USA > Alaska > Alaska and the Klondike > Part 5
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Lt. Bertholf
Dr. Call
Captain Jarvis
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most northern settlement under the American flag. They were without supplies sufficient to carry them through the winter, and it was feared that they would all perish of cold and hunger. News of their desperate plight reached the States about the Ist of December. The Gov- ernment at Washington saw the necessity of sending relief, but how to get it to them was the apparently unsolvable problem, and who should lead the expedition was a no less difficult question. Captain Jarvis, then a lieutenant of the United States revenue-cutter service, was in the States on leave and at the bedside of his sick wife in Massa- chusetts. Her condition was serious. The Government asked him if he would go. He looked at his sick wife and said no. The chances were so desperate that the relief expedition itself could not reach Point Barrow that the Government did not like to order any one to make the attempt, but began to look for volunteers. Seeing the atti- tude of the Government, and impressed with the belief that it was his duty, as, perhaps, the one best qualified by experience and knowledge of the country to lead this expedition, Mr. Jarvis tendered his services, bade good- bye to his family and raced with all speed across the continent to Seattle, where the revenue cutter Bear had been ordered by telegraph to be ready and provisioned for the expedition.
Captain Jarvis had already submitted to the Govern- ment a plan by which the relief needed could reach the imprisoned sailors. He proposed to go as far north in the Bear as it was possible, then take to the ice with
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dogs and go to the nearest reindeer stations on the Seward Peninsula. Domestic reindeer had been imported from Siberia several years before and several reindeer stations or ranches had already been established. From these sta- tions he planned to take reindeer across the country to Point Barrow.
The Bear passed through the Aleutian chain at Dutch Harbour, turned northeast and sought the most northerly limit of the open water on the west coast of Alaska. This point was reached at the village of Tununak, near Cape Vancouver, on Nelson Island, where Captain Jarvis dis- embarked at an Indian village, accompanied by Dr. S. J. Call and Lieutenant E. P. Bertholf. They proceeded north by the aid of Indians with dog teams to St. Michael and thence to the reindeer station on Golofnin Bay. Here and at other reindeer stations in that part of Alaska a herd of 400 reindeer under the care of W. T. Lopp, superin- tendent of the Teller reindeer station, was collected and sent forward 500 miles further to Point Barrow.
The imprisoned whalers had practically given up, and, while not yet out of food, were doing nothing to preserve their own health. Mr. Jarvis, supported by his three assistants, asserted the authority of the Government and took charge of all the supplies on hand, measured out the rations, provided fresh reindeer meat, compelled the men to take daily exercise, and, in short, brought them through to the breaking up of the ice in July, undoubtedly saving the lives of hundreds who were fast yielding to despair and disease.
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The story of this remarkable expedition into the very heart of the arctic region in the dead of winter, has been told by Mr. Jarvis in an official report with a degree of modesty which is eloquent of the courage and resolution and tact required not only to face the terrors of the jour- ney across the snowfields of the north, but to assert and maintain complete mastery over the crazed and mutinous and desperate men who constituted the crews of the im- prisoned whalers. Indeed, it was not facing blizzards on the bleak shores of the Arctic Ocean, the long stretches of weary tramping over the ice and snow, with not a human habitation for hundreds of miles, not even an Indian igloo in which to find shelter-it was not the toil and suffering of that weary struggle for 1,800 miles in midwinter that required nerve and courage so much as the assertion and maintenance of absolute authority in the beleaguered camp after the relief expedition reached there. Yet the small, spare, low-voiced, slow-speaking, modest but resolute man, to whom the people of Alaska all take off their hats when they address Captain D. H. Jarvis, is the man whom the Government selected for that desperate errand, and made no mistake in the choice.
Relief came on the 26th of July when the ice pack in the Arctic Ocean broke up as far north as Point Barrow. It was then that Captain Jarvis learned that there had been a war with Spain; that it was all over, and that he had no chance to get in. This is the only thing in connection with the expedition about which he has ever been known to express any regret. The splendid heroism displayed by
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Captain Jarvis, as the leader of the Point Barrow expedi- tion, was tardily recognised by Congress last year, when he was awarded a gold medal.
