; no scare nuttin'. How many hootz you
+kill?' Buck delate shame. Mos' keel hese'f. Mebby so, I lak dat."
+
+"No, Louie," I replied when we had done laughing, "you are not like
+Buck. You would keep your nerve, and at least account for some of the
+brown bears."
+
+"Well," he ventured doubtfully, "dis Winshesser mighty fine gun. I
+t'ink I try hootz nex' tam."
+
+A week afterwards Louie came to my house in great excitement. He
+knocked repeatedly before I could get to the door.
+
+"Mista Yuy," he almost shouted, "you come see my hootz skin. My firs';
+my las' too."
+
+I went with him to the store where several fine black bear skins were
+displayed to an admiring group of whites and natives. With them was
+an enormous brown bear skin, the largest I had ever seen. The fur was
+beautiful--rich in color, thick and glossy; but it was bloody and badly
+mussed. Turning it over I saw that the skin was full of holes--fairly
+riddled. I counted seventeen perforations. The larger and more ragged
+of the holes marked the exit of the balls that had ranged clear through
+the bear.
+
+"Why, Louie," I exclaimed, "what did you mean by spoiling this fine
+skin? It is like a sieve. You have taken away more than half its value
+by shooting it up like that."
+
+Louie danced about like a monkey--head, hands, feet, his whole body
+gesturing, his voice rising higher and louder as he went on with his
+story.
+
+"You lissen me! I see dis big feller stan' up all same man. Open place;
+no big tree. Maybe hunner ya'd. I say me, 'Louie, you betta draw good
+bead dis tam. You shoot heem straight troo de heart, keel heem dead
+fust shot.'
+
+"I shoot; he fall down. Klosh tumtum (good heart), me. I put de gun on
+shoul'er. Den I look. I 'stonish. De hootz, he git up queek; he come
+straight fo' me. I shoot queek; he fall down; he git up; he come for
+me. I shoot; I shoot; I shoot; he fall down; he fall down; he git up;
+he come for me. You betcha boots I hit heem ev'y tam. I scare to miss.
+I forgit how many catridge. I shoot; I shoot; I say, 'Dat's de las';
+now he git me; dat's de las'; now he git me.'
+
+"I git awful scare. I t'ink, 'Tilly widow now fo' sure. Nobody git wood
+fo' her no mo'.'--Dat bear git close--right here! He jus' goin' grab
+me. I mos' fall down; I so scare. I try once mo'. I put my gun agains'
+he's head. I shoot; he fall down; he don' git up no mo'. My las'
+catridge. I put ten ball t'rough heem. _No-mo'-hootz-fo'-me!_"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+OLD SNOOK AND THE COW
+
+
+In the early missionary days at Fort Wrangell I had to be a little of
+everything to those grown-up, naughty, forest-wise but world-foolish
+children of the islands whom we called Thlingets and Hydas. I had
+to be carpenter, and show them how to build better houses. I had to
+be undertaker, and teach them to make coffins and bury their dead
+decently. I had to be farmer, showing them how to raise turnips,
+potatoes, cabbage and peas. Once I gave a package of turnip seed to an
+old Indian woman. Towards the close of the season I went to see her
+garden. I found that she had dug a big hole and put all the turnip seed
+in it. You can imagine the result.
+
+Among other things, I had to be doctor and surgeon to those people. I
+had never taken a course at a medical school and knew very little about
+medicine or surgery. But I had books and studied them and did the best
+I could. The hardest surgical cases I had were the result of little
+love-taps by old Mr. Hootz, the big brown bear. This bear is almost
+identical, except in color, with _ursus horribilis_, the grizzly--he
+is as large and ferocious and as hard to kill. Farther west in Alaska
+he has the true grizzly color and is called the silver-tip; but in
+Southeastern Alaska he is a rich brown, the female being much lighter
+in color than the male.
+
+Once the Indians brought to me a man who had been foolish enough to
+shoot a hootz with his smooth-bore musket. The bear charged on the
+Indian, gave him one tap with his paw and went away. The poor man
+presented a horrible appearance. One eye was torn out, the skin of one
+side of his face torn loose and hanging down on his shoulder, the cheek
+laid entirely open. I did my best for him, washed his awful wound,
+replaced the skin on his face and took many stitches; but I couldn't
+make a pretty man of him.
+
+Another Indian was hunting in the spring when he came across a little
+brown cub, and thought he would have a fine pet. He had just caught
+the little fellow and was trying to hush its cries, when suddenly the
+mother-bear came on him like an avalanche and he was knocked senseless.
+When he came to, hours afterwards, he was unable to move. The bear had
+torn off much of his scalp with the first blow, and then had bitten
+and chewed him from head to foot, injuring his spine, so that he could
+never walk again. I dressed twenty-one wounds which the angry she-bear
+had given him.
+
+But the greatest example of the strength and ferocity of the hootz
+of which I ever knew was afforded by the adventure of an Irishman--a
+gold-prospector, whom we called Big Mike. He was a giant in
+stature--over six feet, broad and stalwart, physically the king of the
+Cassiar miners. He was a good-natured, happy-go-lucky fellow, a typical
+gold-prospector, making money very fast at times and spending it just
+as fast. Like the most of the miners of the Cassiar region (which was
+reached by traveling by steamboat from Victoria to Fort Wrangell,
+then by canoe or river steamboat up the Stickeen River a hundred and
+fifty miles, then across country by pack-train from one hundred to two
+hundred miles, according to the location of the "diggings"), Mike made
+Fort Wrangell his stopping place to and from the Cassiar, sometimes
+wintering there.
+
+One day Dave Flannery, another Irishman, whose Stickeen wife was a
+member of my mission, came hurriedly up to my house.
+
+"I wish you'd come down and see Big Mike," he said; "he's hurrt bad."
+
+I found Mike in one of the miners' shanties on the beach, lying on a
+bed, entirely helpless. He could only use his arms, his legs being
+paralyzed. This was the story he told me:
+
+"Me an' me partner, Steve," he began, "has been prospectin' up the
+Iskoot." (A tributary of the Stickeen which runs into it about
+twenty-five miles from its mouth.) "Ye know the Iskoot--a domd bad
+river--little flat islands thick as spots on a burrd-dog--th' river
+swift an' shaller--lots av quick-sands an' rocks everywhere--th' shores
+an' th' islands all matted thick wid trays an' underbrush--big fallen
+trays lyin' across one anodher an' odher trays growin' out av thim--an'
+alders, willows, divil-clubs and salmon-berry bushes thicker'n hair on
+a cat.
+
+"Well, me an' Steve set up our tint by a trickle av cold water in a
+side gulch, an' thought to spind th' sayson prospectin'. Th' thickets
+an' brush has scared off prospectors, an' it's new counthry. A wake ago
+Oi made up me pack for four or five days' prospectin'--blankets, fly
+tint, an' some grub, wid gold-pan, pick, shovel an' coffee-pot on top.
+
+"Afther an hour o' harrd worrk Oi'd got mebby half a moil from
+camp, when Oi come to Sathan's own pile o' logs an' brush, stuck up
+ev'ry-which-way, wid bushes an' divil-clubs atween. Ye cuddn't see a
+yarrd. Oi tackled it as well as Oi cud wid me pack, an' got onto th'
+top log. Th' brush wuz that thick Oi cuddn't see pwhat wuz undher me.
+Oi tuk hold av a limb an' swung down into th' bushes. But before I
+touched th' groun'--gr-r-r--woof! somethin' of fur an' iron was all
+over an' aroun' me; me breath was squshed out o' me; somethin' was
+tearin' the cords out o' me neck an' shouldher, an' me back was bruk
+intoirly.
+
+"Oi've some repitation as a sthrong man, an' Oi've niver met th' man Oi
+cuddent down in a fair wrassle; but this thing thut had me didn't play
+fair. He tuk a foul hold o' me when Oi wasn't lookin', an' niver guv
+me a chanst to break ut. Whin Oi swung down me left arrum wuz straight
+up, aholt av th' limb, an' the right wan wuz steadyin' me pack. Th'
+brute pinned that fast, an' Oi cud no more move it than a baby cud lift
+a ton.
+
+"When Oi got me sinses gathered togither, an' knowed Oi wuz in the
+clutches av a bear, me dandher riz an' Oi thought av me knoif. 'Twas
+in a scabbard on me roight hip, an' that han' was hild toight agin me
+pack. Me blankets saved me ribs from bein' all stove in.
+
+"Oi tried to twist aroun' an' git me knoif wid me lift han', but it
+was loik a mouse thryin' to pry off th' paws av a cat. Me fate wuz aff
+th' groun' an' Oi had no purchase. At las' Oi got ahold av th' handle
+av th' knoif. Jist as Oi felt me sinses lavin' me Oi got th' knoif
+an' begun to dig it wid all me strent into th' bear's belly, workin'
+upwards an' thryin' fer his heart. Thin ev'rythin' wint black.
