USA > Alaska > Alaska, the great country > Part 35
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From November the 27th to January the 16th the sun does not appear above the hills to the south. The two "great " days at Eagle are the 16th of January, - " when the sun comes back," - and the day " when the ice breaks in the river," usually the 12th of May. On the former occasion the people assemble, like a band of sun-worship- pers, and celebrate its return.
The vegetable and flower gardens of Eagle were a reve- lation of what may be expected in the agricultural and floral line in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle. Potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower, lettuce, turnips, radishes, and other vegetables were in a state of spendthrift luxuriance that cannot be imagined by one who has not travelled in a country where vegetables grow day and night.
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In winter Eagle is a lonely place. The only mail it receives is the monthly mail passing through from Daw- son to Nome by dog sleds; and no magazines, papers, or parcels are carried.
It was from Eagle that the first news was sent out to the world concerning Captain Amundsen's wonderful dis- covery of the Northwest Passage; here he arrived in mid- winter after a long, hard journey by dog team from the Arctic Ocean and sent out the news which so many brave navigators of early days would have given their lives to be able to announce.
Within five years a railroad will probably connect Eagle with the coast at Valdez ; meantime, there is a good gov- ernment trail, poled by a government telegraph line.
Eagle came into existence in 1898, and the fort was established in 1899.
"Woodings-up " are picturesque features of Yukon travel. When the steamer does not land at a wood yard, mail is tied around a stick and thrown ashore. Fancy standing, a forlorn and homesick creature, on the bank of this great river and watching a letter from home caught by the rushing current and borne away! Yet this frequently happens, for heart affairs are small matters in the Arctic Circle and receive but scant consideration.
On the Upper Yukon wood is five dollars a cord ; on the Lower, seven dollars ; and a cord an hour is thrust into the immense and roaring furnaces.
During " wooding-up" times passengers go ashore and enjoy the forest. There are red and black currants, crab- apples, two varieties of salmon-berries, five of huckle- berries, and strawberries. The high-bush cranberries are very pretty, with their red berries and delicate foliage.
Nation is a settlement of a dozen log cabins roofed with dirt and flowers, the roofs projecting prettily over the
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front porches. The wife of the storekeeper has lived here twenty-five years, and has been "outside " only once in twelve years. Passengers usually go ashore especially to meet her, and are always cordially welcomed, but are never permitted to condole with her on her isolated life. The spell of the Yukon has her in thrall, and content shines upon her brow as a star. Those who go ashore to pity, return with the dull ache of envy in their worldly hearts ; for there be things on the Yukon that no worldly heart can understand.
We left Eagle in the forenoon and at midnight landed at Circle City, which received this name because it was first supposed to be located within the Arctic Circle. We found natives building houses at that hour, and this is my most vivid remembrance of Circle. Gold was dis- covered on Birch Creek, within eight miles of the settle- ment, as early as 1892; and until the Klondike excite- ment this was the most populous camp on the Yukon, more than a thousand miners being quartered in the vicinity. Like other camps, it was then depopulated ; but many miners have now returned and a brilliant dis- covery in this vicinity may yet startle the world. The output of gold for 1906 was two hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars. About three hundred miners are operating on tributaries up Birch Creek. The great commercial companies are established at all these settlements on the Yukon, where they have large stores and warehouses.
Early on the following morning we were on deck to cross the Arctic Circle. One has a feeling that a line with icicles dangling from it must be strung overhead, under which one passes into the enchanted realm of the real North.
" Feel that ?" asked the man from Iowa of a big, un- smiling Englishman.
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"Feel -er-what ?" said the Englishman.
" That shoek. It felt like stepping on the third rail of an electric railway."
But the Iowa humor was scorned, and the Englishman walked away.
