USA > Alaska > Trailing and camping in Alaska > Part 13
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We fell in with many prospectors who were on their way to the coast. A prospector lives in winter on a liberal mixture of hope. In summer he pros- pects until he eats up all of his provisions and then returns; living too often on snow-balls and rabbit tracks. He then is loaded down with rock, rags and more hope. In their cabins they divide the long winter hours into slumber and wakefulness, and when awake no doubt lament the fact that they have no companions empowered with the legal matrimonial privilege of going through their pockets when they are asleep.
We arrived safely in Valdez and found the little town taking on metropolitan airs, because a few men
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had brought their wives and children up there to live. In front of a hotel, a woman was whipping a small child, and when it ran from her she repeated the pun- ishment, then slapping another one of her children for a trivial offense. There was a man standing on the end of the long porch and I said to him :
" It is only animal instinct in a child to run away from that woman, because she punishes it every time she catches it. Such a brutal mother should not be allowed to raise her children, as she is liable to make criminals of them."
He slowly removed the cigar from the aperture of his face and replied :
- " Well, sir, my experience with that woman's dis- position, while living as her husband for twenty years, impresses me with the fact that if you should insist on giving her that information, it would be ad- visable for you to do so over a long-distance tele- phone."
Then he deliberately replaced his cigar while I retreated to seclusion, remarking that there were times when I preferred to be alone.
They had installed a telephone service in Valdez. One of the old-timers was so indifferent and sullen towards me that I expected trouble, and was not sur- prised when he challenged me to fight a duel of one- hundred words on that telephone. I delayed my an- swer to give his nerves time to weaken. I fight duels by proxy, and intended to secure a stuttering man to
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stand up in my stead in this desperate encounter; but my antagonist probably heard of my intentions, for when I accepted, he turned pale and disgracefully withdrew his challenge.
As I was walking along the street " Whiskey Jim " staggered from a saloon with a badly bruised and bleeding face. As I had not seen him for nearly a year, I inquired the cause, and he replied :
" Powell, for two years I have been stinking for a fight, and I'll be hanged if a fellow in there didn't just smell me!"
Here, as the hardships of the summer were past, I had only pleasant reflections. I cannot understand the narrow and contracted views of those persons whose minds never are allowed to expand beyond the confines of such a strenuously congested mass of misery as is a city of human beings. How could Samuel Johnson have known anything of life when he wrote :
" When a man is tired of London he is tired of life, for there is in London all there is in life."
To my companions and myself, the experiences of 1900-the glaciers, rivers and swamps; bears, cari- bou and goat; the castellated peaks of the Suslota, the precipitous walls of the Hoolana, and the lakes in their sequestered solitudes, were all only delight- ful pictures in memory's halls.
CHAPTER XVIII
" Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway, And I wait for the men who will win me-and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtile, suave and mild,
But by men with hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child."
R. W. SERVICE.
I TAKE exception to the last words of the third line. How many brutal men have bit the frontier dust because they attempted to awe some mild-man- nered man! Always beware of the mild, polite man who expresses regard for the rights of others, for so will he defend his own. I have seen a large human brute throw up his hands and, refusing to cross a dangerous river, return home, while a little, slim bundle of nerves remained, built a raft, crossed the river and made his fortune. Nerve, backed by moral- ity and right, makes the man; and the really brave ones are those who have the courage to do right.
I withdrew my name from the list of Deputy U. S. Surveyors for Alaska to devote all of my time to prospecting. During the summer of 1901, James McCarthy, " Colonel " Launtz and myself were des-
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tined to eat each others' cooking while we explored the head-waters of the Shusitna River. We built castles with no other foundations than that we were going on a strictly prospecting trip. It is more pleasant to build castles than it is to fall from their dizzy heights. I have fallen so far that I have been astonished to find I was the only person who was hurt.