+
+"Whin Oi come to th' sun was hoigh. Ut must o' bin tree hours Oi laid
+there sinseless. Oi throied to git up, but me legs wuz dead. Oi cud
+pull mesilf up a little wid me arrms, an' there Oi saw fur th' furrst
+toim th' baste thut bruk me. He wuz lyin' besoid me, stone dead. 'Twas
+all th' joy Oi had.
+
+"Well, there Oi wuz, undher all th' logs an' brush, an' down in a
+little hollow in th' muck--an' helpless. 'Twas too fur away to make
+Steve hear. Oi hollered as best Oi cud, but 'twas no use. Th' bear
+hadn't left me much breath. Then Oi thought Oi'd thry annyhow. Me
+arrums wuz good, an' th' bushes wuz thick, so Oi begun to pull meself
+along troo th' muck by me hands, usin' me knoif whin th' bushes blocked
+me. It tuck me two hours to gain th' top av th' hill in soight av th'
+camp, an' anither to make a flag av a bit o' ma shurrt an' wave it on a
+pole so that Steve cud see it. He drug me down to camp, put me in th'
+canoe, an' here Oi am wid all th' man squose out av me, bad cess to th'
+bear. Ef anny one says anny man c'n fight anny bear wid his two han's
+an' bate it, tell 'im from me he's a loiarr."
+
+We raised a purse and sent Big Mike on the monthly steamboat to
+Victoria. He lived several years. They gave him the position of
+watchman on the wharves, and we used to see him--a pathetic figure,
+creeping slowly about the dock, first with a pair of crutches and then
+with a cane. He was never a man again, after his encounter with the
+hootz.
+
+[Illustration: Native Houses, Showing Totem Poles
+
+In such a house Snook lived]
+
+But although the hootz was so strong and so fierce there was in
+almost every Indian tribe one who would attack and kill him. In the
+Stickeen tribe this man's name was Snook. Tilly, our star pupil and my
+interpreter, proudly pointed him out, one day when I was down in the
+Indian village, as her granduncle and the head of the family.
+
+I had never before seen Snook. He never came to church or to my house.
+He must have been sixty or sixty-five years old--a great, stalwart,
+big-boned savage with a huge head and a tremendous jaw. He was almost
+always absent from Fort Wrangell, hunting in the mountains or fishing
+among the islands. "My gran'fader, the greatest hootz-hunter in the
+world," was Tilly's introduction.
+
+It was on the occasion of a visit with Tilly to the community house of
+her family. As she spoke she went behind the carved totemic corner post
+which supported the roof, and brought forth old Snook's most valuable
+and proudest possession. It was a beautiful spear. The shaft was of
+crabapple wood and eight feet long, thick enough for a good grip, and
+polished until it shone like brown granite. It was carved all over
+with the totemic images of the eagle and the brown bear, the totems
+of Snook's family. The head was made of a large steel rasp and was a
+foot and a half long, five inches across in the widest place, finely
+pointed, the edges sharp as a razor. The handle of the spear-head was
+let into the end of the shaft in a very ingenious way, and secured
+by many tightly wrapped turns of a cord of deer-sinew. It was a most
+perfect and ferocious weapon. I learned that the chief of another tribe
+had offered a slave, whose value was five hundred blankets, for the
+spear, and his offer had been refused.
+
+All efforts to get Snook to talk about his hunting exploits were
+unavailing. He only grunted and went on with some carving with which
+he was occupied. But Sam Tahtain, a member of Snook's family, who
+was noted for his powers of oratory, described most graphically,
+in a mixture of Chinook, Thlinget and bad English, Snook's way of
+killing the big bears. He acted it so perfectly that even if I had not
+understood a word, the scene would have stood out very vividly before
+my mental vision. He showed the hootz grubbing among mossy logs and
+flirting the salmon out of a swift mountain stream; then Snook came in
+sight, creeping stealthily through the forest, a flintlock musket in
+one hand, his spear in the other. From that point the story grew more
+animated and the gestures more rapid to the climax. I can best tell it
+in the present tense:
+
+The bear hears a stick snap and catches a faint human odor; he stands
+up on his hind feet to investigate. His lips are drawn back from his
+big teeth, and he snarls a question.
+
+The man dodges behind a tree; creeps closer--cautiously flits from
+tree to tree--moves slowly out from a sheltering trunk--sinks on one
+knee--raises his gun--aims. "_Bang!_" from the gun,--"wah-a-ah-gr-r-r!"
+from the bear. The bear whirls round and round, biting his wound; then
+he charges straight for the man, his teeth champing, his jaws slavering.
+
+The man throws away the gun and takes his spear in both hands. He steps
+boldly out in the open and stands still, his left foot advanced, his
+spear slanting upwards, braced for the shock. The bear comes galumphing
+on, his hair on end, his sideways strut showing his anger and his
+readiness for the battle.
+
+When within a few feet of the man the bear stops short with a startling
+"Woof!" and stands upright on his hind feet. The man knows this habit
+of the hootz, and seizes the opportunity. He springs forward before the
+bear is steadied on his two feet and thrusts mightily with his spear.
+The bear strikes viciously at the man and howls hoarsely. A stream of
+red gushes out from the wide wound. Now the bear attacks, his fangs
+gleaming, his long claws standing stiffly out. He jumps and strikes and
+slashes with his teeth at the man.
+
+The man is alert--firm and sure on his feet--quick as lightning, yet
+steady. He dodges and leaps about the bear, feinting and thrusting.
+Again and again the spear goes home. The froth from the bear's jaws is
+bloody now, while the man's face is covered with drops of sweat. The
+breath of both comes in gasps. The air seems full of violent motion and
+raucous sounds. At every fresh wound the bear howls--"wa-a-ah"--this
+changes immediately to a vicious growl as he rears on his hind
+feet again and rushes to the fray. The man begins to shout his
+war-cry--"hoohooh--hoohooh"--as he jabs his terrible weapon into the
+bear's breast.
+
+The bear is visibly weakening. His eyes grow dim, his rushes and blows
+have less steel and lightning in them. The man begins to taunt him,
+"Oh, you big-chief hootz--I thought you brave man--strong man. You no
+brave--no strong. You just like baby. Why you no stand up, fight like
+man?"
+
+At last the bear, sick and faint with loss of blood, but game to the
+end, stands with paws outstretched, swaying like a drunken man. The
+man comes close, and, bending back to gain force for his blow, thrusts
+upward and forward with all his strength, striking just under the
+bear's breast bone and buries the spear-head, splitting the heart
+in two. Over on his back topples the great beast, his paws feebly
+twitching, his last breath bringing with it a great rush of blood.
+
+The man, as soon as he can recover breath, puts his foot on the bear's
+neck, singing in quaint minor strain a brief song of triumph. Then he
+hastens to prop the bear's mouth open with a stick, to let his spirit
+go forth in peace, and he also places between the dying jaws a piece
+of dried salmon, that the bear may not lack food when he goes to join
+the _hoots-kwany_--the bear-people, in that spirit land of forests and
+mountains to which all brown bears, good and bad, must go.
+
+Sam Tahtain was a little man, in striking contrast with his giant
+brother, Snook, but he entered into his recital with infinite energy,
+dancing about the floor, striking and thrusting, acting the bear's
+part and then the man's, shouting and growling out his words; and when
+he had finished, his own face was bathed in perspiration. His acting
+was an artless piece of art, very perfect in its way; and it certainly
+thrilled the Indians who had drawn around in an eager circle as the
+recitation proceeded, their fervent indrawn exclamations of wonder and
+admiration supplying the most genuine applause.
+
+But I must confess that the antics of the little man, and his evident
+pride in his own performance, struck me as irresistibly funny; and I
+could not help recalling a verse I had learned when a boy:
+
+    "Little man with the wild, wild eye,
+      Man with the long, long hair,
+    Why do you dance about the floor?
+      Why do you beat the air?
+    Why do you howl and mutter so?
+      Why do you shake your fist?"
+    Said the little man, in a deep, deep voice,
+      "I'm an el-o-cu-tion-ist!"
+
+But the Indians saw nothing funny in Sam's oratory--it thrilled them
+through and through. Even old Snook, the hero of the story, ceased his
+carving, fixing his eyes intently on the speaker, and rewarding him
+with a fervent "_Kluh-yukeh!_" To exactly translate that exclamation
+will require a paraphrase--"My, but that was good!"
+
+But Tilly thought only of the glory of her granduncle. Her eyes shone
+with pride, and she whispered to me, "Isn't my gran'fader, Snook, just
+the bravest man you ever heard of? Why, he isn't afraid of anything."
+
+The other Indians also yielded Snook the palm for courage and strength.
+They looked upon him as a sort of Indian superman, lauding him in their
+speeches, and being careful not to offend him. He was the hero of the
+Stickeens.
+
+And, indeed, I was much of the same opinion. Certainly a man who would
+stand up, single-handed, to a grizzly and kill him with a spear, must
+have unqualified nerve and courage. Surely nothing on earth could
+frighten a mighty bear-hunter like that.
+
+Well, listen. A few days after this visit to Snook's house I was
+sitting in my house, which was within the stockade of the old fort.