We soon landed at Fort Yukon, the only landing in the Arctie Cirele and the most northerly point on the Yukon. This post was established at the mouth of the Porcupine in 1847 by A. H. McMurray, of the Hudson Bay Com- pany, and was moved in 1864 a mile lower on the Yukon, on account of the undermining of the bank by the wash of the river. During the early days of this post goods were brought from York Factory on Hudson Bay, four thousand miles distant, and were two years in transit. The whole Hudson Bay system, according to Dall, was one of exacting tyranny that almost equalled that of the Russian Company. The white men were urged to marry Indian, or native, women, to attach them to the country. The provisions sent in were few and these were consumed by the commanders of the trading posts or given to chiefs, to induce them to bring in furs. The white men received three pounds of tea and six of sugar annually, and no flour. This seanty supply was uncertain and often failed. Two suits of clothes were granted to the men, but nothing else until the furs were all purchased. If anything remained after the Indians were satisfied, the men were permitted to purchase ; but Indians are rarely satisfied.
Fort Yukon has never been of importance as a mining centre, but has long been a great fur trading post for the Indians up the Porcupine. This trade has waned, how- ever, and little remains but an Indian village and the old buildings of the post. We walked a mile into the woods to an old graveyard in a still, dim grove, probably the only one in the Arctic Circle.
CHAPTER XLVI
THE Yukon is a mighty and a beautiful river, and its memory becomes more haunting and more compelling with the passage of time. From the slender blue stream of its source, it grows, in its twenty-three hundred miles of wandering to the sea, to a width of sixty miles at its mouth. In its great course it widens, narrows, and widens ; cuts through the foot-hills of vast mountain systems, spreads over flats, makes many splendid sweeping curves, and slides into hundreds of narrow channels around spruce- covered islands.
It is divided into four great districts, each of which has its own characteristic features. The valley extending from White Horse to some distance below Dawson is called the "upper Yukon," or " upper Ramparts," the river having a width of half a mile and a current of four or five miles an hour, and the valley in this district being from one to three miles in width.
Following this are the great "Flats"-of which one hears from his first hour on the Yukon ; then, the " Ram- parts "; and last, the "lower Yukon " or "lower river."
The Flats are vast lowlands stretching for two hundred miles along the river, with a width in places of a hundred miles. Their very monotony is picturesque and fascinates by its immensity. Countless islands are constantly form- ing, appearing and disappearing in the whimsical changes of the currents. Indian, white, and half-breed pilots patrol these reaches, guiding one steamer down and
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another up, and by constant travel keeping themselves fairly familiar with the changing currents. Yet even these pilots frequently fail in their calculations.
At Eagle a couple of gentlemen joined our party down the river on the Campbell, expecting to meet the same day and return on the famous Sarah- as famous as a steamer as is the island of the same name on the inland passage ; but they went on and on and the Sarah came not. One day, two days, three days, went by and they were still with us. One was in the customs service and his time was precious. Whenever we approached a bend in the river, they stood in the bow of the boat, eagerly staring ahead ; but not until the fourth day did the cry of " Sarah" ring through our steamer. Hastening on deck, we beheld her, white and shining, on a sand-bar, where she had been lying for several days, notwithstanding the fact that she had an experienced pilot aboard.
Throughout the Flats lies a vast network of islands, estimated as high as ten thousand in number, threaded by countless channels, many of which have strong currents, while others are but still, sluggish sloughs. Mountains line the far horizon lines, but so far away that they fre- quently appear as clouds of bluish pearl piled along the sky; at other times snow-peaks are distinctly visible. Cottonwoods, birches, and spruce trees cover the islands so heavily that, from the lower deck of a steamer, one would believe that he was drifting down the single chan- nel of a narrow river, instead of down one channel of a river twenty miles wide.
It is within the Arctic Circle that the Yukon makes its sweeping bend from its northwest course to the south- west, and here it is entered by the Porcupine ; twenty miles farther, by the Chandelar ; and just above the Ram- parts, by the Dall. These are the three important rivers of this stretch of the Yukon.
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Many complain of the monotony of the Flats ; but for me, there was not one dull or uninteresting hour on the Yukon. In my quiet home on summer evenings I can still see the men taking soundings from the square bow of our steamer and hear their hoarse cries : -
" Six feet starboard ! Five feet port ! Seven feet star- board ! Five feet port ! Five feet starboard ! . Four feet port ! " At the latter cry the silent watchers of the pilot- house came to attention, and we proceeded under slow bell until a greater depth was reached.
