USA > Alaska > Trailing and camping in Alaska > Part 18
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growling, into seclusion. " Old Brigham," a well- known dog in Valdez, went completely back on me, fell three feet off a sidewalk and ran home, simply because he scented the fact that I had skinned a wolverine. The proper name for a wolverine is the hunter's appellation of "skunk bear."
My dog Pete displays good canine judgment when hunting, but draws the line on prospecting. When- ever I wash a pan of dirt, he looks into the pan, and then wonderingly at me. When I change to breaking rock, he smells the broken fragments, then closely fitting his tail in its natural trench, he walks over to one side and sits down, with the look that plainly says :
" My Master has 'em ag'in!"
Fish are almost too plentiful in Alaska to write about. In the early springtime, hundreds of tons of little candle fish and herring can be seen. The candle fish is a little hard roll of fish oil. The old- timers along Alaska's coast used those little sardines for candles, by sticking the mouth of the dried ones over a nail, usually driven into a table for the pur- pose, and then setting fire to the tail, which would burn and furnish light until the entire fish had been consumed. That is why they are called candle fish. These fish run in February and March, and are found as far inland as Mentasta Lake. They can be fried in their own oil, first starting the oil by im- mersing the fish in hot water.
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Salmon ascend the rivers and streamlets in such numbers that where they are stalled by a dam, or a waterfall, they are found by the ton. They ascend little streams along the coast, where often they can proceed but a short distance from tide-water, yet there they. stop, die and rot. They have lived in the sea the prescribed four years, and now are return- ing to the sparkling fresh waters of their youth to spawn and die.
Once we visited the Orca cannery, when it was said that there were 36,000 salmon lying on the wharf. We watched a Chinaman with a spiked pole sling- ing the salmon up a chute, where another grabbed and dexterously beheaded them with a knife. The remains of the salmon were shoved up to another Celestial, who, in like manner, cut off the tails, and to another who severed the fins. We watched a salmon grow smaller, slip into a cleaning vat of hot water, come out and go into a machine that cut it into can-length pieces; then saw the machine ram those pieces into cans and cup the lids. After that, the cans were rolled down a chained run-a-way over a blaze of fire and under a stream of solder, and then into a basket, which was lowered into boiling water that did the cooking. Then they were set aside, labelled and boxed for shipping.
There was one of our number who was addicted to the dangerous habit of playing with statistics. He was so much inclined that way, that we generally
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referred to him as "the computer." That great display of salmon induced him to produce his pencil, and he began figuring. Presently he accosted us with the question :
" To say that this Company has caught ten mil- lions of salmon would not be unreasonable, would it ? "
" Certainly not," I replied.
"Well, to say that they averaged two feet in length would be just as reasonable, wouldn't it? "
" Yes."
"Now, if ten millions of salmon were trans- formed into one, it would mean a fish twenty mil- lions of feet in length, would it not?"
I committed the fatal error of agreeing to this also, and he continued :
" A fish that measures twenty millions of feet would be a little over 3700 miles long, but we can afford to throw off a few feet when we have so much fish in warm weather. Now, if that fish hooked his gill on Cape Cod, on the Atlantic coast, he could wipe San Francisco off the Pacific coast, with his tail, and he would measure so large around the shoul- ders that there would not be another man put off at Buffalo for some time! Of course I have nothing against San Francisco, besides San Francisco wouldn't mind it much, as she is used to such things, but it just shows what the fish could do if old Cape
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Cod could stand the strain; besides, gentlemen, fig- ures won't lie ! "
One of the men employed there came to my res- cue by remarking :
"No, but liars will figure !"
Alaska has sixty-six canneries and eighteen salt- eries with an annual output valued at $11,000,000.
The autumn of 1905 settled in with the usual regular rainfall, and prospecting was exchanged for the more comfortable accommodations of a Valdez hotel. Several old pioneers assembled here to pro- cure their winter supplies, and among them was one who deserves especial mention,-the noted German- sen.
There he sat, " doubled and folded," Lincoln- like; long, sinuous and slender, the result of a life- time spent in the wilds. Germansen had been a child of the wild, a man of the wild, and now in his old days the fascinating phantom still invited him with a beckoning call. His kind, honest face inspired one with confidence, and his striking personality proclaimed him to be one to " tie to."