+The posts of this stockade, some twelve feet high and firmly spiked
+together, had been put in place about sixteen years before, when the
+fort was first established. Although many of the posts were rotting,
+the circle enclosing the parade ground, barracks, hospital and
+officers' quarters was still unbroken. Our house was one of the old
+officers' dwellings and not far from the gateway which led "up the
+beach" towards the Indian village of temporary houses in which the
+"foreign Indians"--those from distant tribes--encamped. On the other
+side of the fort another gateway led "down the beach," through the town
+with its stores and white man's houses, to the large community houses
+of the Stickeens. To go from one Indian town to the other you had to
+pass through the fort.
+
+It was a lovely, sunny day in midsummer. Everything was peaceful about
+the old fort. School was in session in the old hospital, our little
+children were playing on the grass, and our old cow, "Spot," was
+feeding in the gateway.
+
+This cow was a little black and white Holstein which the ladies of
+Pennsylvania had purchased for Mrs. Young's training-school, and to
+supply our babies and the native babies with fresh milk. She was the
+first cow which had been brought to Fort Wrangell, and was a great
+curiosity and wonder to the Indians. The Thlingets had no name for
+cattle, because these animals were not known in Alaska; so they adopted
+the Chinook name--moosmoos--and, owing to the Thlingets' inability to
+pronounce any consonant that brings the lips together, they called it
+"wusoos."
+
+Our little "wusoos" was gentle and tame as a kitten. Our children used
+to hang onto her tail, and feed her bunches of grass and leaves of
+cabbage. Once I came upon a group that made me laugh. "Spot" was lying
+down and placidly chewing her cud; Abby, aged five, was seated between
+the cow's horns; while Alaska (Lassie), who was three, with her little
+dog, Jettie, in her arms, was sprawling on Spot's back.
+
+This peaceful summer's morning the cow was cropping the grass by
+the gate. Suddenly the silence was shattered by a strong Indian
+voice, pitched high through fear, calling to me: "_Uh-eedydashee;
+uh-eedydashee, uh-Ankow; uh-eedydashee!_" (Help me; help me, my chief;
+help me!)
+
+I ran quickly out of the house and through the gateway in the direction
+of the cries, which were growing more agonizing. I thought somebody was
+being murdered. I rushed past "Spot," who was calmly munching grass,
+undisturbed by the hullabaloo. At first I could see nobody; then I
+discovered the huge bulk of old Snook, the hootz-hunter, crouching
+behind a stump. His face was as pale as its coating of smoke and grease
+would permit, and he was shaking like a leaf.
+
+"Why, Snook!" I cried in Thlinget, "what's the matter? Is anything
+wrong in the Indian village?"
+
+He pointed a trembling finger towards the cow and quavered, "Drive
+that thing away!"
+
+The thought of that famous old bear-hunter, scared to death at my
+gentle old cow, was too much for me, and I burst into a roar of
+laughter. When I had recovered my powers of speech and locomotion I
+walked to "Spot" and put my arm over her neck.
+
+"This is a _shawat wusoos_" (a woman cow), I explained. "She will not
+hurt anybody. See how kind and gentle she is."
+
+Snook was unconvinced. His eyes were fixed in fascinated terror upon
+"Spot," and he dodged at every motion of her head.
+
+"Eehya-a-ah!" he answered in contempt, "she knows white man; she
+doesn't know Indian. See the sharp horns on her head!" and he refused
+to come away from the shelter of the stump until I had driven
+"Spot" away some distance; and even then he sidled past, eyeing her
+apprehensively and then hurrying through the gateway and across the
+parade ground with the air of one who has escaped deadly peril.
+
+The memory of Snook and the cow has often braced me up when I was
+tempted to retreat from the path of duty, because I did not know what
+was in the gateway, or because of unfamiliar obstacles. It is the
+unknown that terrifies us. If we march right up to the bugaboos that
+stand across our way, we will find the terrible horned monster change
+into something no more harmful than a gentle old cow.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+NINA AND THE BEARS
+
+
+All these stories are true, in their essential points. In some of them,
+however, I have to change or suppress the names of persons and towns,
+because the characters introduced are still living, and might not like
+publicity. That is the case in this story.
+
+Ever since the great gold stampede of 1897 into the Klondike, it has
+been my duty, as it certainly has been my pleasure, to follow the new
+gold stampedes into different parts of Alaska, and be at the beginning
+of most of the new gold camps and towns of the great Territory of the
+Northwest. Of course I began preaching as soon as I arrived at one of
+these camps, holding my first services on log piles, under the trees,
+in tents or saloons or lodging houses--wherever I could gather together
+a congregation.
+
+Always, the next thing was to start a Sunday-school, if there were any
+children in the camp, or at least a Bible class, if there were only
+grown people. I always had hymn-books and a baby-organ along, and was
+sure of finding people to play the organ and sing. The gold-seekers
+are not all roughs and toughs, as some people think, but just such
+people as may be seen in the States, and a large proportion of them are
+Christians.
+
+One of the greatest of these gold stampedes occurred in the heart of
+Alaska--in the center of a great wilderness until then unexplored.
+A rich vein of gold was struck deep down in the frozen ground. The
+news spread, and soon thousands of eager gold-seekers from all parts
+of Alaska, from the Pacific States, from Canada, and later from all
+parts of the United States came over the mountains from the coast,
+down the Yukon from Dawson City, up the Yukon from Nome and from other
+directions; traveling by steamboat, poling boat and canoe on the
+rivers, and with dog-sled, horse-sled and hand-sled in the winter over
+the mountains, and with packs on their backs and guns in their hands in
+the summer.
+
+Of course I was with the crowd. I never liked to miss the fun of a
+great scramble like that. When I got to the big new camp I set up my
+tent and began to prepare a preaching-place and to advertise a meeting
+for the next Sunday by putting up posters on stumps and trees. I also
+called the children to come and be organized into a Sunday-school.
+About twenty children came the first Sunday.
+
+Among them was a pretty little Swedish girl, named Nina. She had blue
+eyes, flaxen hair and rosy cheeks, and was about twelve years old.
+She won my heart at once, and soon we were great chums. She was so
+bright and pleasant and sweet, and such a fearless and intelligent
+outdoor girl, that one could not help loving her. She was always at
+Sunday-school and church, always knew her lessons, and sang so heartily
+and tunefully that people turned their heads to see her, and her sunny
+smile drew answering smiles even from care-worn faces.
+
+I soon found that among Nina's accomplishments she was already a good
+shot with both rifle and shotgun; and when the snow began to fall in
+October I took her with me on a couple of rabbit-hunts, and her glee
+at getting the biggest bag of snow-shoe rabbits was very enjoyable.
+Rabbits formed our principal meat-supply that winter.
+
+When the cold weather of November covered the rivers, creeks and lakes
+with ice and carpeted the hills and valleys with snow, a big stampede
+occurred away from the town of log houses into which the camp of tents
+had grown. Almost every one who had a dog-team and sled packed up an
+outfit of food, blankets, tent and sheet-iron stove, and "mushed" away
+into the mountains, prospecting for gold. If no dogs were available,
+two men, or sometimes a man and his wife, would harness themselves to
+a sled with their outfit aboard, and, depending upon their guns for
+their meat supply, would cheerily set forth into the trackless wild,
+following the water-courses until they found a likely-looking creek,
+when they would halt and build a snug log cabin, and spend the winter
+prospecting. To those who had courage, some knowledge of woodcraft and
+love of nature, this adventurous life was very enticing. Thousands of
+men in Alaska, to this day, spend their summers in the towns, working
+at their trades or professions, and then, on the approach of winter,
+invest the money they have earned in an outfit of provisions, tools
+and ammunition, and bury themselves in the wilderness again. It is a
+great life; and I have often felt strongly tempted to leave everything
+and join these brave spirits for a winter's stay in the McKinley range
+of mountains.
+
+One day, about the middle of November of that year, little Nina came
+into our house and threw herself into our arms, crying as if her heart
+would break.
+
+"Why, Nina dear," asked my wife, "what is the matter? Is any one sick
+or dead?"
+
+"Oh, no," she sobbed, "but I can't come to Sunday-school any more. Papa
+and Mamma and I are going away off into the mountains to-morrow, and
+we'll never come back here again."
+
+We petted and soothed her, the best comfort I could give her being the
+thought of the great hunting adventures that were before her. So the
+wilderness swallowed up my brave little friend, and for eight years I
+had no word of her. By that time I was at another large gold camp, in a
+distant part of the great Yukon Valley.
+
+I was the only minister in a region larger than Pennsylvania. My parish
+extended from two to five hundred miles in different directions from
+the camp in which I wintered. That winter I traveled with my dogs
+between two and three thousand miles, in preaching and exploring trips.
+Magazines, papers and books sent me by churches, Sunday-schools, Boys'
+Scouts, and women's missionary societies, I found three hundred miles
+from my central reading room, in miners' and trappers' cabins and in
+roadhouses to which I had sent them.