The subject of falling suggests the incident of the Swede who fell two hundred and fifty-six feet down a Treadwell shaft and was unhurt. When he was helped out, he exclaimed :
" I one big yumper ! "
The man who holds the record for high jumping at Treadwell, however, was not the Swede, but a fellow who went up in front of a blast of giant pow- der, and of whom nothing came down but a sus- pender buckle. I was told that before the coroner would sit on the remnant, he gave the balance of the remains an hour to put in an appearance. My in- former said that this was an official recognition of an ascent of 119,873 feet and 6 inches. Possibly this may give us an approximate idea of how far one may fall and be killed. It is natural for human beings to fall, and has been so since our ancestors fell from grace. Children fall out of cradles, and later out of apple trees, and when cured of that, they fall into things, such as love and trouble.
On our way to the interior, I saw a man attempting
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to wade the Tekeil River with a heavy pack strapped to his back. The current washed him from his foot- ing, and, with the pack holding him down, he would have drowned if I had not ridden my saddle horse in there and pulled him out. When he recovered, I asked :
" Didn't you know better than to go into such dangerous water with a heavy pack like that strapped tightly to your back?"
" Well," he answered, "I suspicioned that I had made a mistake, just as I began to strangle the last time ! "
We passed dozens of men carrying packs, who were on their way to the Slate Creek diggings. That was two hundred miles away, but they had heard that gold was there, and so they were going. They could not realize that long before the news had reached civilization, it had been too late to secure a valuable claim, and that they were just going in there to look at other men's gold.
We found sleds by the trail, where men had be- come exhausted at trying to convert themselves into quadrupeds, and had given it up to go and tell of Alaska's hardships. I once attempted to pull a sled, but relinquished the intention with the thought that both industry and laziness are habits. However, I once saw a man make a great start in life by pulling a sled. He started with it down a very steep moun- tain.
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We met an Indian whose squaw and dogs were heavily packed. When asked why he did not carry the squaw's pack, he replied :
" Me got em dog to carry pack; squaw, he no got dog."
It was among those mountains during the winter of 1898 and 1899 that a companion of Charley John- son fell into the water and became mortally chilled. Charley urged him to hurry to some near-by timber where a fire could be built, but he said :
" Charley, we have safely weathered many storms together, but now I feel the final chill crawling up to my heart, and I know it to be the last ! "
Then he gasped and fell lifeless to the ground. Charley arrived at Quartz Creek, more dead than alive. After recovering he made many trips in search of the body of his partner, but never found it.
We crossed Tekeil River on a narrow bridge, over water that was thirty feet deep. Even horses be- come imbued with recklessness in Alaska, and ours unhesitatingly undertook any task required of them. Possibly a thousand horses crossed over this bridge during that summer.
Our ascent of the Copper River was the same old story of a battle with gnats, flies and mosquitoes. It is very probable that many of those mosquitoes could whip a wolf. They are the embodiment of bravery. I have seen a single mosquito attack a full-grown dog. It has been said that the Alaska mosquitoes
- ---- - ------
Pack-train crossing on a Polc-bridge.
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differ from others by having a white spot between their eyes about the size of one's hand. I have met no baldfaced ones up-to-date, but the Colonel asserts that he met one on the trail, and fortunately for him, the monster was eating a squirrel at the time.
After enjoying chicken stew for an evening meal, we were greatly amused at the Colonel's glorious exaggerations. The Colonel was a most agreeable camp companion, and very entertaining. He told of seeing a salmon in the river that was nine feet long. We worked with him until bed-time, “ Jew- ing " him down, an inch at a time, until he had re- duced the length to thirty-six inches; but there he balked and declared by Mt. Drum that he would not take off another inch. The task of shortening up that salmon drove Mac to bed and caused me to reason with the Colonel. I told him that about all the satisfaction I ever had derived from the study of grammar was the proof that all other grammarians were liars, and added that I thought he should either write fiction or be a professed grammarian.
The Colonel replied that the Americans were retro- grading rapidly into a nation of liars. He said they lied to their children about a mythical Santa Claus, and later on they compelled them to study fiction in the schools. They did this, he declared, with a pre- tense of studying English, when English could just as easily be taught in the study of natural and politi- cal history. He insisted that the Americans con-
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stantly pay for things they do not need, and buy books of fiction because they want to be humbugged. As an instance in point he cited the following circumstance : Lewis and Clark wrote facts about their journey across the continent, but the public demanded a liar to tarnish the story with romance and an Indian woman to guide them across. Subsequently the direc- tors of the Portland fair erected a monument to the mythical squaw, because they preferred that which was false-a deception and a lie. The real squaw only guided them a short distance.