On the shores, as we swept past, we caught glimpses of dark figures and Indian villages, or, farther down the river, primitive Eskimo settlements ; and the stillness, the pure and sparkling air, the untouched wilderness, the blue smoke of a wood-chopper's lonely fire, the wide spaces swimming over us and on all sides of us, charmed our senses as only the elemental forces of nature can charm. One longs to stay awake always on this river ; to pace the wide decks and be one with the solitude and the still- ness that are not of the earth, as we know it, but of God, as we have dreamed of him ..
The blue hills of the Ramparts are seen long before en- tering them. The valley contracts into a kind of canyon, from which the rampart-like walls of solid stone rise abruptly from the water. The hills are not so high as those of the Upper Ramparts, which bear marked resem- blance to the lower ; and although many consider the latter more picturesque, I must confess that I found no beauty below Dawson so majestic as that above. Many of the hills here have a rose-colored tinge, like the hills of Lake Bennett.
In places the river does not reach a width of half a mile and is deep and swift. The shadows between the high rock-bluffs and pinnacled cliffs take on the mysteri- ous purple tones of twilight ; many of the hills are cov-
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ered with spruce, whose dark green blends agreeably with the gray and rose color. The bends here are sharp and many ; at the Rapids the current is exceedingly rapid, and Dall reported a fall of twelve feet to the half mile, with the water running in sheets of foam over a granite island in the middle of the stream. This was on June 1, 1866. In August, 1883, Schwatka, after many hours of anxiety and dread of the reputed rapids, inquired of Indians and learned that he had already passed them. They were not formidable at the time of our voyage, - August, - and it is only during high stages of water that they present a bar to navigation.
We reached Rampart at six o'clock in the morning. After Tanana, this is the loveliest place on the Yukon. Its sparkling, emerald beauty shone under a silvery blue sky. There was a long street of artistic log houses and stores on a commanding bluff, up which paths wound from the water. Roofs covered with earth and flowers, carried out in brilliant bloom over the porches, added the characteristic Yukon touch. Every dooryard and win- dow blazed with color. Narrow paths ran through tall fireweed and grasses over and around the hill -each path terminating, like a winding lane, in a pretty log- cabin home. There was an atmosphere of cleanliness, tidiness, and thrift not found in other settlements along the Yukon.
Captain Mayo, who, with McQuesten, founded Rampart in 1873, still lives here. The two commercial companies have large stores and warehouses ; and residences were comfortably, and even luxuriously, furnished.
Rampart is two hundred and thirty miles below Fort Yukon, and is about halfway between Dawson and the sea. It has a population of four or five hundred people - when they are in from the mines ! - and almost as many fighting, hungry dogs. Its street winds, and the
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buildings follow its windings ; sometimes it stops alto- gether, and the buildings stop with it-then both go on again ; and in front of all the public buildings are clean rustic benches, where one may sit and "look to the rose about him." The river here is half a mile wide, and on its opposite shore the green fields of the government ex- perimental station slope up from the water.
Gold was discovered on Minook Creek, half a mile from town, in 1895, and the camp is regarded as one of the most even producers in Alaska. In 1906, despite an un- usually dry season, the output of the district was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
In the afternoon of the same day we reached Tanana, which is, as I have said, the most beautiful place on the Yukon. It has a splendid site on a level plateau ; and all the springlike greenness, the cleanliness and order, the luxuriant vegetation, of Dawson, are outdone here. One walks in a maze of delight along streets of tropic, in- stead of arctic, bloom. The log houses are set far back from the streets, and the deep dooryards are seas of tremu- lous color, through which neat paths lead to flower-roofed homes. Cleanliness, color, and perfume are everywhere delights, but on the lonely Yukon their unexpectedness is enchanting.
In 1900 Fort Gibbon was established here, and this post has the most attractive surroundings of any in Alaska. Tanana is situated at the mouth of the Tanana River, seventy-five miles below Rampart, and passengers for Fairbanks connect here with luxurious steamers for a voyage of three hundred miles up the Tanana. It is a beautiful voyage and it ends at the most progressive and metropolitan town of the North.
