USA > Alaska > Alaska, the great country > Part 36
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and becomes beautifully channelled and islanded. Across these low, wooded, and watered plains the sunset burns like a maze of thistledown touched with ruby fire - burns down, at last, into the rose of dawn; and the rose into emerald, beryl, and pearl.
Not far above Nulato the Koyukuk pours its tawny flood into the Yukon. For many years the Koyukuk has given evidences of great richness in gold, but high prices of freight and labor have retarded its progress. During the past winter, however, discoveries have been made which promise one of the greatest stampedes ever known. Louis Olson, after several seasons in the district, experi- enced a gambler's "hunch " that there " was pay on Nolan Creek." He and his associates started to sink, and the first bucket they got off bedrock netted seven dollars ; the bedrock, a slate, pitched to one side of the hole, and when they had followed it down and struck a level bed- rock, they got two hundred and sixty dollars.
"Our biggest pan," said Mr. Olson, telling the story when he came out, one of the richest men in Alaska, " was eighteen hundred dollars. You can see the gold lying in sight."
Captain E. W. Johnson, of Nome, who had grub-staked two men in the Koyukuk, " fell into it," as miners say. They struck great richness on bedrock, and Captain John- son promptly celebrated the strike by opening fifteen hundred dollars' worth of champagne to the camp.
Within ten days three pans of a thousand dollars each were washed out. Coldfoot, Bettles, Bergman, and Koyukuk are the leading settlements of this region, the first two lying within the Arctic Circle. Interest has re- vived in the Chandelar country which adjoins on the east.
Really, Seward's "land of icebergs, polar bears, and walrus," his "worthless, God-forsaken region," is doing fairly well, as countries go.
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Nulato, nearly three hundred miles below Tanana, is one of the most historic places on the Yukon, and has the most sanguinary history. It was founded in 1838 by a Russian half-breed named Malakoff, who built a trading post. During the following winter, owing to scarcity of provisions, he was compelled to return to St. Michael, and the buildings were burned by natives who were jeal- ous of the advance of white people up the river. The following year the post was reestablished and was again destroyed. In 1841 Derabin erected a fort at this point, and for ten years the settlement flourished. In 1851, however, Lieutenant Bernard, of the British ship Enter- prise, arrived in search of information as to the fate of Sir John Franklin. Unfortunately, he remarked that he in- tended to " send for " the principal chief of the Koyukuks. This was considered an insult by the haughty chief, and it led to an assault upon the fort, which was destroyed. Derabin, Bernard and his companions, and all other white people at the fort were brutally murdered, as well as many resident Indians. The atrocity was never avenged.
Nulato is now one of the largest and most prosperous Indian settlements on the river. A large herd of reindeer is quartered there. There was, as every one interested in Alaska knows, a grave scandal connected with the rein- deer industry a few years ago. Many of the animals im- ported by the government from Siberia at great expense, for the benefit of needy natives and miners, were appro- priated by missionaries without authority ; but after an investigation by a special agent of the government there was an entire reorganization of the system. In all, Con- gress appropriated more than two hundred and twenty thousand dollars, with which twelve hundred reindeer have, at various times, been imported. There are now about twelve thousand head in Alaska, of which the gov- ernment owns not more than twenty-five hundred. There
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
SURF AT NOME
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are also stations at Bethel, Beetles, Iliamna, Kotzebue, St. Lawrence Island, Golovnin, Teller, Cape Prince of Wales, Point Barrow, and at several other points. They are used for sledding purposes and for their meat and hides, really beautiful parkas and mukluks- the latter a kind of skin boot - being made of the hides.
A native woman named Mary Andrewuk has a large herd, is quite wealthy, and is known as the " Reindeer Queen."
We reached Anvik at seven in the evening. Anvik is like Uyak on Kadiak Island, and I longed for the frank Swedish sailor who had so luminously described Uyak. If there be anything worth seeing at Anvik - and they say there is a graveyard! - they must first kill the mosquitoes ; else, so far as I am concerned, it will forever remain unseen. Under a rocky bluff two dozen Eskimo, men and women, sat fighting mosquitoes and trying to sell wares so poorly made that no one desired them. Eskimo dolls and toy parkas were the only things that tempted us ; and hastily paying for them, we fled on board to our big, comfortable stateroom, whose window was securely netted from the pests which made the very air black.