There was another Alaska hero on board the Bailey go .. ing down from Dawson to Eagle. There is no man in Daw-
O
Ben Downing
son who has more friends and who is really regarded with more good will by the people of that city than Ben Down- ing, the veteran mail-carrier of the Yukon. Ben Down- ing was carrying the royal mail from Dawson to Eagle. His engagement by the Dominion Government in this service is a commentary on the ingratitude of the Repub- lic, and indicates a higher appreciation of faithful public
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service on the part of our neighbours of the British Empire. Four or five years ago, Downing, who was once a Maine Yankee, left off "broncho-busting " and " cow-punching " in Arizona and joined the stampede to the north. He did not strike anything very rich at the beginning, and soon found himself engaged as Government mail-carrier on the long route between Dawson and Nome. It was his busi- ness to make the run from Dawson down the Yukon to the Tanana, a distance of nearly 900 miles. The travers- ing of this long and weary route alone in the dead of an Arctic winter was the agreeable task assigned to Mr. Downing, but he enjoyed it. He had his dogs and his sled, and he could "mush "* 40 miles a day or more after his fleet-footed and tireless " huskies " and " mala- mutes." The route was laid with roadhouses at the end of each day's journey, in which Downing and his dogs housed themselves at night. It was on one of these long runs, when nearing Dawson on his eastward trip, that he ran into a hole in the ice in the Yukon River. The side bars of a dog sled terminate usually in two curved handles, much like the handles of a plow, to which the driver may hold as he runs behind his team. The dogs saw the danger in time to sheer off, but the sled toppled partly into the water, into which Downing fell. His dogs, seeing him in distress, were inclined to turn and come to him, but being
* In Alaska and the Klondike to " mush " is to walk, or to run slowly. The miner who tramps over the country prospecting " mushes "; the mail-carrier who walks " mushes." Whether the word has an Indian origin I do not know, but such origin is not necessary to explain its use when every step on the soft, wet, spongy mat of moss and roots and grass that covers the ground over such a large portion of the country suggests the word.
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vigorously urged on they pulled the sled and their master so that by their help he was able to raise himself out of the water, from which he emerged without cap or mittens, drenched from head to foot. He was several miles from a roadhouse where he could find warmth and shelter, and a less resolute man would have frozen stiff in a few minutes. He urged his dogs with all his might and ran at the top of his speed, knowing that his life depended upon his utmost exertions. It was one of those beautiful clear Arctic nights when the mercury crawls down in the bulb and lies there, a little solid bullet. The temperature was probably about 60 degrees below. His clothes froze so stiff as to impede his running, but still he struggled on. Finally reaching the roadhouse, he dashed within, and called for help. His clothing was cut from him as rapidly as possible. His face and nose and ears were badly frozen, and his feet were almost solid. In a short time he was dressed in dry and warm clothing and, with his blistered and swollen feet pre- pared as best he could for the journey, he refused the urgent appeal of the keeper of the roadhouse to remain, but insisted on pressing on to Dawson, that he might de- liver the mail on time. The mail was delivered on time, but this last stage of his journey, it is needless to say, was accomplished only with intense suffering and by the exer- cise of a powerful will. They say in Dawson that, as he hobbled into the post-office there, his footsteps were marked with blood.
His mail delivered, he was taken at once to a hospital and the doctors decided that his feet were so badly frozen
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it would be necessary to amputate them. Downing heard this conclusion announced and quietly asked that some one hand him his revolver. They hesitated lest he might be contemplating suicide, but when he assured them that he had no such intention, they gave it to him. He put it under his pillow, and lay down. "Now," said he, “ go ahead and fix up them feet the best you can, but let me tell you that if I wake up and find you fellows have cut them off I am going to shoot the man that did it. Them feet and me are goin' together; if I live I have use for them; if I can't have them I don't want to live. Now, go ahead." The result was that the ends of several of his toes were trimmed off and the old mail-carrier is not quite as agile as he used to be, but he walks comfortably on two feet, a really splendid fellow and a living monument to grit and endurance, expended in carrying out what he believed to be his duty as a public servant. What a pity there are not more like him ! The ingratitude of republics came in when Downing, owing to the fact that he could not get the mail carried as promptly while he was laid up in the hospital as it was carried before, lost his contract with the United States postal authorities; the higher appreciation of the Dominion Government rewarded him with a contract to carry the royal mail between Eagle and Dawson.