He objected to the Americans being taught Ger- man, French and the dead languages, when they should know that there are no business opportunities in Europe for their sons, while the whole of South America is a vast field for our goods and implements. Instead of teaching the Americans the English and Spanish languages, they cross the ocean to pay for languages they do not need. He added: " If Presi- dent Roosevelt said California had no schools, who knows but he was correct, and if that State were one of the leading ones in education, what about the others ? "
That question sent me to bed, where I lay and writhingly attempted to digest the Colonel's lecture. I thought of the many graduates who are compara- tively ignorant of geography. How few of them know whether Sydney is in Australia or New Zea- land, or that Australia is larger than the United
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States. If they talked with you about Alaska they probably would refer to it as "The Klondike." I thought of a time when I had shown an educated lawyer some photographs of Alaska mountains that bordered the sea, and had attempted to explain to him that they were about five thousand feet high, and he had indirectly called me a liar by saying that it was impossible, as mountains did not attain such great heights at the edge of salt water. He evidently as- sumed that all the world was like Monterey County, California, and that one would be compelled to go as far from salt water as he would from there to the Sierra Nevadas, to see high mountains. He evi- dently did not know that St. Elias looks down from twenty thousand feet to the ocean that laps its base.
I was reminded of a county school-board which recently required scholars to tell how a balky horse acts, and thereby impressed upon the scholars the fact of how silly a school-board could act. I thought drowsily that if I had devoted more time to the study of English, I should not now be attempting so often to perform the acrobatic feat of constructing sen- tences without subject and predicate foundations; and then I-I-passed into a fairy-land of slumber.
On July 4 we arrived at the place where Mr. Date and I had left for the coast in 1899, with no footwear. Now there was an abundance of bunch- grass for our horses. The forest fires had quieted the mosquitoes, and as the warm weather was decid-
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edly enervating, we concluded to be patriotic and rest. The fires had driven our little dog Pete across the river, where he had traveled for one whole day, and then had swum over to our camp at night.
Some visitors came into camp while we were bak- ing bread for our future needs, and the conversation turned upon cooking. One said he had cooked on a Yukon stove, another said he had cooked on a large hotel range, and the Colonel announced that he had cooked on a cattle range.
On Slate Creek we saw string after string of sluice boxes, attended by long-bearded, long-haired and high-booted men, shoveling, picking and pan- ning. Others would not work, because they wanted $15.00 a day and could get but $10.00. A few claims were producing more than $100.00 a day to the man.
One Sunday, when Slate Creek was abandoned by all hands, because they were attending a miners' meeting in another gulch, I walked up the creek to find it deserted, and thousands of dollars in the yel- low metal scattered around the tents in gold-pans and tin-cups. No one was left to watch over the treas- ure, as thieves in such localities are not protected by law.
Sensational writers often harmfully and falsely educate the masses in their statements regarding life on the frontier. It is a pitiful sight to see a young man coming west, or northwest, with a six-shooter
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conspicuously hanging on the right, but wrong, side, in accordance with customs obtained from illustrated fictional periodicals and cheap shows.
This Slate Creek was the gulch on which Gokona Charley, the Indian, had vainly endeavored to per- suade me to investigate and locate in 1899; and no doubt but it was the original Captain West discov- ery. We left there and traveled for days over a rolling hill country and past the point where I had killed the bear by the lake the year before. We crossed the Delta River where it was not deep enough to swim our horses, and entered one of the then-unexplored sources of the Shusitna River.
We crossed by easy passages through the moun- tains and discovered another glacier which was the source of two rivers, namely, the Eureka, a tributary of the Delta, and a fork of the East Fork of the Shusitna, now known as the McClarren River. Just below the glacier we crossed the McClarren where it was a mile wide. We found dry willow to burn when we were above timber, but the mosquitoes drove us down to where we could build large fires to smoke them from our horses. It is astonishing how quickly a horse will learn that smoke protects him from those insects.