Many pioneers have followed Germansen, for he had led the van of the northwest pathfinders, years and years ago. Look on the map of the Canadian Northwest Territory and you'll see Ger- mansen's Lake and Germansen's Landing. He was the first to cross from that country to Fort Simpson, away back in 1868. The life story of that hardy
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pioneer is an interesting narrative, and in answer to my request for it, he untied a few knots of him- self, drew his brawny hand across his forehead, and began :
" Well, it doesn't amount to much, but it is his- tory. I was born in Waukesha County, Wiscon- sin, in 1843, on the site of an old abandoned In- dian village, and in the sight of an Indian tepee, and I have been in sight of them almost ever since.
" I fought for the Union, but was discharged for injuries received on Shiloh's dark and bloody ground. I fought the Sioux with Generals Sibley and Sully. I once swam a horse across the Yellowstone River and then across the Missouri to get to Rock Fort Union. I was an Indian trader from 1865 to 1867, and dealt with the Blackfeet, Pegans, Bloods and Crees. I left St. Cloud for Winnipeg, where I pro- cured fresh cattle and proceeded with the first emi- grant train to Fort Edmonton. There were 500 carts, 700 half-breeds, and three white men,- Boyd, John Beaupré and myself.
" Again I started out to trade with the Indians, and employed Hugh Morrison, a man with a Black- foot wife, who had lived with the Indians for forty years. We came upon an Indian town of about three thousand souls," and, as my hair was red and long, they looked upon me as a freak, which I was. They swarmed around and grunted astonishment
5
James Germansen. (at the time of his narrative)
-
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and awe as they ran their fingers through my scalp- lock.
" The price of a buffalo robe was two cups of flour, and it was but a short time until our carts were loaded down. When I was ready to leave, Chief Maxipeta (Great Eagle), kindly offered me my choice of his six wives, and insisted that I should take a certain pony-built one, but I declined the offer on the ground that I was too young. This incident caused an enmity towards me that prohib- ited me from returning to that village to trade. The old chief, however, warned me to look out for roving bands of his young Indians who were then on the warpath with the Big Knives, (Montana miners).
" We arrived safely at Fort Edmonton, and a few days later, 'Dancing Bill ' (Tom Latham), an old California pioneer, came into camp and de- manded flour; and although he had no money, he said he was going to have it. He wore two six- shooters and just took what flour he wanted. In about two weeks he returned, paid me in gold dust for what he had taken, and demanded more grub. He turned out to be a first-class fellow, and just lousy with gold dust.
" The 'Breeds,' as they were called, gave dances; the fiddler played to step dancers, who would bow and dance until exhausted, when another would take his place. The good dancers were show-
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ered with moccasins and beaded presents by the squaws. This Tom Latham was a great clown, and he confided to me that he was going to show them a new ' Walla Walla ' step and a 'Hangtown ' jig. He did, and coming in late he danced until the fiddler became exhausted. The squaws looked upon this as such a feat, that they loaded Tom down with enough moccasins to last him through life. From that achievement, he got his name of 'Danc- ing Bill.'
" My acquaintance with 'Dancing Bill ' and his partner, 'Black Jack' '(Tom Smith, of Baltimore), broke me financially and transformed me from a trader into a prospector. I furnished an outfit of fourteen oxen, two cows and seven horses, loaded with supplies, for a trip through the Peace River country. We left Fort Edmonton on April 5, and arrived at Fort Dunvagan on September 15. There had been no frost, and the country at that time was a vast flower-garden. There we wintered. The next summer we ascended the Peace River, made the Rocky Mountain portage, and mined on Upper Peace, Sandy Bar and Findley Branch, wash- ing out an ounce per day to the man. The next fall we arrived at Caribou, passed up Parsnip River to the Salmon River portage, and descended Frazer River 140 miles. I mined at Caribou in 1869.