We left Anvik at midnight. We were to arrive at Holy Cross Mission at four o'clock the same morning. Expecting the Campbell to arrive later in the day, the priest and sisters had arranged a reception for the gov- ernor, in which the children of the mission were to take part. Thinking of the disappointment of the children, the governor decided to go ashore, even at that unearthly hour, and we were invited to accompany him. We were awakened at three o'clock.
The dawn was bleak and cheerless; it was raining slightly, and the mosquitoes were as thick and as hungry as they had been at the Grand Canyon. Of all
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the passengers that had planned to go ashore, there appeared upon the sloppy deck only four - the governor, a gentleman who was travelling with him, my friend, and myself. We looked at one another silently through rain and mosquitoes, and before we could muster up smiles and exchange greetings, an officer of the boat called out: -
" Governor, if it wasn't for those damn disappointed children, I'd advise you not to go ashore."
We all smiled then, for the man had put the thought of each of us into most forcible English.
We were landed upon the wet sand and we waded through the tall wet grasses of the beach to the mission. At every step fresh swarms of mosquitoes rose from the grass and assailed us. A gentleman had sent us his mosquito hats. These were simply broad-brimmed felt hats, with the netting gathered about the crowns and a kind of harness fastening around the waist.
The governor had no protection ; and never, I am sure, did any governor go forth to a reception and a "pro- gramme " in his honor in such a frame of mind and with such an expression of torture as went that morning the governor of "the great country." It was a silent and dismal procession that moved up the flower-bordered walk to the mission - a procession of waving arms and flapping handkerchiefs. At a distance it must have resembled a procession of windmills in operation, rather than of human beings on their way to a reception in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle.
So ceaseless and so ferocious were the attacks of the mosquitoes that before the sleeping children were aroused and ready for their programme, my friend and I, notwith- standing the protection of the hats, yielded in sheer ex- haustion, and, without apology or farewell, left the unfor- tunate governor to pay the penalty of greatness ; left him to his reception and his programme ; to the earnest priests,
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the smiling, sweet-faced sisters, and the little solemn-eyed Eskimo children.
This mission is cared for by the order of Jesuits. Two priests and several brothers and sisters reside there. Fifty or more children are cared for yearly, -educated and guided in ways of thrift, cleanliness, industry, and morality. They are instructed in all kinds of useful work. About forty acres of land are in cultivation; the flowers and vegetables which we saw would attract admiration and wonder in any climate. The buildings were of logs, but were substantially built and attractive, each in its setting of brilliant bloom. How these sisters, these gentle and refined women, whose faces and manner unconsciously reveal superior breeding and position, can endure the daily and nightly tortures of the mosquitoes is inconceivable.
" They are not worth notice now," one said, with her sweet and patient smile. "Oh, no! You should come earlier if you would see mosquitoes."
"Our religion, you know," another said gently, "helps us to bear all things that are not pleasant. In time one does not mind."
In time one does not mind! It is another of the lessons of the Yukon ; and reading, one stands ashamed. There those saintly beings spend their lives in God's service. Nothing save a divine faith could sustain a delicate woman to endure such ceaseless torment for three months in every year; and yet, like the lone woman at Nation, their faces tell us that we, rather than they, are for pity. The stars upon their brows are the white and blessed stars of peace.
The steamer lands at neither Russian Mission nor An- dreaofsky; but at both may be seen, on grassy slopes, beautiful Greek churches, with green, pale blue, and yellow roofs, domes and bell-towers, chimes and glittering erosses.
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Down where the mouth of the Yukon attains a width of sixty miles we ran upon a sand-bar early in the after- noon, and there we remained until nearly midnight. It was a weird experience. Dozens of natives in bidarkas surrounded our steamer, boarded our barges, and offered their inferior work for sale. The brown lads in reindeer parkas were bright-eyed and amiable. Cookies and gum sweetened the way to their little wild hearts, and they would hold our hands, cling to our skirts, and beg for " more."