+
+About the middle of the winter I was delighted to get a letter from
+Nina. It was written from a point about two hundred and fifty miles
+distant, in that great game-stocked region which lies west of the
+Alaska Range, of which Mt. McKinley, "The Top of the Continent," is the
+highest peak. It was a cheery, girlish letter--just such an one as I
+might have expected from Nina--grown-up. It told me of her marriage,
+two years before, to a young man whom I had known--one who had loved
+her when she was a little girl, had followed her and her parents to the
+western wilderness, waited patiently for her to grow up, and, now that
+they were married, seemed to her all that was admirable and complete
+in manhood. It was her one romance and was very sweet and perfect.
+
+Nina and her husband were living in a large cabin on one of the trails
+that led from the Interior to the Coast. Nina called it a roadhouse,
+and, though low and dark, with only poles for floor, and pole-bunks
+for beds, it was fitted for the accommodation of a dozen travelers.
+Nina was queen of a wide realm. Her cabin was a hundred and twenty-five
+miles from that of the nearest white woman. They were two hundred miles
+from the nearest store. They were in the heart of the richest game
+region of North America--the western foot-hills of the Alaska Range.
+They were prospectors for gold in the summer; farmers, raising their
+own potatoes and vegetables and wheat for their chickens; trappers
+during the winter; hunters all the time; and hotel-keepers during the
+six months when snow and frozen streams and lakes lured travelers along
+the lonely trail.
+
+There was in Nina's letter, however, no hint of loneliness; rather a
+joyful tone of contentment, as one of God's favored creatures; and of
+comradeship with the things about her--the mountains, the forests
+and the myriads of animals, small and great. She invited me to come
+and make them a long visit and have a big hunt. Her letter also spoke
+of the one need in her life that I could supply--Bibles, books and
+magazines.
+
+Very few travelers came my way who had passed Nina's that winter, but
+from most of them I heard of my little chum, and always in terms of
+enthusiastic praise.
+
+"I am a city man," said a young lawyer from Seattle, "and am in this
+wild land just long enough to make my stake and get back to the rattle
+of the street-cars. The 'call of the wild' has no allurement for me.
+There is just one thing that could make me settle down in Alaska, and
+that is to find such a mate as that little woman."
+
+"Know her?" repeated a rugged, black-eyed man of thirty whom I had met
+on the Chilcoot Pass in '97. "Who doesn't? Say; she's a great woman.
+Why, I'd go out of my way a hundred miles, any time, just to see her
+smile, and to taste her grouse-pie or roast sheep. Tell you what she
+did this last trip: As I swung into the edge of their clearin' a pair
+of sharp-tailed grouse flew up to the top of a dry spruce, a hundred
+yards from the cabin. Nina was complainin' that she had no makin's of
+grouse pie in the house, knowin' my likin' for the same. I told her
+about the two I'd scared up. 'Lend me a shotgun,' I said, 'and I'll go
+back and try for a shot at them.' We stepped to the door for a look.
+There set the two grouse on the spruce, lookin' like robins agin the
+sky. Nina took down a twenty-two rifle from the wall and put some
+'extra-long' shells in the magazine. I thought she was goin' to give
+the gun to me, and I planned to sneak back till I got under the birds
+before riskin' a shot; but she stood in the doorway and swung the rifle
+up quick and easy. Crack, crack! and dogged if them chickens didn't
+come tumblin' right down. I never seen such shootin'. Then she slipped
+on her snow-shoes and went and got the grouse and made me my pie. She's
+sure a little bit of 'all right.'"
+
+I asked him if he had seen the magazines and Bibles I had sent her.
+With a sheepish grin he took out of his pocket a little red Testament,
+and handed it to me. I saw his name on the fly-leaf with her initials
+under it.
+
+"First I've carried since I was a kid," he confessed. "And she made me
+promise to _read_ it! A woman that can be a bright little Christian
+in a place like that, and a dead game sport, too, can make me do most
+anything. Joe [Nina's husband] is a lucky guy."
+
+Naturally such reports as these made me all the more anxious to
+see this queen of the wilderness again. The necessity of taking a
+seven-hundred-mile trip to the Coast in March gave me the opportunity.
+
+Oh, boys, you'll never know the real joy of living till you take a
+winter trip with dog-sled in Alaska. The keen, fine air, lung-filling,
+invigorating; your dogs yelping with eagerness, their feet twinkling,
+the sled screaming its delight; frost-diamonds sparkling from every
+branch, frost-symphonies played by the ice-harps under your feet; your
+own struggle, achievement, triumph, against and over the cold, the
+difficulties of the trail, the long miles.
+
+    "The morning breaks, the stars grow pale,
+    Your huskies leap, shrill shrieks the sled;
+    You follow free with flying tread;
+    A joy to live! What joy! to thread
+    The fluted ribbon of the trail."
+
+It was near the sunset of a beautiful, bright day that I swung into
+Joe's clearing. For three days I had been headed almost directly
+towards Dinali--The Great One, and Dinah's Wife (Mt. McKinley and Mt.
+Foraker). Higher and higher these majestic mountains heaved their
+mighty shoulders. The country became more broken and rugged. Lesser
+mountains raised their white heads all around me. Only a few inches of
+snow covered the ground instead of the six to ten feet that prevailed
+farther west. The character of the trees had changed--more birch,
+cottonwood and other deciduous timber; less tamarack, hemlock and swamp
+spruce.
+
+Signs of abundant life were everywhere. Fox, wolf, lynx and wolverine
+tracks criss-crossed the snow in all directions; great moose tracks
+going in a straight line, and the imprint of thousands of caribou hoofs
+crossing and obliterating each other, but keeping in the same general
+direction showed the presence of abundance of big game; while grouse,
+ptarmigan and rabbit tracks were so numerous that my dogs were kept
+excited and on the "keen jump" every minute.
+
+On the bank of a small river, in a clearing of a couple of acres cut
+out of a forest of great fir and cedar trees, stood Joe's log-cabin
+roadhouse. Enough of the big trees had been left standing to shade the
+house. In front of it were a dozen cozy log dog-kennels, and behind it
+was a garden enclosed in a picket and wire fence.
+
+As soon as "Leader's" bells gave shrill notice of my arrival the door
+flew open, a bright little figure in gingham and moccasins, with yellow
+hair flying and blue eyes sparkling, rushed at me, and I received
+the first good hug that I had experienced since leaving my wife and
+daughters in the East a year before.
+
+A cheery voice cried, "Oh, you dear old man, you. I've been watching
+for you every day for two weeks. I was so afraid you weren't coming!"
+
+Joe's welcome, though not so demonstrative, was none the less hearty.
+It was worth dog-mushing two hundred and fifty miles to have such
+a reception. As soon as I stepped into the house I was made keenly
+aware that I was in the home of hunters and trappers. In all my
+wide experience of wilderness homes I had never seen one like this.
+The long, low cabin had two rooms. The smaller was kitchen and
+dining-room, having a sheet-iron range and home-made tables, shelves
+and chairs. The larger room had a good sized sheet-iron heating stove
+in the center, and was almost filled with bunks in tiers of three each,
+built in double rows the length of the room. A little chamber enclosed
+with snowy caribou buck-skin, the skins sewn together most skillfully
+with sinew thread, was Nina's bedroom. The poles which formed the
+floors had been hewn and laid so carefully that they looked like
+boards. The tables and shelves were of whipsawed lumber, every article
+showing painstaking skill.
+
+"Joe and I made the cabin and everything in and about it, all
+ourselves," Nina boasted.
+
+"What!" I exclaimed, "you two rolled up these heavy logs, without any
+help?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. We used block-and-tackle. It isn't so hard when you know
+how; and it was great fun."
+
+"But the lumber for the doors and tables and window-sash--it's so true
+and smooth and beautiful; how did you get that?" I asked.
+
+"Whipsawed and hand-planed it all," she replied. "You see, we came
+here two years ago this month, just after we were married. The
+Government was surveying this trail, and we thought we'd build this
+roadhouse and pick up a few dollars taking care of travelers. But
+chiefly we chose this place because it was so beautiful and such a game
+country. Then it has never been prospected for gold.
+
+"Joe and I each had a good dog-team and sled when we were married. We
+loaded the sleds with tools, hardware, stoves and dishes, glass for
+the windows, some flour, sugar, beans and a few other groceries, and
+brought our traps and plenty of ammunition for our guns. It was hard
+breaking trail through the deep snow on the east side of the Alaska
+Range, but nice going on this side. We mushed the two hundred and fifty
+miles from the coast in two weeks; and had some time for trapping
+before warm weather."
+
+"How do you get 'outside' in the summer time?" I inquired.
+
+"We can't, and we don't need to. We spent that first summer building
+this house, making garden, gathering berries, drying fish, hunting and
+getting ready for the winter. Almost all our wants are supplied right
+here. From the middle of April till the middle of October we don't see
+a human being, except now and then an Indian, or a stray prospector."