"Oh, yes! I didn't tell you about my first bear ! Well, I just rolled over Bruin and then, boy-like,
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laid the gun across my arm unloaded, and leisurely but foolishly approached for an inspection of the trophy. Well, sir! That bear just rose up with a snort of blood and began to plead his side of the question with a charge! Say, I,-ha ! ha !- I-I just left there ! "
Then the narrator arose, and rubbing his legs, stepped very high, while he crossed and recrossed the room, as if to get them in good working order to demonstrate the long steps he took when fleeing from the bear. Then, after shaking off a convulsion of laughter, he continued:
" You should have seen that clown of a 'Dancing Bill' the winter we trapped! He volunteered to go to the creek and set my traps for a beaver, while I prepared breakfast. Now, he had never set a trap in his life, but he declared that he could do it."
'Again my informant stopped to laugh, and as he did so he buttoned up his coat, then unbuttoned it, doubled with his head between his knees and laughed some more.
" Well," he continued, " it was but a few minutes until 'Bill' had returned with his hand beneath his coat and solemnly announced :
" ' I caught him !'
"' What ! caught one already ?'
" ' Yep !'
" Then Bill withdrew his hand from beneath his
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coat and there was the trap attached to three of Bill's fingers. I laughed so that it was with diffi- culty I could release his hand.
" He attempted once to ride a toboggan down a steep hillside. The toboggan went over into Peace River, and Bill was stuck head-first into a snow bank. I could just see his feet when I commenced to dig him out. He got up and shook himself, and said :
"' I always expected to go to hell, but never once thought it would be done tobogganing !'
" Dancing Bill joined a crowd of miners one night, with a bucket of black sand under his arm. He also had a handful of gunpowder, which looked like the sand, and he threw the powder on the fire. As it flashed up, he raised the bucket of black sand and began to pour it into the fire, yelling :
"' Here I go, boys !'
" Bill then quietly walked behind the bar and helped himself, as there was no one in the house to wait on him.
" Poor Bill! Years after that incident, when min- ing in the Cassiar country, on Liard River, he com- plained one day of being sick, and said to one of his partners :
"'Ned, I am going to die and I want you to bury me under that spruce tree, over yonder, as I have prospected there, and it's only two-dollar dirt, so the boys won't molest me.'
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" Ned laughed, as Bill walked over to his bunk and lay down with the remark that if only he had the old organ he had left at Wrangell he would play even with this world.
" When Bill was called to dinner, a few minutes later, it was discovered that he was stone dead. This Tom Latham, or 'Dancing Bill,' was born on the Schuylkill River, Pennsylvania. But there, I am ahead of my story.
"Once, when 'Black Jack' and I were traveling ahead looking for a way, we came out on a small clearing where there was a little Indian town. It was Sunday, and the whole tribe was inside a large tepee, holding religious services,-a sort of Catholi- cism which had been introduced into the country, and which the Indians had brought into those moun- tains. 'Black Jack ' and I sat down on a log near by, and listened to the singing. It sounded so homelike that Jack, although rough and uncouth, turned to me and said :
"' Jim, they are above us !'
" Presently they came out and shook hands with us. There was one old man among them who had seen a white man. He surprised us by taking one of our guns and presenting himself in a military at- titude; he then explained that he was an Iroquois who had helped the British fight the Yankees; that he had come into the northwest with the Hudson Bay Company, and here in the Rocky Mountains
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had married a Stony squaw and had thirty descend- ants.
"In 1870 I left Fort Frazer for Fort St. James, on Stewart Lake; ascended through the Arctic pass into the Omeneca country and there discovered the Omeneca, or Peace River, diggings, on July 13, 1870.
"On November 15 I arrived at the mouth of the Skeena River, on the shore of the Pacific at Fort Essington, after exploring a route from our dig- gings through a very rough country, where I saw the wildest-looking Indians I had ever met. They were very primitive, living with dogs and covered with vermin in holes or dens in the ground, which we called smoke-holes. We descended into one of those dens to satisfy our curiosity, and then climbed back again, out through a smoke-hole just as rapidly as three men could perform the feat."
Here Germansen was seized with another spasm of laughter; and again he exercised and rubbed his legs, as though to keep them in condition for another emergency, if one should occur. He added :
" You see, we had been invited to climb out by a very wild-looking fellow who held a large knife in his hand, and we didn't hesitate for a second invita- tion. Those Skeena Indians killed several explorers the following spring.