A splendid, stormy sunset burned over those miles of water-threaded lowlands at evening. Rose and lavender mists rolled in from the sea, parted, and drifted away into the distances stretching on all sides; they huddled upon islands, covering them for a few moments, and then, with- drawing, leaving them drenched in sparkling emerald beauty in the vivid light; they coiled along the horizon, like peaks of rosy pearl; and they went sailing, like elfin shallops, down poppy-tinted water-ways. Everywhere overhead geese drew dark lines through the brilliant atmos- phere, their mournful cries filling the upper air with the weird and lonely music of the great spaces. Up and down the water-ways slid the bidarkas noiselessly; and along the shores the brown women moved among the willows and sedges, or stood motionless, staring out at their white sisters on the stranded boat. There were times when every one of the millions of sedges on island and shore seemed to flash out alone and apart, like a daz- zling emerald lance quivering to strike.
They are dull of soul and dull of imagination who com- plain of monotony on the Yukon Flats. There is beauty for all that have eyes wherewith to see. It is the beauty of the desert; the beauty and the lure of wonderful distances, of marvellous lights and low skies, of dawns that are like blown roses, and as perfumed, and sunsets
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whose mists are as burning dust. When there is no color anywhere, there is still the haunting, compelling beauty that lies in distance alone. Vast spaces are majestic and awesome ; the eye goes into them as the thought goes into the realm of eternity-only to return, wearied out with the beauty and the immensity that forever end in the fathom- less mist that lies on the far horizon's rim. It is a mist that nothing can pierce; vision and thought return from it upon themselves, only to go out again upon that mute and trembling quest which ceases not until life itself ceases.
The northernmost mouth of the Yukon has been called the Aphoon or Uphoon, ever since the advent of the Rus- sians, and is the channel usually selected by steamers, the Kwikhpak lying next to it on the south. By sea-coast measurement the most northerly mouth is nearly a hundred miles from the most southerly, and five others between them assist in carrying the Yukon's gray, dull yellow, or rose-colored floods out into Behring Sea, whose shallow waters they make fresh for a long distance. It is not without hazard that the flat-bottomed river boats make the run to St. Michael ; and the pilots of steamers cross- ing out anxiously scan the sea and relax not in vigi- lance until the port is entered.
CHAPTER XLIX
WE were released from the sand-bar near midnight, and at eight o'clock on the following morning we steamed around a green and lovely point and entered Norton Sound, in whose curving blue arm lies storied St. Mi- chael.
St. Michael is situated on the island of the same name, about sixty miles north of the mouth of the Yukon. It was founded in 1833 by Michael Tebenkoff, and was originally named Michaelovski Redoubt. The Russian buildings were of spruce logs brought by sea from the Yukon and Kuskoquim rivers, as no timber grows in the vieinity of St. Michael or Nome. Some of the original Russian build- ings yet remain, - notably, the storehouse and the redoubt. The latter is an hexagonal building of heavy hewn logs, with sloping roof, flagstaff, door, and port-holes. It stands upon the shore, within a dozen steps of the famous " Cot- tage," - the residence of the managers of the Northern Commercial Company, under whose hospitable roof every traveller of note has been entertained for many years, - and in front of it the shore slopes green to the water. In- side lie half a dozen rusty Russian cannons, mutely testify- ing to the sanguinary past of the North.
The redoubt was attacked in 1836 by the hostile Una- ligmuts of the vicinity, but it was successfully defended by Kurupanoff. The Russians had a temporary landing- · place built out to deep water to accommodate boats draw- ing five feet; this was removed when ice formed in the
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bay. The tundra is rolling, with numerous pools that flame like brass at sunset ; only low willows and alders grow on the island and adjacent shores. The island is seven miles wide and twenty-five long, and is separated from the main- land by a tortuous channel, as narrow as fifty feet in places. The land gradually rises to low hills of volcanic origin near the centre of the island. These hills are called the Shaman Mountains. The meadow upon which the main part of the town and the buildings of the post are situated is as level as a vast parade-ground; but the land rises gently to a slender point that plunges out into Behring Sea, whose blue waves beat themselves to foam and music upon its tundra-covered eliffs.