+
+"What a lonesome life!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Now, Doctor, I know you don't mean that," protested Nina. "Why, this
+is the most companionable place in the world. It is full of friendly
+creatures. The winter before I was married I spent three months in
+San Francisco. I nearly died, I was so lonely and homesick. I'd meet
+thousands of people on the streets every day, and not get a word or
+smile from one of them. I wouldn't give my little 'Red' for the whole
+crowd."
+
+"Who's Red?" I asked.
+
+Nina leaned forward and made a squeaking noise with her lips. Instantly
+a little furry creature of a bright scarlet color, with a short tail,
+jumped out of a box in the corner, ran to her and up her hand and arm
+to her shoulder and then down to her knee, where he stood stiffly erect
+like a soldier at attention. He was so quick and comical in his motions
+and so full of tricks that he kept us laughing.
+
+"I had three Reds," explained Nina, "but a weasel got two of them
+before I got the weasel. I have had many other pets besides the
+wood-mice. There isn't a creature in all the forest that would do me
+harm unless I hurt it first. And I don't have a grudge against any of
+them, except the hawks and owls that come after my chickens."
+
+The most striking feature about the cabin, however, was the abundance
+and variety of furs and other trophies of the chase. Adorning and
+almost covering one end of the room was an enormous moose head. At the
+other end was a wonderful caribou head. Over the windows were beautiful
+heads of the white mountain sheep, the bighorn of the Northwest.
+
+But the pelts! Great bunches of mink, marten, fisher, otter, muskrat
+and beaver; scores of red fox, with here and there a priceless black or
+silver fox; lynx, wolf, wolverine and black bear.
+
+"We have four lines of traps, each five miles long," explained Nina;
+"and Joe and I each take two lines every other day, spending the
+alternate days caring for the skins. We are making bear traps now,
+getting ready for Bruin when he comes out of his den. We have about
+four thousand dollars' worth of furs caught this winter, and we'll make
+it five before warm weather."
+
+But the most imposing objects of all in the cabin were two tremendous
+rugs--the skins of the _ursus gigas_ or Kodiak bear--the largest of
+existing carnivorous mammals. Joe had learned something of taxidermy,
+and the heads were nicely preserved, the big teeth and claws showing,
+the skins being lined with red blankets. The largest of these rugs was
+over twelve feet long, the distance from nose to tail over ten feet,
+the lateral spread being almost as great. The fur was a rich brown in
+color, deep, thick and soft.
+
+At my exclamation of wonder and admiration, Joe began eagerly to tell
+me the story of the rugs; but his wife stopped him.
+
+"Better wait till after supper, Joe," she said.
+
+Ah, that supper! The supreme physical pleasure of it lingers in my
+memory still. Moose soup with potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions
+from their garden in it; fresh grayling, caught in the fall and frozen;
+ruffed grouse pie; roast mountain sheep--the best meat that grows;
+omelet made of eggs laid that day; moose-nose cheese, delicately
+pickled; fine sour-dough bread with raspberry jam and currant jelly;
+pie made of fresh blueberries, the berries having been picked in the
+fall and preserved by the simple process of pouring water on them and
+letting them freeze. All of these viands, except the bread, being the
+products of Nina's labor or marksmanship, made them doubly sweet. Where
+else in the world could you get a meal like that--or the appetite to
+devour it all?
+
+"Well," began Joe, when, sated, I lay back in the easy-chair curiously
+fashioned of moose horns, while the young couple washed the dishes,
+"I'm mighty proud of them rugs. They're Nina's, both of 'em, and I
+reckon there's no other girl in the world would of tackled the job she
+did, and got away with it. It scares me every time I think of it, and I
+don't know whether I'd oughter scold her or pet her up."
+
+"Nonsense!" protested his wife; "you know you'd have done exactly as I
+did if you'd been here."
+
+"Maybe I would," he retorted, "but I wouldn't of let _you_ take that
+risk."
+
+[Illustration: Five Kodiak Bears
+
+The bear to the right is twice the size of a Grizzly]
+
+"It was the first of last November," he resumed. "I'd taken the two
+sleds and all the dogs, as soon as I thought the ice was strong enough,
+and I'd gone two hundred miles to the store at Ophir to lay in our
+winter's outfit. The ice towards the coast wasn't strong enough to make
+safe mushin', and Nina was all alone here for more'n three weeks. I
+knowed she would make the reg'lar round of the traps and keep things
+goin' just as usual. She's never learned to be afraid--that girl.
+
+"Well, one mornin' she was gettin' breakfast, when she heard a little
+noise outside. She opened the door, and there, within twenty-five feet
+of her, were three big Kodiak bears. Two of them stood up on their hin'
+feet when she opened the door, while the other kept smellin' around for
+grub."
+
+"Goodness, Nina!" I exclaimed. "What was your first thought when you
+saw the big brutes so close?"
+
+"Well," she answered, smiling, "my first thought was, 'What beautiful
+rugs those are on the backs of the bears! I want those rugs.'"
+
+"Yes," Joe went on, "and so she stepped slowly back, inch by inch
+into the house, and softly closed the door so as not to _scare_ the
+bears--they as big as a house and her such a leetle mite of a thing.
+She took down that 30-40 Winchester, there, and filled the magazine
+full (it chambers ten); and then she done a plumb foolish thing. I know
+darned well what I'd 'a' done. I'd 'a' poked the moss out between the
+logs, there, and stuck my rifle through and had some 'vantage."
+
+"What did Nina do?" I asked.
+
+"Why, she threw the door wide open and stepped right out in front of
+it. Up came all three bears, this time, on their hind feet. Nina's
+lightnin' on the snap shot, and before the big he-bear was straightened
+up he got it right between the eyes. Down he tumbled, and the other two
+was out of sight around the kennel there before she could throw another
+shell into the gun and aim." Joe pointed to a log dog-house about two
+rods in front of the door.
+
+"Nina raced pell-mell past the kennel to get another shot, and there
+she saw the big she-bear, standin' up behind the dog-house, awaitin'
+for her, not a gun's length away. Nina swung around and fired
+pointblank into the bear's breast. It went down on all-fours and
+came for her with open mouth. There was nothing for it but to keep on
+shootin'. She worked the lever of her gun mighty fast. She put five
+bullets into the beast before she quieted it. She never saw the third
+bear again."
+
+"Why, Nina!" I cried, as soon as I could get my breath. "You foolish
+child! Your escape was miraculous! It frightens me to hear Joe tell of
+it. Weren't you dreadfully scared when you saw that great brute jump at
+you like that?"
+
+"Oh, no," laughed the girl. "I was too busy to get scared. But I was
+awfully provoked because the other one got away."
+
+Other details of Nina's great adventure followed--how it took her
+three days to skin the two bears, she having to climb a tree to adjust
+the block and tackle so as to move the heavy carcases; and how Joe
+"blubbered" when he got home and saw them, and knew the peril his
+beloved had encountered.
+
+Nina is an exceptional woman, but still she is truly a type. There
+is something in "that great, big, broad land, way up yonder," that
+stiffens the moral fiber, enlarges the spirit and makes the people
+unafraid. The white settlers of Alaska, while by no means all saints,
+are as a class the strongest, bravest and most resourceful people I
+know. I have not heard from my brave little chum for several years. I
+presume she is still living her joyous, fearless, Christian life in
+what John Muir used to call my "beautiful, fruitful wilderness." Here's
+to her; God bless her!
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE ABSURD WALRUS
+
+
+Lewis Carroll's famous lines about the Walrus and the Carpenter will
+always hold their place at the very top of humorous poems. For besides
+being funny they have a quality of truth which the careless reader
+little suspects:
+
+    "The time has come," the walrus said,
+      "To talk of many things,
+    Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
+      Of cabbages and kings;
+    And why the sea is boiling hot,
+      And whether pigs have wings."
+
+The very few men who have been acquainted with the walrus in his native
+haunts know that the author of "Alice in Wonderland" in these verses
+"hits the nail on the head," and, perhaps unwittingly, gives an insight
+into the true character of the walrus as the most inconsistent,
+grotesque and absurd of all beasts.
+
+It was my good fortune the summer of 1913 to be one of a company of six
+hunters on board the three-masted power schooner, _P. J. Abler_, which
+sailed along the Alaskan and Siberian coasts for six thousand miles and
+pounded its way northward into the Arctic ice-pack to within sixteen
+degrees of the Pole.