" From Fort Simpson I took the Hudson Bay
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steamer Otter for Victoria, where we landed, De- cember 23, 1870. There I met Alexander Mac- Kenzie, whom I had saved from starvation at Fort St. Johns. He was a nephew of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who discovered the great Mackenzie River of the north. It was this same man who had put the cattle that went wild on Queen Charlotte island. Speaking of that island reminds me that there was a forest of totem poles there, but the many hundred Indians who once lived there have passed from the earth.
"I was in the Cook Inlet country in 1895. I hired two Indians to pack for me up the Matanuska, and we passed over to the Tazlina slope of the Cop- per River country where we killed a moose. I was told that the Indians would kill me, when I started on that trip, but I lived to follow the Yukon from its head-waters to the sea, and enjoy life on Middle- ton Island, the gem of the Northern Pacific Ocean. I tell you, Indians are not such bad people when they are treated right, but they have been terribly wronged by the white man.
" Besides my life in the north, I've mined in Montana, Colorado and California. Say, I believe I'll get two horses and spend next summer in the interior, as it is most too confining out there on the island. I am only sixty-two and a summer's outing would do me good."
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He then arose and crossed the room to inspect a map on which was marked " Unexplored Terri- tory."
And this was Germansen, a moral frontiersman with innate refinement; who never drank intoxicants, gambled, used tobacco or profane language-a mag- nificent type of the western pioneer. This is a bare outline of his wonderful life story. Imagine a sum- mer spent in the wilds of the Matanuska with no companions but strange Indians, and that only one of a life-time of such incidents. It requires great force of character to live the life that paves the way for empires, but the North possesses many such characters. Verily, truth is stranger than fiction !
Three months after that interview James Ger- mansen died at Juneau.
Camp OMFORT.
Camp Comfort Roadhouse.
CHAPTER XXVI
O, the days that we've numbered and the nights that we've slumbered
In the lone valleys 'midst forests of thrills;
Where the water was splashing with silver salmon's lashing, And the great bighorns looked down from the hills!
IT is not such a precarious pastime to glance back- ward over the summer of 1906 as were the real experiences. Yet it is not more comfortable than were the many pleasant evenings I spent at good old Camp Comfort roadhouse during that sum- mer. As this was only four miles from my copper locations, it was as a neighbor as well as a comfort to me when passing too and fro.
It is a mental pleasure to me now to glance from the present back to the scenes which linger in my memory, and to see again those black, high peaks silhouetted against the northern sky; storm-whipped peaks kissed into forgiveness by warm sunshine while other storms raged below. Again I can see the mountain goat, away up yonder, clinging to preci- pices and life with his remarkable tenacity. And such a life! He seems to say, "Behold in Me misery incarnate ! "
I will relate an incident which happened during
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that summer because it may partly demonstrate to the reader their attachment to the miserable ex- istence they endure among precipices and snow- slides, summer rains and winter blizzards.
I had crawled among a bunch of twenty-three of them, feeding on rolling hills, and as we were out of meat I decided to lay in our summer's sup- ply, then and there. Of course I should have " necked " them, or shot them through the top-shoul- ders, but did not know at the time that a precipice was so near. As they ran over a ridge I shot five through the heart cavities, expecting to find them lying along the trail of the others, but imagine my surprise, when following them over the ridge, to find a sheer precipice and not a goat in sight.
By clinging to alder brush, I managed to look down over the precipice, and counted three dead ones which were lying on shelves and in inaccessible places. A large one, yet untouched by one of my bullets, was standing on the side of the bluff where his place of footing looked no larger than a saucer. The Wolverine glacier filled the bottom of the can- yon, directly below, and was about a mile wide at that place. A snow bank extended from the glacier to the wall of this precipice, a distance of about thirty feet.
I decided to break that goat's neck and drop him down onto the snow bank, which was at least two hundred feet directly below. By approaching over
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the glacier, from the other side of the canyon, it would be possible thus to secure the meat. He was only about forty yards away, and nearly on a level with me. Crack! and he shot out of his niche in the wall, and descended like a bird, but when he struck the snow the impact caused it to give way, and I could hear that goat bumping down, down, down, under the glacier, and over other precipices beneath.