On the day that I stood upon this headland the sunlight lay like gold upon the island; the winds were low, murmur- ous, and soothing; flowers spent their color riotously about me; the tundra was as soft as deep-napped velvet ; and the blue waves, set with flashes of gold, went pushing languorously away to the shores of another continent. Scarcely a stone's throw from me was a small mountain- island, only large enough for a few graves, but with no graves upon it. In all the world there cannot be another spot so noble in which to lie down and rest when "life's fevers and life's passions - all are past." There, alone, - but never again to be lonely ! - facing that sublime sweep of sapphire summer sea, set here and there with islands, and those miles upon miles of glittering winter ice ; with white sails drifting by in summer, and in winter the wild and roaring march of icebergs ; with summer nights of lavender dusk, and winter nights set with the great stars and the magnificent brilliance of Northern Lights ; with the perfume of flowers, the songs of birds, the music of lone winds and waves, out on the edge of the world - could any clipped and cared-for plot be so noble a place in which to lie down for the last time ? Could any be so close to God ?
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The entire island is a military reservation, and it is only by concessions from the government that commercial and transportation companies may establish themselves there. Fort St. Michael is a two-company post, under the com- mand of Captain Stokes, at whose residence a reception was tendered to Governor Hoggatt. The filmy white gowns of beautiful women, the uniforms of the officers, the music, flowers, and delicate ices in a handsomely furnished home made it difficult for one to realize that the function was on the shores of Behring Sea instead of in the capital of our country.
There is an excellent hotel at St. Michael, and the large stores of the companies are well supplied with furs and Indian and Eskimo wares. Beautiful ivory carvings, bidarkas, parkas, kamelinkas, baskets, and many other curios may be obtained here at more reasonable prices than at Nome. There are public bath-houses where one may float and splash in red-brown water that is never any other color, no matter how long it may run, but which is always pure and clean.
No description of St. Michael is complete that does not include " Lottie." No liquors are sold upon the mili- tary reservation, and Lottie conducts a floating groggery upon a scow. It has been her custom each fall to have her barge towed up the canal just beyond the line of the mili- tary reservation, ten miles from the flag-staff at the bar- racks, thus placing herself beyond the control of the authorities, greatly to their chagrin. In summer she anchors her barge in one of the numerous bights along the shore, and they are again powerless to interfere with her brilliantly managed traffic, since it has been decided that their sway extends over the land only.
It is Lottie's practice to have the barge made fast in such a way that a boat can be run to it from the shore on an endless line. One desiring a bottle of whiskey
Copyright by E. A. legg, Juneau
Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
MOONLIGHT ON BEHRING SEA
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approaches the boat and drops his money and order into the bottom of it. The boat is then drawn out to the barge, whiskey is substituted for the money, and the pur- chaser pulls the boat ashore, where it is left for the next customer.
There is no witness to the transaction and it has been im- possible to prove, the authorities claim, who put the money and the whiskey into the boat, or took either therefrom.
Lottie's barge has operated for many years. Its illicit transactions could easily have been stopped had the civil authorities on shore taken a firm stand and worked in conjunction with the military ; but there was the usual jealousy as to the rights of the different officials -and Lottie has profited by these conditions. Furthermore, many people of the vicinity entertained a friendly feeling for Lottie - not only those who were wont to draw the little boat back and forth, but others in sheer admiration of the ingenuity and skill with which she carried on her business. She was careful in preserving order in her vicinity, was very charitable, and frequently provided for natives who would have otherwise suffered. Thus, by her diplomacy, self-control, good business sense, and many really worthy traits of character, Lottie has been able to outwit the officials for years. Her barge still floats upon the blue waves of Norton Sound. However, it seems, even to a woman, that Lottie must be blessed with " a friend at court."
We had been invited to voyage from St. Michael to Nome - a distance of a hundred and eleven miles - on the Meteor, a very small tug ; being warned, however, that, should the weather prove to be unfavorable, our hardships would be almost unendurable, as there was only an open after-deck and no cabin in which to take refuge. We boldy took our chances, remaining three days at St. Michael.