+
+The ship itself was of unusual pattern. Her owner called her the
+_Mudhen_. Her three masts stood stiff and straight in a row and were
+the same height. Her lines were not particularly elegant, and her
+small engine could only push her through calm seas at the rate of five
+miles an hour. But she was a comfortable ship and had one quality in
+particular which overbalanced all the drawbacks and made her the boat
+for us--she was built for "bucking ice." She had extra heavy timbers,
+especially about her bow. In spite of her slowness, she was an ideal
+craft for venturing into Arctic ice-floes. She would come at a good
+speed, bow on, against a huge berg and bring up with a jar that would
+shake her as a rat shaken by a terrier, and send your plate of polar
+bear meat into your lap. Then she would recover from her backward
+bounce and calmly proceed on her way undented and unharmed. Mr. Scull
+of Philadelphia, who has sailed the world over, could never get used
+to bumping the ice. He and I would be bent over the chess board,
+absorbed in a difficult situation, when--bang! would go the schooner
+against the ice, and recoil, trembling like a hound. I would grab for
+the tottering chessmen, while Scull would jump right into the air with
+his hair standing straight up on each side of his bald pate like the
+ears of a horned owl. He would rush frantically out of the cabin door,
+lean far over the vessel's side, train his big eye-glasses on the
+ship's bow and watch for signs of her filling. Then he would come back
+muttering strange words in any of the five or six languages of which
+he is the master, and resume his study of the game, only to repeat
+the performance at the next bump. "Oh!" he would say, "it hurts me
+more than it hurts the ship"; which was undoubtedly true. I always had
+better luck in chess with Scull when we were bucking ice.
+
+The personnel of our party was like some landscapes, varied and
+interesting. The commander of the expedition and its manager, was
+Captain Kleinschmidt, sailor, miner, hunter, author and moving-picture
+man. He chartered the _Abler_ and hired her crew, who were as
+cosmopolitan as it is possible for crew to be--the captain, a Swede;
+the mate, a Dane; the engineers (brothers) German-Americans; the cook,
+a "Jap"; the crew composed of one American, one Russian and five
+Eskimos. There were two taxidermists to take care of the birdskins,
+bugs, mammals, etc., collected.
+
+Of the four hunters, who, with Captain Kleinschmidt, financed the
+expedition, three were from Philadelphia: Scull, our polyglot
+interpreter, a publisher of books; Collins, a manufacturer; and
+Lovering, a young man who had lived part of his life in Wyoming. The
+fourth, Dr. Elting, was a surgeon of reputation from Albany, N. Y. All
+were experienced hunters, Scull and Collins having followed trails in
+Africa and America, Dr. Elting in the Western States and Canada, and
+Lovering in the West. As for myself, the guest without responsibility
+or care, "taken along," as the captain said, "to lend dignity to the
+expedition," you can call me by my common names: "The Sour-dough
+Preacher," "The Mushing Parson," "The Alaska Sky-Pilot," or any of half
+a dozen Northwestern cognomens, of all of which I am equally proud.
+
+My object in joining this expedition was, first, to have a big hunt
+and a grand rest. But, more than the outing, I valued the privilege of
+exploring ground untrodden by the missionary, and, if possible, doing
+something towards bringing the Gospel to the heathen Eskimo of the
+Alaskan and Siberian shores.
+
+We were all "out for a lark," glad beyond expression to be hundreds
+of miles from a telegram or newspaper, to be able to wear our dirty
+clothes and eat in our shirtsleeves without shame; to forget that such
+things existed as automobiles or stiff collars or dinner parties. We
+had four months of a royal good time--along the Asiatic Coast after
+Siberian sheep, on the Alaska Peninsula for caribou and brown bears,
+on Kenai Peninsula after moose, white sheep and black bear, among the
+islands of the Southern Alaska Coast and Bering Sea with the bird and
+seal rookeries, and pursuing polar bear amid the ice-floes of the
+Arctic Ocean.
+
+We visited many Eskimo villages; we shot for the museums hundreds of
+varieties of birds on the Siberian and Alaskan Coasts; we captured new
+species of beetles, moths, butterflies and other insects; the camera
+fiends and moving-picture man reveled in novel scenes, animate and
+inanimate. We buffeted storms, pounded ice and sailed sunny seas.
+
+But the climax of our joyous outing was the three or four days we spent
+among the walrus herds off the Northern Siberian Coast. Scull and
+Collins, who had hunted everything in Africa from dikdik to rhinoceros,
+declared that none of their experiences in that continent approached in
+thrilling interest their days with the walrus herds.
+
+For the walrus is _sui generis_: there is no other mammal at all like
+him in appearance, habits, habitat or characteristics. He is the least
+known or written about of all the larger animals. No thorough study
+has ever been made of him. More is known of the habits of the extinct
+woolly elephant--the mammoth, whose bones, tusks, and even hair and
+skin we find on the Alaskan Coast--than the walrus. And what has been
+written and the common ideas concerning this animal are so erroneous as
+to be funny.
+
+A century or so ago a naturalist-traveler, writing about the Eskimos
+and the _morse_, as the walrus was then called, said that the tusks of
+the animal are for the purpose of pulling himself up the icy mountains
+where he lives; that his habit is to thus work his way up to the top
+of the dizziest peak; that the Eskimos pursue him there and cut holes
+through the thick skin of his flippers unknown to the huge pachyderm,
+whose hide is impervious to sensation. Then, having passed strong ropes
+through these holes and tied them to the jutting crags, they raise
+a hullabaloo, and the walrus, alarmed, precipitating himself down
+the mountain, jerks off his skin, which the Eskimos then use in the
+construction of their boats and houses. The year before our hunt, a
+California gentleman, interested in Captain K.'s moving pictures, asked
+him whether the walrus brought forth their young alive or laid eggs and
+hatched them.
+
+In May, 1913, when discussing my proposed outing with some of my
+ministerial brethren, at the General Assembly at Atlanta, a good Doctor
+of Divinity tried to deter me from undertaking it because of its
+dangerous character.
+
+"Is it not true, Dr. Young," he asked with great solicitude, "that the
+walrus sometimes devours human flesh?"
+
+I patiently explained that the walrus has no incisors, no teeth at
+all but flat grinders, level with the gums and far back in the jaws,
+"and therefore he cannot rend or eat anything so very tough as a
+missionary"; and that moreover his mouth is situated back of a narrow
+opening of three or four inches in width between his tusks, so that
+nothing bulky can enter it. "He might drown me but he couldn't eat me!"
+
+The "D. D." listened with open skepticism and put this poser: "How then
+can he devour his prey?"
+
+"What prey?" I asked.
+
+"Why, the seals and salmon and other large sea animals on which he
+feeds."
+
+Again I sternly suppressed my rising emotions: "But he doesn't eat
+these things. He couldn't catch them and doesn't want them. He is only
+a clam-eater. His tusks are not spears, but an admirably constructed
+clam-hoe. He could not live without them; and his stiff whiskers form a
+fine brush to clean the clams of mud before he dines off them."
+
+The good brother glanced from one to another of the listening group
+with a look that plainly said: "How sad it is that such shameless
+prevaricators will even slip into the ministry;" and walked off
+muttering something about consulting "authorities."
+
+Illustrating my own roving habits, while a pioneer missionary in
+Alaska, I have sometimes said, using a common simile, that I "had no
+more home than a jack-rabbit." I am changing this now to a stronger
+expression; "no more home than a walrus." He is the most constantly on
+the move of all the vagabonds. Even when sleeping he is moving, for the
+only home the poor fellow has is the ice-cakes which form in the Arctic
+Ocean and Bering Sea, entirely filling the former and in the winter
+crowding down the latter to about fifty-eight degrees, north latitude.
+The walrus herds, for the greater part of the year, keep on the borders
+of this great field of ice. In the summer when the Bering Sea ice melts
+and also that of the southern part of the Arctic Ocean, the walrus
+keeps on the flat ice-cakes which float over the great clam beds of
+these shallow seas. As the ice forms in the fall and the ice-floes
+extend southward he sets out on a long swim ahead of the fast freezing
+ice, resting occasionally on the Siberian shore, the Diomedes, St.
+Lawrence, St. Matthews and other islands. When the ice-field has
+extended to its southern limit he resumes his ice-house-boat habit and
+returns north in the spring.
+
+So little is known of the life history of the walrus that I am unable
+to speak with confidence, but the young are evidently brought forth
+very early in the spring, April or May, and float with their mothers
+(the females and young herding together), up into the Arctic Ocean as
+far as the shoals off Wrangle Island, one hundred and fifty miles north
+of the Siberian Coast. There the little ones are guarded by the cows,
+which during the summer months are the only really dangerous walrus
+ever met with. Were the walrus the ferocious and combatant animal he
+is sometimes depicted, it would be a risky thing indeed to hunt him
+in skin boats or any other small craft. Imagine three or four tons
+of muscular fierceness, armed with strong, sharp, spearlike tusks,
+charging at you. The front part of his head is a solid mass of tough
+bone more than a foot thick. He could strike his tusks through your
+boat and sink it in an instant, or hook them over the edge and upset
+you, spearing you one by one in the water.
+
+But the huge pachyderm is the most timid and good-natured of animals.
+It is only when the female fears for the safety of her young that she
+shows anything like ferocity. In 1911 Captain Kleinschmidt was taking
+moving pictures of the walrus herds. He had two catamarans, made by
+lashing two kyaks together with firm cross pieces. In the foremost
+craft two Eskimo hunters with their spears were paddling ahead, to
+slip up on the herds and harpoon them at the proper time, while the
+moving-picture man was in the other craft to take pictures of the herds
+and of the whole performance.