I discovered a beautiful waterfall near the source of the McClarren. On those travels we found few signs where Indians had made their annual fall hunts, but at that time they were down the river
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catching salmon. The subject of Indians caused the Colonel to tell about killing them until Mac lost his appetite. Evidently he had killed thousands of them -that is, Comanches, Apaches and Sioux, for he wished to impress us with the idea that he didn't count such as Diggers, Piutes and Siwashes.
Mac and I left the Colonel to care for camp and for our crippled horses, while we prospected towards the west. We ascended over rolling, gravelly hills, through which is a strip of old ocean wash that may some day be worked for gold, yet we did not stop to prospect it, but climbed among the mountains where one would not think a horse could get a foot- ing, and at night we descended a steep canyon, where we camped and enjoyed ptarmigan stew, while it rained.
The next day we again climbed among mountains where the sun was kissing new life into bluebells and buttercups. At one place, a caribou cow and calf approached to investigate the centaur-like intruders upon their northern domain. They stopped and looked, then trotted down fifty yards nearer. The little red calf trotted alongside of its mother's flanks and affectionately rubbed its little head against them. They came within fifty yards of us, and not until we had dismounted from our horses did they become really frightened and scamper away. The cow was too poor to shoot, and we would not separate them by killing the calf. Away up on a ridge could be seen the long horns of the cow, as she stopped to look
Alaskan Caribon Swimming.
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back, but a report from my pistol caused her to dis- appear in the distance, and probably to follow more cautiously the trails of her ancestors.
It really is a pity that human butchers are allowed to run at large and needlessly kill all kinds of game, even when it is unfit to be eaten. There are those who will kill and leave the carcass to rot, but fortu- nately such men are few, and they are never experi- enced frontiersmen. Both caribou and moose are wonderfully good swimmers and do not hesitate to swim across large rivers and even lakes. I have heard of men who would row a boat up to them, and there kill them, while they were swimming for their lives. Such men have no spirit, and they are the kind who brag about shooting deer with shotguns or killing fish with dynamite.
We crawled up to one high divide, but a parachute would be necessary to enable one to drop down on the other side. There the aneroid indicated an elevation of seven thousand feet above the sea, and there, too, the clouds drifted away and allowed us one brief glimpse of Mount McKinley-or, as it is known by the Indians, Mount Bulsha, which is the largest and highest mountain on the North American continent. Another storm was approaching, and we hurriedly descended down to the edge of the Shusitna valley, where we camped among some dead spruce trees where the grass was as high as our horses' backs.
A week before that I had traveled alone from the head of Clear Creek, and had arrived at the source
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of what is now known as Valdez Creek. On the way, I found an eighteen-foot vein of lignite coal. I also washed out some gold prospects on Valdez Creek, but they were of little importance. We had now come around to a point near the lower end of Valdez Creek, and close to some new good placer diggings. There Mr. McCarthy probably washed the first gold from the immediate vicinity of the Val- dez Creek diggings, but the credit for opening up the creek belongs, not to us, but to those who after- wards "mushed " in to that place and spent years in opening it up. They discovered the pay streaks by continual digging, and to such men must be given all the credit of opening placer camps and mining dis- tricts in the north, and not to the ramblers.
On our return to the Colonel's camp, we saw one little bear. It was about this time that Archie Parks, twenty miles from that point, was most unlovingly hugged by a bear. The bear did not release his hold until the little Siwash dog of Archie's nipped its heels. While the bear gave chase to the dog, Archie ran to his companions in a dazed and bloody condi- tion. Fortunately, Parks was not seriously hurt, and after seventeen stitches had been taken in his scalp, he remarked that he felt bearly impressed with the idea of returning to Slate Creek for further repairs. When we arrived at the old camp, we found Colonel Launtz sitting by the campfire, watching for In- dians.