2 L
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Never had Behring Sea, or Norton Sound, been known to be so beautiful as it was on that fourteenth day of August. We started at nine in the morning, and until evening the whole sea, as far as the eye could reach in all directions, was as smooth as satin, of the palest silvery blue. Never have I seen its like, nor do I hope ever to see it again. To think that such seductive beauty could bloom upon a sea whereon, in winter, one may travel for hundreds of miles on solid ice! At evening it was still smooth, but its color burned to a silvery rose.
The waters we sailed now were almost sacred to some of us. Over them the brave and gallant Captain Cook had sailed in 1778, naming Capes Darby and Denbigh, on either side of Norton Bay; he also named the bay and the sound and Besborough, Stuart, and Sledge islands ; and it was in this vicinity that he met the family of cripples.
But of most poignant interest was St. Lawrence Is- land, lying far to our westward, discovered and named by Vitus Behring on his voyage of 1728. If he had then sailed to the eastward for but one day !
Every one has read of the terrors of landing through the pounding surf of the open roadstead at Nome. Large ships cannot approach within two miles of the shore. Passen- gers and freight are taken off in lighters and launches when the weather is "fair " ; but fair weather at Nome is rough weather elsewhere. When they call it rough at Nome, passengers remain on the ships for days, waiting to land. Frequently it is necessary to transfer passengers from the ships to dories, from the dories to tugs, from the tugs to flat barges. The barges are floated in as far as possible; then an open platform - miscalled a cage -is dropped from a great arm, which looks as though it might break at any moment ; the platform is crowded with passengers and hoisted up over the boiling surf,
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swinging and creaking in a hair-crinkling fashion, and at last depositing its large-eyed burden upon the wharf at Nome. I had pitied cattle when I had seen them un- loaded in this manner at Valdez and other coast towns!
We anchored at eleven o'clock that night in the Nome roadstead. In two minutes a launch was alongside and a dozen gentlemen came aboard to greet the governor. We were hastily transferred in the purple dusk to the launch. The town, brilliantly illuminated, glittered like a string of jewels along the low beach ; bells were ring- ing, whistles were blowing, bands were playing, and all Nome was on the beach shouting itself hoarse in welcome.
There was no surf, there was not a wave, there was scarce a ripple on the sea. The launch ran smoothly upon the beach and a gangway was put out. It did not quite reach to dry land and men ran out in the water, picked us up unceremoniously, and carried us ashore.
The most beautiful landing ever made at Nome was the one made that night; and the people said it was all arranged for the governor.
There was an enthusiastic reception at the Golden Gate Hotel, followed by a week's brilliant functions in his honor.
Three days later the Meteor came over from St. Michael, with a distinguished Congressman aboard. The weather was rough, even for Nome, and for three blessed days the Meteor rolled in the roadstead, and with every roll it went clear out of sight.
There were those at the hotel who differed politically from the Congressman aboard the little tug; and, like the people of Nome when the senatorial committee was landed under such distressful circumstances a few years ago, their faces did not put on mourning as they watched the Meteor roll.
CHAPTER L
NOME! Never in all the world has been, and never again will be, a town so wonderfully and so picturesquely built. Imagine a couple of miles of two and three story frame buildings set upon a low, ocean-drenched beach and, for the most part, painted white, with the back doors of one side of the main business street jutting out over the water; the town widening for a considerable distance back over the tundra; all things jumbled together - saloons, banks, dance-halls, millinery-shops, residences, churches, hotels, life-saving stations, government build- ings, Eskimo camps, sacked coal piled a hundred feet high, steamship offices, hospitals, schools - presenting the ap- pearance of having been flung up into the air and left wherever they chanced to fall; with streets zigzagging in every conceivable and inconceivable, way - following the beach, drifting away from it, and returning to it; one building stepping out proudly two feet ahead of its neighbor, another modestly retiring, another slipping in at right angles and leaving a V-shaped space; board side- walks, narrow for a few steps, then wide, then narrow again, running straight, curving, jutting out sharply ; in places, steps leading up from the street, in others the streets rising higher than the sidewalks ; boards, laid upon the bare sand in the middle of the streets for planking, wearing out and wobbling noisily under travel; every second floor a residence or an apartment-house; crude signs everywhere, and tipsy telephone poles; the streets
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