Downing is an authority on dogs. He has a corral near Dawson where he has a hundred or more of these faithful animals, which he uses in his mail-carrying business in win- ter. There are two kinds of dogs common in Alaska- the " huskies " and their cross-breeds from the Mackenzie
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River country-those stocky, grey fellows, with their short, erect ears and close, thick coat, intelligent and handsome- and the " malamute," an Alaska Indian dog crossed with the wolf and resembling the wolf a good deal in shape and
Miner and Dogs Rigged for Packing
size, a shaggy brownish-grey fellow, friendly and tractable and a perfect slave. These animals are grossly abused by the Indians; they haul their sledges all day to be rewarded at night with a piece of frozen dog-salmon and a chance to curl up in the snow to sleep. With such treatment the dog gets the reputation of not being an affectionate creature. Downing's dogs have warm, comfortable shelter whenever they reach a roadhouse; when he is compelled to camp by
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the roadside, as sometimes happens, they share his tent, curl up around him and protect him with the warmth of their own bodies and whenever he enters the corral they are wild in their demonstrations of delight. " Don't tell me," said Downing, " that these fellows are not affectionate. I wish some good woman would take a notion some day to like me half as much as they do." If she does she will have to tell him; Ben would not dare to ask her.
Although of a kindly disposition toward humankind these brutes are often very quarrelsome among themselves and it is the general rule that when a fight begins there is no sympathy for the under dog among the rest of the pack. On the contrary, the poor fellow who is getting the worst of it is likely to be beset by all the rest and literally torn to pieces.
Don't think I overestimate the dog. He is one of the in- stitutions in Alaska. He, as a judge on the bench recently said in an Alaska case, "is one of the most important factors in the development of his country." What the ox was to the pioneer of the Wabash valley, what the horse is to the ranchman of the plains, what the camel is to the denizen of the desert, the dog has been to the miner and prospector of Alaska, and will be till the United States Government manifests as much interest in Alaska as Canada does in the Yukon territory and builds roads over which freight may be hauled in wagons. Under the pres- ent conditions it's a poor dog that isn't worth $25 and one team of five was sold in Dawson for $2,500.
Eagle, I have said, is a town with a future. There are
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two towns in Alaska, 400 miles apart, which are longing for the day when a railroad will connect them; one is Val- dez on the south, at the head of Prince William Sound, and the other is Eagle on the Yukon. In 1899 the Govern- ment undertook to build a road from Valdez to Eagle and did expend considerable money bridging streams and laying out a trail through the forests and over the mountains, and on this trail the mail is carried between Valdez and Eagle. A Government telegraph line follows this trail from Valdez to Eagle and a railroad is projected over this route. Some day it will be built. How soon no one can tell. Valdez is living in hope of this road. A wagon road part of the way would greatly benefit Valdez ; a wagon road all of the way would be of immense value to Eagle, but of more immediate importance to Eagle would be a system of roads extending south and west twenty-five to fifty miles, into the Forty-Mile mining district. This district is mainly on the American side and naturally tributary to Eagle, an Ameri- can town, but owing to the fact that the Yukon Govern- ment has already constructed a road from Dawson to the boundary line near the Forty-Mile district, the trade goes largely to Dawson, because supplies can be transported so much cheaper over the Dawson road than they can be carried over the miserable trails reaching back from Eagle.
The senatorial party arrived at Eagle on Wednesday, the 15th. Here, as at Dawson, the stretches of the river below were scanned eagerly with field-glasses every day for a glimpse of the Sarah. Four days passed and yet no sign of the missing boat. It happened, however, that the
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United States army transport, Jefferson C. Davis, in charge of Lieutenant Kalde, was lying at Eagle waiting orders to proceed to Dawson to convey General Funston down the river on his tour of inspection of the Alaskan military posts. Inasmuch as General Funston would not need the transport until the first of August, arrangements were made to have it convey our company to Rampart, 450 miles further down the river, where Judge Wickersham of the central division was holding court, where there would be opportunity to see men from all parts of central Alaska and where it was hoped some boat might be found in which to continue the journey.