+
+A herd of cows and their young had been frightened from an ice-cake
+into the water. Suddenly one of these cows thrust her tusks forward,
+the sign of a charge: "Look out!" cried K. to the Eskimo as the cow
+dived. They made frantic efforts to paddle their kyaks to the nearest
+berg, but the cow came up under the craft and slashed with her tusks
+one of the kyaks, ripping the bottom and filling it with water. The
+other kyak of the catamaran tilted dangerously, the Eskimo in the
+sinking one throwing himself upon it, and the two frightened natives
+made their escape to the ice-cake. Coming to the surface again the cow
+sighted Captain K.'s catamaran, thrust her tusks forward again and
+dived; he saw her body deep in the water coming toward him and thought
+his time had come; but luckily when she struck the canoe had veered
+and received only a glancing blow. She came to the surface within a
+yard of the picture man, who had his rifle ready and thrust it against
+her brain and pulled the trigger, which ended that affair. But it was
+a perilous adventure, and one is liable to meet with such if he is so
+rash as to venture among the herds of the cows with their young.
+
+During this hunt of ours, although we saw great herds aggregating
+hundreds of walrus, we did not see a cow or calf among them; only the
+big bulls herded together and occasionally a solitary one.
+
+After passing Cape Prince of Wales into the Arctic Ocean we had a week
+of battling with winds and tide before we got into the ice-pack well up
+towards Wrangell and Herald Islands. We had another week of pounding
+ice, poking through the narrow "leads," constantly turning and running
+the other way in our effort to get to the shores where the walrus herds
+would feed.
+
+We had fun with the polar bears, but, with one exception, saw no walrus
+for nearly two weeks of this strenuous fight. This one exception was
+a big old bull that we sighted reposing in solitary dignity on an
+ice-cake in the midst of this vast white solitude.
+
+Captain K. took Dr. Elting with him in the kyaks which we manufactured
+into a catamaran, and while the _Abler_ lay "off and on" the two
+hunters whom we watched through our field-glasses made their sinuous
+way behind ice hummocks through the narrow "leads" and around the
+jamming cakes of the ice-field. We saw them at last seemingly right
+upon the walrus, on the same cake. The big fellow was fast asleep in
+the uneasy fashion that all walrus and seal have of sleeping; that is,
+every two or three minutes they will raise their heads and move them
+back and forth, during which time the hunters must keep perfectly still
+and if possible behind the ice-cakes. The walrus, however, has not the
+keen sight of the seal, and is more easily approached.
+
+Our hunters moored their skin boat on the ice-cake close to the walrus,
+crept up behind a hummock right upon him, and Dr. Elting put his bullet
+into the brain of the beast, which is situated in his neck, and not
+in what appears to be his head. It was an easy and not very exciting
+triumph. What possessed this old bull to lie there alone scores of
+miles from his companions, I do not know. He may have been there two
+or three weeks on that one ice-cake, as the Eskimos tell us this is
+sometimes their habit.
+
+It was not until August eighteenth that we got sight of our first
+walrus herd, and then for three days we were right in the midst of
+them. We had been driven by buffeting winds and threatening ice-packs
+away from the vicinity of the islands far westward along the Siberian
+coast and were perhaps thirty or forty miles from land. The cry was
+raised from the "crow's nest": "Walrus!"
+
+The appearance of the herd as we approached it was very unlike anything
+imagined by those who had not hitherto seen these animals. All sorts of
+comparisons crowd upon one's imagination when trying to describe them.
+Some of them look like huge caterpillars and have an exactly similar
+motion, except that their antennae are bent downward instead of upward.
+Sometimes when bunched up they look like immense squirrels. Sometimes
+when scratching themselves with their flippers they have the languid
+movements of a fashionable lady fanning herself; and again, when two
+are sparring at each other, they have the fierce mien of gladiators.
+But always there is that particularly comical edge about them that
+impels to irresistible laughter, as when one approaches a cage of
+monkeys. Their attitudes and motions are so unexpected and ridiculous.
+
+I did little hunting myself but went with the other hunters in the
+_oomiak_ or large skin boat; and I believe I got more enjoyment than
+any one else of the party; for I was not doing the killing, and was
+enjoying equally the misses and the hits of the others and, above all,
+the study of these huge and interesting brutes. Many of my preconceived
+notions, obtained by reading and by hearsay, were put to flight during
+those three or four days.
+
+Only a few years ago a report to the Smithsonian Institute was
+published in which it was stated that the walrus were very watchful and
+wary, and that when reposing on the ice-cake they selected a large bull
+to climb the highest pinnacle and keep watch for foes, and that when
+he grew weary of his vigil and wished to sleep he would prod the bull
+next to him with his tusks and let him take his turn while the former
+watchman took a nap. It was thus inferred that the walrus scanned the
+region of ice with eagle eyes and had a system of signalling similar to
+the organized human gunboats or armies.
+
+But this is all nonsense. The fact is that the walrus cannot see more
+than ten or twelve feet at the most, and even at that distance I doubt
+whether he can distinguish more than the mere outlines of any object.
+His eyes are the eyes of a fish, small and rudely constructed and
+exceptionally nearsighted. They are made for use in the dim depths of
+the sea. When the sun shines the walrus shut their eyes and apparently
+cannot open them. When alarmed they rush into the water and then come
+up and will crowd within five or six feet of the moving-picture man or
+hunter, bulging their eyes like those of a crab in frantic attempts to
+see their foe.
+
+We clad ourselves in white muslin parkas, and got our _oomiaks_ or
+_kyaks_ boldly up under the noses of these great beasts with them
+staring down upon us. The only thing we had to guard against was their
+getting our wind. If we kept to leeward of them we were always out of
+their sight. The strange bulging of the eyes when excited gives a most
+grotesque appearance to the countenance of these walrus, as ordinarily
+their eyes are deep sunken in their heads.
+
+Let me sketch a picture from life: It is the twentieth of August. We
+are in the vicinity of Cape North on the Northern Siberian coast. We
+are twenty or thirty miles offshore. The day is warm, sunny, still. The
+ship is tied to a large iceberg; a wilderness of floating ice-cakes
+stretches in every direction to the horizon. In some places these are
+massed together; again there will be little open places, and ragged
+leads, but everywhere ice, ice, ice. And it is all in motion; a slow
+heaving and grinding of the floe, and the tidal currents moving in
+different directions and with varied rapidity, but all trending
+northwest, the landscape--or seascape--changing every minute. There
+are herds of walrus all around us, some numerous, containing two or
+three hundred on one cake of ice, others small; here a group of four or
+five big bulls on a cake just large enough to hold them; then fifteen
+or twenty on a wider berg with little hummocks, up the slopes of which
+the big brutes crowd.
+
+Scull and Lovering have taken the kyak-catamaran and are paddling to
+the nearest bunch of walrus not five hundred yards from the ship.
+Captain K. has launched the big skin boat, or _oomiak_, and is perched
+on the high stern, steering. His aeroscope moving-picture machine and
+graphlex camera, his field-glass and rifle are by him. "Eskimo Prank"
+and I are in front of him with our paddles; while Dr. Elting and
+Collins are in the bow, with paddles in their hands and their big Ross
+and Mannlicher rifles close by. We corkscrew our way through the ice,
+steering past a bunch of walrus on a small cake. "Small ice--lose um
+quick," says Prank. We are heading to a herd of twenty or thirty, with
+some big tuskers among them. We keep to the leeward of them, for the
+sense of smell seems to be their one keen sense, and even that does
+not compare in acuteness with the nose of the polar bear or the caribou.
+
+Captain K. and "Eskimo Prank" are the only ones in our party who are
+perfectly calm and unexcited, and they seem to the rest of us rash and
+careless. The boat is steered right in sight of the herd, and we are
+getting close to them. Now the big, ugly heads of five or six which
+have been digging clams come up right alongside of us. Suddenly their
+heads rise high out of the water and their sunken eyes bulge out as
+they stare up into our faces. It takes a whole minute's scrutiny to
+satisfy them that we are enemies, and they go down with great splashing
+and blowing to come up again almost in the same place and stare at us
+again. So we are escorted up to the edge of the ice-cake on which the
+herd reposes. As a precaution against discovery we list the _oomiak_ so
+that its side protects us from their sight.
+
+We range alongside the cake; "Prank" and I hold it steady by clutching
+spurs of ice. The captain with his picture machines, and the hunters
+with their guns crawl out on the ice. They are clad in white
+parkas--but there is plenty to see about them in all conscience, and
+they make plenty of noise. We are only twenty or thirty feet from
+the nearest walrus. Two or three big bulls are on the hummock right
+above us. The captain and the hunters maneuver about, cautiously but
+sometimes in plain sight, and discuss, in voices clearly audible three
+times the distance, the question as to which have the best tusks, which
+lie most favorably for a good shot, in which hump of the neck the brain
+lies and just where to shoot. The captain gets his bulky aeroscope
+placed and sets the engine to buzzing and clacking. The hunters are
+waiting for the beasts to turn just right so as to expose the brain.