CHAPTER XLVII
IN the autumn of 1902 Felix Pedro, an experienced miner and prospector, crossed the divide between Birch and MeManus creeks and entered the Tanana Valley.
Previous to that year many people had travelled through the valley, on their way to the Klondike, by the Valdez route ; and a few miners from the Birch Creek and Forty-Mile diggings had wandered into the Tanana country, without being able to do any important prospect- ing because of the distance from supplies; but Pedro was the first inan to discover that gold existed in economie quantities in this region, and his coming was an event of historical importance.
One of the best tests of the importance and value of geological survey work lies in the significant report of Mr. Alfred H. Brooks for the year of 1898 - four years before the discoveries of Mr. Pedro : -
"We have seen that the little prospecting which has been done up to the present time has been too hurried and too superficial to be regarded as a fair test of the region. Our best information leads us to believe that the same horizons which carry gold in the Forty-Mile and Birch Creek distriets are represented in the Tanana and White River basins. . .. I should advise prospectors to care- fully investigate the small tributary streams of the lower White and of the Tanana from Mirror Creek to the mouth."
Pedro's discovery was on the creek which bears his
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name, and before another year gold was discovered on several other creeks. In 1901 a trading post was estab- lished by Captain E. T. Barnette, on the present site of Fairbanks, and the development of the country progressed rapidly. The Fairbanks Mining District was organized and named for the present Vice-President of the United States. In the autumn of 1903 eight hundred people were in the district, and about thirty thousand dollars had been produced, the more important creeks at that time being Pedro, Goldstream, Twin Creek, Cleary, Wolf, Chatham, and Fairbanks. In the fall of 1904 nearly four thousand miners had come in, and the year's output was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fairbanks and Chena had grown to thriving camps, and a brilliant prosperity reigned in the entire district. Roads were built to the creeks, sloughs were bridged, and Fairbanks' "boom " was in full swing. It was the old story of a camp growing from tents to shacks in a night, from shacks to three-story buildings in a month. The glory of the Klondike trembled and paled in the brilliance of that of Fairbanks. Every steamer for Valdez was crowded with men and women bound for the new camp by way of the Valdez trail; while thousands went by steamer, either to St. Michael and up the Yukon, or to Skaguay and down the Yukon, to the mouth of the Tanana.
Fairbanks is now a camp only in name. It has all the comforts and luxuries of a city, and is more prosperous and progressive than any other town in Alaska or the Yukon. It started with such a rush that it does not seem to be able to stop. It is the headquarters of the Third Judicial District of Alaska, which was formerly at Ram- part ; it has electric light and water systems, a fire de- partment, excellent and modern hotels, schools, churches, hospitals, daily newspapers, a telegraph line to the outside
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world which is operated by the government, and a tele- phone system which serves not only the city, but all the creeks as well.
The Tanana Mines Railway, or Tanana Valley Railway, as it is now called, was built in 1905 to connect Fairbanks with Chena and the richest mining claims of the district ; and two great railroads are in course of construction from Prince William Sound.
In 1906 the output of gold was more than nine millions of dollars, and had it not been for the labor troubles in 1907, this output would have been doubled. In the earlier days of the camp the crudest methods of mining were employed; but with the improved transportation facilities, modern machinery was brought in and the diffi- culties of the development were greatly lessened.
Upon a first trip to Fairbanks, the visitor is amazed at the size and the metropolitan style and tone of this six-year-old camp in the wilderness.
It is situated on the banks of the Chena River, about nine miles from its confluence with the Tanana. It has a level town site, which looks as though it might ex- tend to the Arctic Circle. The main portion of the town is on the right bank of the river, the railway terminal yards, saw-mills, manufacturing plants, and in- dustries of a similar nature being located on the oppo- site shore, on what is known as Garden Island, the two being connected by substantial bridges. The city is incorporated and, like other incorporated towns of Alaska, is governed by a council of seven members, who elect a presiding officer who is, by courtesy, known as mayor. The executive officers of the municipal gov- ernment consist of a clerk, treasurer, police magistrate, chief of police, chief of the fire department, street com- missioner, and physician.