We left Eagle Saturday at noon. The river here main- tains about the same characteristics heretofore noted. It grows wider and carries a larger volume of water, but is confined within reasonable limits for the next 100 miles. At II o'clock at night we sighted the town of Circle, once a place of considerable importance, and although it was nearly midnight when we arrived, the leading men of the place presented themselves to offer any courtesies which the senatorial party might be pleased to accept. Among the objects of interest exhibited here was a field of oats nearly arrived at the heading-out stage, not a very heavy growth, but still of good colour and not unpromising. Experience is, however, that this crop cannot be successfully ripened in that country and is valuable only as forage. The mid- night was so light that the visit to Circle was made without any inconvenience on account of the time of day.
A short distance below Circle City the river begins to
Old Hudson Bay Trading Post, Fort Yukon
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spread out and at the widest point it is probably twenty miles in width. Navigation through these Yukon flats is attended with great difficulty. The stream is necessarily shallow, being spread over so wide an area, and it keeps the navigators guessing to follow the channel. The chan- nel shifts continually, and while it may be in one place at one time, a month later or next year it may be miles away. There are no buoys or beacons and the pilots, who are often Indians, read the water and tell by its appearance where to go, although the boiling, muddy flood looks about the same everywhere to inexperienced eyes.
The next morning after leaving Circle we were called early that we might all see a large, handsome river steamer lying on a sandbar at one side of the channel. On her pilot house we read the name Sarah. We learned later that she had been on the sandbar for three days already and her situation indicated that it would probably be as many more before she could escape, and it was.
About II o'clock of Sunday, July 19, we crossed the Arctic Circle and the whole party lined up on the upper deck for a photograph taken within the Frigid Zone. Everybody tried hard to imagine what it meant to cross the Arctic Circle and stand within the realm supposed to be given up to perpetual ice and snow, but it was not an easy thing to do. There were no shivers running down our backs, no frost in the air, no rubbing of noses and ears, but rather the balmy air of an early October day in Minnesota. It was at noon of such a day when we touched at Fort Yukon, an abandoned military post, about six miles north
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of the Arctic Circle, and the most northerly point on the Yukon River. At one time it was important in the fur trade, and the old buildings of the trading post are still standing, but the fur business has disappeared and has left only a small Indian village. The decline of the fur trade under the cruel game laws of Alaska, which rob the Indian of a market for his furs at the season when they are most marketable, has left these people without any means of support adequate to their necessities; the Government of the United States makes no appropriations for the care of the Indians of Alaska and their condition is deplorable. Religious exercises were in progress in the log cabin near the landing, a lay reader, a full-blooded Athabaskan, con- ducting the service. Indian oratory, as exemplified by Wil- liam Loola, is anything but dramatic and vociferous. In a quiet and devout manner he read the lessons of the day and led his fellow parishioners through the Episcopal ser- vice, winding up with a hymn, and all, of course, in the Indian language. The missionary, Mr. Wooden, was not at home; he was on the Sarah, bound for Dawson, for which he had started three days before, but towards which he had made but little progress. His wife and children, two small boys, with the trader's family, were the only white people in this settlement.
The remainder of the day was spent on the monotonous waste of the Yukon flats. The next morning, Monday, July 20, we arrived at the village of Rampart, 620 miles from Dawson.
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THROUGH THE HEART OF ALASKA
A DAPTATION to his surroundings is one of the human animal's strong points. He can make him- self at home, as he phrases it, almost anywhere and under almost any conditions. I found an illustration of this peculiar and serviceable faculty in the heart of Alaska. It was at Rampart, so I am told, that a philosopher, who wished to preserve the natural and accustomed order of things, with as little dislocation as possible, provided him- self with a daily paper for each of his long winter even- ings. He was 2,000 miles from any daily newspaper office and the winter mails carried no newspapers, yet he had his daily paper and kept posted in a way on all the important news of the world. The way he managed that was simple enough, as you will admit. He knew that there was no paper mail delivered at Rampart from October 15 to the following Fourth of July, so he subscribed in the fall for a daily paper published in the States and had it sent in by freight the next spring. When the papers arrived he stacked them up in regular order, the one of earliest date on top and when he sat down with his pipe by his cabin fire in the evening he took up the first paper on the pile and read up the news of the day. Of course, he knew that what he read was nearly a year old to the people in
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the States, but what was that to him ? His daily paper was just as new to him then as it ever had been to the folks at home.