I spent some time in looking over those rolling hills, hoping that some of them had not gone into the bluffs, but in vain. I then returned to where I had broken the neck of the one who was clinging to the wall, and behold! there was another one in exactly the same place. He appeared to be a year- ling, and had evidently emerged from around the wall, beneath me, having tracked the other to this place, whence further progress was an absolute im- possibility.
As he was standing with his head from me, but looking at me, I decided to waste no more meat, but to sit down there and watch how he would manage to turn round and get back from that point. It was a most interesting sight to observe how he humped his back into an arch, and held his head close to his side to prevent over-balancing and tum- bling to sure death, below! I became actually dizzy while watching him work his body around, an inch at a time, until he had completely turned. Then
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the danger was not over, for it looked to me like an impossibility for any live thing larger than a fly to return along the face of that precipice. He stood upon his hind feet and placed his front feet against the wall, by his nose, but apparently he could not discover any way above him to get out.
Then he lowered himself, and intently scrutinized the way towards me. He was compelled to place confidence in my not hurting him as he should work his way along the face. Finally he lowered his head, craned his neck, and acted as though he had discovered a small jagged place which would hold his foot, while he should run a few steps. To halt anywhere short of twenty feet would mean destruc- tion, so he looked at me as much as to say, "Now please let me try this, for it's my only way out," then he made the rush. My heart beat more quickly, while he attempted the feat, but he landed where again he could stand, and then again he looked at me, seeming to say, "How's that?"
It required at least half an hour for him to pick his way carefully, a step at a time, along that dizzy wall to a place directly beneath where I was sitting. I held on to an alder and peeped down at his back, not more than twenty feet away from me. I could have fastened a rope to the alders and have dropped a loop over his head, but if I had had the rope, I should not have done such a thing. No; for had we not lived together through a time when I had
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held my breath nervously with fear that he should lose his life? Now we were companions in danger, and nothing should tempt me to destroy his life after it had been so carefully preserved. I could have shaken his foot in congratulation for his suc- cess, and should have enjoyed patting him only too well. I returned to camp completely satisfied, so far as that particular goat concerned me.
I saw eighty-three goats and fourteen bears dur- ing that summer. One unusual sight was a female bear with three cubs. It was interesting to watch her, as the correct control of such a playful family of three was evidently a task. Bears chastise their young, and often she gave one of them a slap to cause it to travel ahead of her. While two were rolling on an old snow bank, locked in each other's arms, the third would linger behind, apparently with no other purpose than to torment his maternal an- cestor. Finally she let the little fellows roll as far down the bank as they desired, and turned her attention to the third. It was really laughable to watch that little fellow attempting to run past his mother, to where he knew he belonged without get- ting a slap. I have seen the little American black bears slap their young, and drive them up trees when they scented danger.
At another time that summer, I saw three bears across a canyon from our tent. I resolved to cross over, as two had turned back from their previous
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course, and the third soon would be following in their tracks. I had just arrived within fifty yards of their trail when the third bear came along, just as expected.
Four pellets, for that was all they were, were sent through his body. He attempted to ascend a bluff in a small gully, but was too weak and turned down the gulch towards me. The fifth shot was sent for the head, but it struck him in the eye, and, as is generally the case with a bear, that kind of a shot had no perceptible effect upon him. When he was about twenty-five steps away, and just as he had lowered his head, the sixth shot was squarely placed between the eyes, and a little above. That shot caused me to step to one side, to allow his body to roll by. He was not after me, particularly, but was too weak to climb the mountain.
Valdez suffered considerably from the effects of a glacier flood that summer. A good portion of the town was washed away, and I watched one house- furniture, mortgage and all-go floating out into the bay.
Several persons lost their lives in the interior. A very sad incident was the drowning of Jim Mont- gomery, with his wife and child. The child had been born in the wilds of the Tanana, while Jim was out hunting, and the only attendant had been an Indian squaw. They had concluded to cease the vigil they had kept for years on Montgomery's
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