CHAPTER XIX
If a trail doesn't bring an appetite to a man, it will lead the man to an appetite.
FROM that hospital camp we returned in a south- erly direction. We recrossed the McClarren River, where we saw more than one hundred wild geese swimming down the stream, having been floated from their island nests by the high water. They could " honk " equal to their grandfathers, but they couldn't fly, and their short wings proclaimed them to be goslings.
We camped on an old Indian trail that leads from the Gulkana country to Knik, by way of the Matan- uska, and on that trail we saw the tracks of a white man leading westward. It is probable that those were the last seen tracks of Clark Moore, of Fresno, Cali- fornia. He passed through that way but never again was heard from. There were tracks of three Indians on that trail, and if not murdered by them, he must have died an awful death of a wild, crazed and wandering prospector. His last moments may have been happy in the delusion that he had found the rich pay he so long had sought.
We traveled several days in an easterly direction, over high gravelly and brush-covered ridges, enclos- ing numerous lakes. All lakes that had outlets were
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stocked with trout. The hills were literally covered with cackling ptarmigan, and our diet generally con- sisted of a choice of ptarmigan or duck stew, or fried trout. Once, when Mac crippled a duck, our little dog Pete was sent into the water after it. When he approached, it dived, and down went Pete. For a minute the water was smooth; then up came the little dog with the duck in his mouth.
At another time, when we were camped near the shore of a lake that formed one of the sources of the Gulkana River, we discovered the fresh tracks of three Indians. As they were near our camp and did not come in, it was evident that they were renegades, out for no good purpose.
When crossing through a high pass between the rolling hills and near the Gulkana Lake, I saw two caribou, which were about a quarter of a mile away. Both had large, long antlers, but evidently one was a bull, and the other a small heifer. The male stood on the point of a small hillock and displayed the august bearing of a leader, gazing far away into the blue, and over Alaska's spruce forest beneath. He lowered his great antlers until his nostrils had sniffed at the bunch-grass at his feet, and when he raised them again, their golden polished surface played re- flections with the light of the northern sun.
I left my horse and noiselessly crawled to a place where it appeared that I was within reach of him. Placing my pistol on a hummock of the tundra, I
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aimed to the top of his shoulder and fired; but that elevation was evidently insufficient and the bullet must have struck beneath him. It was farther away than I had first supposed, so I raised to sight above him and fired again. Elk-like, he never flinched, but before another shot could be carefully placed, he walked a few steps and lay down. Then he got up on his feet and turned broadside, so that another bul- let was placed as near the second as possible, and he slowly turned and again lay down. From the way his large antlers were rocking, it was evident that his life-blood was passing out.
The heifer was looking in my direction, and I raised my white hat to further excite her curiosity. She, antelope-like, quickly responded by trotting in a large circle that brought her much nearer. She stopped and looked for a moment, and then con- tinued the circle; the next time came nearer, and the third circle brought her so near that, when she stopped to look, I gave her a mortal shot at one hun- dred and fifty-six steps. She continued her circle in a rapid trot and after going about fifty steps tumbled over, heels up. She was killed just as quickly with that shot from a .38 cal. pistol as if she had been shot with a 45-70 rifle.
It was found that the last two shots at the bull had struck near together and one of them had pierced the heart. The Colonel stepped the distance and then advised me to mould my bullets and mix
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salt with the lead, so that it would preserve the meat until I could arrive to where it was.
We loaded our horses with meat, as I never waste it or travel with one who does. That evening we descended to timber, strung the meat up in trees and remained there several days prospecting. Here, the Colonel offered to bet that Mac could eat a caribou at two sittings, but the challenge was declined.
I descended in search of a way that would lead us off from the mountain and through the timber, and had not gone half a mile from the camp when I came out within thirty steps of a large bull moose. He was a pretty sight as he dignifiedly turned his antlers, and instantly I regretted that I had not brought my kodak. Instinctively I caught hold of my pistol, but he was peaceably inclined and walked away. I did not care to kill him, as we had plenty of meat in camp; but at that time of year these animals are dan- gerous, and when one is so near they are liable to charge.
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