+For the brain of a walrus is as small as that of a rhinoceros in
+proportion to its size--about as big as one's two fists,--and you must
+know just where it is, and place your ball right through it, or your
+game will flop and flounder in his dying struggles and roll into the
+sea and you'll lose him. Hence the nervous care and uncertainty of
+the hunters. For ten or fifteen minutes we wait for the chance, the
+favorable moment.
+
+But about that foolish sentinel story: A beast that cannot tell an
+_oomiak_ full of bipeds, or these same bipeds with guns or cameras
+from a fellow walrus at the distance of ten yards, doesn't plan and
+place a relay of watchmen. We learned from close and long observation
+that the walrus couldn't see us in the sunshine--their eyes were shut,
+or nearly so, and dim when open. Neither can they hear well. They
+have no external ear at all, only a tiny hole which requires close
+observation to discover. Even the near roar of a heavy rifle does not
+always alarm them, and hunters with smaller rifles have killed one
+after another of a whole herd until all were slain, without causing a
+stampede. Of course the repeated shots of two or three rifles close at
+hand will generally cause them to rush into the water, but even that
+does not always scare them. A heavy shot near by will bring all heads
+up, but if it is not repeated they will soon go to sleep again.
+
+But what a thrilling time it was for me as I sat in the boat or on the
+ice-cake and watched the drama! It was far more comedy than tragedy.
+The great beasts, as heavy as elephants, were lying in bunches or
+rolling around like a lot of huge, fat hogs. Here a great bull with
+long tusks was lying on his back and scratching himself against an
+ice hummock, wriggling and squirming like a Newfoundland dog. Another
+was curled up in an impossible heap and scratching the top of his head
+with his hind flipper. Another was making his way through a bunch of
+sleeping comrades, rolling them around or scrambling over them and
+fighting those that resented his intrusion. Some were swimming about
+the landing place of low ice and trying to scramble onto the cake, and
+these would disturb a whole bunch of the lazy animals and there would
+be trouble.
+
+And the noises they made were as various and interesting as their
+positions. One huge fellow, so close to me that I could have punched
+him with a bamboo fishing-rod, shook his head slowly from side to side
+with shut eyes and groaned with a dismal falling cadence, for all the
+world like a fat old man with the rheumatism: "O-o-o-h: D-e-a-r me,
+d-e-a-r me; this world's a wilderness of woe!"
+
+Another was optimistic, and his was a sigh of infinite content.
+"A-a-h-h!" he said, "what a nice, soft, warm bed this ice-cake is! How
+fat and delicious those clams were! And I don't believe there is one
+of those horrible, malodorous little human bipeds with his deadly
+bang-stick within a hundred miles of us." And there we were within
+twenty feet of him, trying to locate his brain-pan!
+
+Some grunted like pigs in sheer laziness. Others barked sharply as they
+prodded each other with their strong, sharp tusks: "Get off my stomach,
+you lazy son of a clam-digger! Wow! Wow!"
+
+Two of them were sparring like gladiators, raising their heads high and
+roaring defiance; but it was all good nature, for in a minute they were
+lying asleep, one with his head across the other's neck.
+
+All their movements, attitudes and voices had such a droll element; all
+were so irresistibly funny that I wanted to lie down on my back and
+roar with laughter.
+
+But our hunters wanted big heads and tusks as trophies; our Eskimos
+desired some hides to make their _oomiaks_ and to cover their houses;
+and we wanted tons of meat for the women and children of the Siberian
+villages. And so after a while the rifles roared and roared again and
+again, and the hunters moved close up, working their levers fast. The
+mad scramble of the walrus for the water was a most grotesque sight.
+They charged blindly ahead whichever way they happened to be lying,
+humping up their backs as they drew their hind flippers under them
+and stretching out again, just like the "woolly bear" caterpillars
+I used to tease when a boy. Those that escaped the volley splashed
+heavily into the water and dived deep, but presently they were all at
+the surface again, blowing and coughing, bunching in masses, crowding
+close to the feet of the moving-picture man, stretching their heads
+six feet out of the water, popping and rolling their ochre-colored
+eyes in frantic efforts to see. Then one would get a whiff of the
+dreaded man-scent and would go down with a mighty splash and snort,
+and the whole crowd would follow suit, soon to come up and repeat the
+performance five or six times before they could finally get it into
+their slow brains that this was a dangerous neighborhood.
+
+We had four most interesting days among the walrus, and the hunters
+were sated with sport and trophies. My wishes were more modest. I had
+announced to Dr. John Timothy Stone, the Moderator of the Atlanta
+General Assembly, 1913, that my grand object in going on this hunt
+was to kill a walrus myself, get his tusks and have a couple of ivory
+gavels made out of them, that I might present them to the outgoing and
+incoming moderators of the next General Assembly, which was to meet in
+Chicago, 1914.
+
+I got my walrus in this fashion: Captain K., Dr. Elting and I were in
+the _oomiak_ with "Eskimo Prank." Dr. E. had got a fine head, and we
+were cruising about, when we spied a bunch of seven or eight big walrus
+on a hummocky berg near the edge of the ice-floe. The swell of the open
+ocean came in here with considerable force, and long, smooth topped
+billows heaved among the ice-floes, washing far up on the shelving
+bergs. We pushed our boat into a narrow passage and the swell took it
+and landed the bow on the ice right in the midst of the walrus. The
+captain and the doctor took the hazardous chance and leaped on the ice,
+placing the muzzles of their rifles almost against the heads of their
+selection. I was not quick enough to make the jump, but as the _oomiak_
+surged back with the receding wave I saw a walrus charging down the
+sloping ice diagonally from me. Both he and I were moving rapidly
+and in opposite directions and I could only take a hasty "wing" shot.
+It was the most difficult shot of all my experience. I was standing
+uncertainly in the plunging _oomiak_, swaying and tottering as the
+light craft shot down the receding wave away from the iceberg; while
+the frightened walrus was humping himself for all he was worth, trying
+frantically to get off the ice-floe into the ocean, his head bobbing
+up and down with his rapid motion. I was wobbling in one direction and
+he in another, and the space between us was widening fast. There was
+no time to be lost. Balancing most unsteadily, I swung up my rifle for
+a snap shot. It was a great moment. I had little hope of hitting the
+mark; but my walrus fell to the crack of the rifle, with his nose in
+the water. A delay of one-tenth of a second and I would have lost him.
+I had my gavels.
+
+The closing scene of our walrus drama was a comedy scene, and possessed
+what every drama ought to have--human interest. We had pounded our way
+southeast again through the fast thickening ice-floe driven upon us by
+a strong northwest wind. At one time to the least experienced of the
+party it seemed as if there was no possible way out, as if we must
+spend the winter on the bleak shore of Northern Siberia. But always the
+narrow leads opened before us, and after two or three days of slow and
+careful work through the ice we emerged from it, and before a strong,
+fair wind we bowled along towards Bering Strait. The early morning of
+August twenty-fifth found us anchored in the harbor of East Cape, after
+a hard struggle against wind and tide.
+
+Here is a large Eskimo village. The Tchukchees, or reindeer-herding
+Eskimos do not roam as far north as this, and these were the seal and
+walrus hunters. They depend almost entirely for their food upon the
+sea, and a shortage of these animals sometimes causes starvation.
+
+This village is situated behind a high bluff, but it is not well
+sheltered, and a fierce wind offshore caused the ship to tug violently
+at her anchor, and made landing difficult. Captain K. and the Eskimos
+got a boat ashore and secured a stout line to the ship. Then the eight
+or nine great carcases on our deck were heaved by the donkey engine
+into the sea. They would float by this time. They were not spoiled at
+all in the estimation of the Eskimo, only "ripe." They were tied to
+the line and then a large crowd of Eskimos took hold, ran up the beach
+and so towed the meat ashore.
+
+Then, what a scene! Out from every one of those large balloon-framed,
+skin-covered houses poured the men, women and children, shouting,
+screaming, hurrying in joy and excitement. The men with high waterproof
+mukluks were cutting up the carcases, and men and women would seize
+the hunks of meat and rush away to their houses, pursued by scores of
+wolfish dogs which leaped and snapped at the meat. Occasionally the
+dogs would succeed in getting away with a large chunk, when instantly
+there would be a general mix-up from which some of the dogs would
+emerge limping and howling. There was a dog-fight every five minutes.
+
+The moving-picture man and the camera fiends moved about "taking" the
+crowd. The men with old ivory ornaments, white ivory implements, and
+other curios to sell besieged the white men. In all the houses cooking
+was going on, and many were chewing on the raw blubber. It was a day
+of days to these poor people, and for the first time on our voyage of
+pleasure we felt ourselves benefactors to the human race. "The calendar
+of these Eskimos will date from to-day," said the only American white
+man who lives in East Cape village. "They will count time all winter
+from the day of the big feed of walrus meat."
+
+But better than the meat for their bodies which we procured for these
+poor people of the Arctic shore, was the Bread of Life that I was able
+to direct to several Eskimo towns, from the knowledge gained in this
+great walrus hunt.
+
+
+     _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Otherwise, the author's
+original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Adventures in Alaska, by Samuel Hall Young
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN ALASKA ***
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