This story, whether strictly true or not, throws some light upon what life in the heart of Alaska means, and Rampart comes pretty near being in the heart of Alaska. It is about half-way down the Yukon from Dawson to Bering Sea. Imagine a turgid stream half a mile wide, flowing between sloping hillsides, rather sparsely wooded with an inferior grade of spruce and birch, a thick mat of tangled vines and moss covering the ground with a soft, wet, spongy carpet eight or ten inches thick, shielding the frozen earth from the rays of the sun, and on the high left bank of this stream locate a somewhat irregular line of one- and two-story log houses front- ing the river for over half a mile, with a few scattered cabins on the hillside above; fill these river-front houses with merchandise, dry and wet, throw in a small frame telegraph station of a local line, a little white building for the accommodation of the federal court, tack up a lawyer's sign or two and hang out a single doctor's sign, write the initials of the Northern Commercial and the North Ameri- can Transportation and Trading companies on the biggest buildings in town, take no special pains to preserve a regular street line, and make the wooden sidewalk conform to the sinuosities of the building fronts, sprinkle the side- walk and the sloping river bank liberally with sleeping dogs, fill up the town with 300 or 400 people from every- where, living in peace and harmony with each other, and
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you have Rampart, which was the hospitable tarrying place of the senatorial committee from July 20 to July 23.
It was the same old story of nothing-too-good for the senatorial party and "whatever we have is yours." Men vacated their beds and changed their boarding places and abandoned their business that they might contribute to the comfort and pleasure of the senatorial visitors and their party.
You may be at a loss to account for this town, and for the considerable stocks of merchandise which fill the stores of the big trading and transportation companies, but down on the river bank you may see several thousand feet of iron piping waiting till the ground freezes up to be taken back into the interior together with a lot of other mining machinery and you will find that there are several more or less important mining districts supplied from this point, among them, some comparatively rich diggings on Minook Creek.
Rampart is pretty lively when we arrive. Court is about to sit, and lawyers and litigants, witnesses and prisoners are here in such numbers that beds in severalty, so to speak, are hard to get. They come for hundreds of miles and spend weeks in getting here, and we know of some who would be glad to be here but cannot come because the sandbars of the Yukon hold fast the boats in which they must ride. They are also waiting for the Sarah.
If you ask any Alaskan what the people of that district want most at the hands of Congress you will learn that the first thing the Government at Washington is expected
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to do for them is to give them representation in Congress- a delegate to look after their interests just as our congress- men in the States are supposed to look after ours. They want other things, too-good roads, revision of the mining
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Bargain Day at Rampart
laws and many are particularly anxious for territorial gov- ernment. On this latter point the Alaskans are not unan- imous, but there is no dissent from the proposition that Alaska should have a delegate in Congress. There is some question, however, as to how he should be chosen-whether elected or appointed. But the desire for a delegate is uni- versal, is natural and reasonable, and Congress will no doubt provide for such representative in some way at an early date.
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Rampart is one of the places where Judge James Wickersham, of the central Alaska judicial division, holds court. His district is 500 miles wide and 900 miles long. It extends from the North Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean and from the international boundary on the east to the mouth of the Koyukuk. There isn't a mile of railroad in it and no wagon road worthy of the name. The means of transportation are steamers along the south coast and on the Yukon River, which runs through the middle of the district. When court is held at Eagle or Rampart for the accommodation of the people of the central and northern parts of the district, justice costs time and money. One man, Judge Mckenzie, United States com- missioner at Cold Foot on the upper Koyukuk, travelled 900 miles and 27 days to get to Rampart to attend court.
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