The municipal finances are derived from a share in
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federal licenses, from the income derived from the local court, from poll taxes, and from local taxation of real and personal property. From all these sources the municipal treasury was enriched during the year of 1906 by about ninety-five thousand dollars.
Each of the three banks operates an assay office under the supervision of an expert. The population of the dis- trict is from fifteen to twenty thousand, of which five thousand belong permanently to the town. The climate is dry and sparkling; the summers are delightful, the winters still and not colder than those of Minnesota, Montana, and the Dakotas, but without the blizzards of those states. In 1906 the coldest month was January, the daily mean temperature being thirty-six degrees below zero, but dry and still. Travel over the trail by dog team is continued throughout the winter, skating and other outdoor sports being as common as in Canada.
Five saw-mills are in operation, with an aggregate daily capacity of a hundred and ten thousand feet, the entire product being used locally. There is an abundance of poplar, spruce, hemlock, and birch; an unlimited water supply ; a municipal steam-heating plant ; two good hos- pitals ; two daily newspapers ; graded schools, - the four- year course of the high school admitting the student to the Washington State University and to high educational institutions of other states; a Chamber of Commerce and a Business Men's Association ; twelve hotels, five of which are first class ; while every industry is represented several times over.
This is Fairbanks, the six-year-old mining-camp of the Tanana Valley.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
SUNRISE ON BEHRING SEA
CHAPTER XLVIII
AT Tanana our party was enlarged by a party of four gentlemen, headed by Governor Wilford B. Hoggatt, of Juneau, who was on a tour of inspection of the country he serves.
Our steamer, too, underwent a change while we were ashore. We now learned why its bow was square and wide. It was that it might push barges up and down the Yukon ; and it now proceeded, under our astonished eyes, to push four, each of which was nearly as large as itself. All the days of my life, as Mr. Pepys would say, I have never beheld such an object floating upon the water. The barges were fastened in front of us and on both sides of us; two were flat and uncovered, one was covered, but open on the sides, while the fourth was a kind of boat and was crowned with a real pilot-house, in which was a real wheel.
We viewed them in open and hostile dismay, not yet recognizing them as blessings in disguise ; we then laughed till we wept, over our amazing appearance as we went sweeping, bebarged, down to the sea. Four barges to one steamboat ! One barge would have seemed like an insult, but four were perfectly ridiculous. The governor was told that they constituted his escort of honor, but he would not smile. He was in haste to get to Nome; and barges meant delay.
We swept down the Yukon like a huge bird with wide wings outspread; and those of us who did not care
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whether we went upon a sand-bar or not soon became in- fatuated with barges. Straight in front of our steamer we had, on one barge, a low, clean promenade a hundred feet long by fifty wide; on the others were shady, se- cluded nooks, where one might lie on rugs and cushions, reading or dreaming, ever and anon catching glimpses of native settlements-tents and cabins ; thousands of coral-red salmon drying on frames ; groups of howling dogs ; dozens of silent dark people sitting or standing motionless, staring at their whiter and more fortunate brothers sweeping past them on the rushing river.
Poor, lonely, dark people ! As lonely and as mysterious, as little known and as little understood, as the mighty river on whose shores their few and hard days are spent. Little we know of them, and less we care for them. The hopeless tragedy of their race is in their long, yearning gaze ; but we read it not. We look at them in idle curi- osity as we flash past them; and each year, as we return, we find them fewer, lonelier, - more like dark sphinxes on the river's banks. As the years pass and their numbers diminish, the mournfulness deepens in their gaze ; it becomes more questioning, more haunting. The day will come when they will all be gone, when no longer dark figures will people those lonely shores ; and then we will look at one another in useless remorse and cry :-
" Why did they not complain ? Why did they not ask us to help them ? Why did they sit and starve for every- thing, staring at us and making no sign ? "
Alas ! when that day comes, we will learn -too late ! - that there is no appeal so poignant and so haunting as that which lies in the silence and in the asking eyes of these dark and vanishing people.
Below Rampart the hills withdraw gradually until they become but blue blurs on the horizon line during the last miles of the river's course. It is now the lower river
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